Second Hand Excerpts @secondhandexcerpts-blog - Tumblr Blog

Granville Stanley Hall via Jill Leopre ; New Yorker

" The work of growing up, Hall argued, is the work of finding something to believe in."

Patti Smith - Just Kids #2

"The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation"

"Laughter. An essential ingredient for survival. And we laughed a lot,"

"Where does it all lead? What will become of us? These were our young questions, and young answers were revealed. It leads to each other. We become ourselves."

#patti smith

Patti Smith - Just Kids

"I swiftly accepted the notion of God. it pleased me to imagine a presence above us, in continual motion, like liquid stars"

",,, I would lie in my bed by the coal stove vigorously mouthing long letters to God... But as time passed I came to experience a different kind of prayer, a silent one, requiring more listening than speaking"

"His brutal confidence took my breath away"

"For a brief moment I felt as if I might die; and just as quickly I knew everything would be all right."

" It was a good day to arrive in New York City. No one expected me. Everything awaited me."

Joan Didion - Slouching Towards Bethlehem

" We're just gonna let it all happen", Jeff says. "Everything is in the future, you can't pre-plan it. First we get jobs, then a place to live, Then, I dunno."

The Fellowship of the Ring - Tolkien

"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

#truth #Tolkien

Joan Didion - On Self Respect

To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw; one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

Joan Didion > Helen Keller.

#DIDION,#self

An orginal - On Helen Keller

I'm reading a book of essays, and this morning I started an essay by Helen Keller. Never have I felt so much anger. Here is why:

REASONS I DO NOT BELIEVE THE LEGEND OF HELEN KELLER 1. She was BLIND AND DEAF IN 1880 yet wrote sentences like this:

" ... we go about our petty tasks, hardly aware of our listless attitude of life, The same lethargy, I am afraid characterizes the use of all our faculties and senses." Guys, this is fucking beautiful but I'm sorry I just cannot believe that someone who could not hear or see knew the word LETHARGY. I have been able to see and hear since I was born and I barely know that word. 2. She apparently became a genius through all the braille books she read. Were there really THAT many braille books at her disposal in the fucking 1800's? WERE THERE ? No. The answer is NO. 3. She was FRIENDS with Alexander Graham Bell. Who is actually friends with Alexander Graham Bell? No one. 4. Her admirer was MARK TWAINE. Please take a moment to let this sit with you. Mark Twain, the great american novelist was in love with Helen Keller. 5. Helen Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. DID SHE? DID SHE? I don't mean to sound insensitive but if she was ACTUALLY BLIND AND DEAF how did she learn to TALK. Via her sense of smell? 6. She once told a Japanese person that she would love to name her dog "Kamikaze-go" and was then given a dog by the JAPANESE GOVERNMENT. I was unaware that the Japanese government gave people dogs, ever. I mean - wouldn't they have given Yoko Ono a dog? These six reasons lead to me to believe that Helen Keller was either a) not real b) not blind and deaf (maybe one but not both) c) a prophet from God. d) a superhero or e) planted by the US government to boost morale. Let's face it kids, this is the biggest hoax in American history. We have been lied to, the lines of truth have been blurred. I may not be blind and deaf - but I know when something smells fishy.

#BS #KELLER #Mine

Goodbye To All That - Joan Didion

"...quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. "

"It is relatively hard to fight at six-thirty or seven in the morning, without any sleep, which was perhaps one reason why we stayed up all night, and it seemed to me a pleasant time of day. "

"... I liked walking, from the East River over to the Hudson and back on brisk days, down around the Village on warm days. "

"...I hurt the people I cared about, and insulted those I did not. I cut myself off from the one person who was closer to me than any other. I cried until I was not even aware when I was crying and when I was not,"

NOTE: That's a picture of the street I lived on for the best two years of my NYC life. Last night I went to a friends surprise party and ran into someone who poured a drink on my best friend from college. I mean it - poured a drink on her, on purpose. WHO DOES THAT? She pretended it didn't happen and gave me a hug. I think New York did that. Seriously, so wonderfully fucked up.

#Dideon #friendship #new york

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Manners

This is going to be one of those - groups of quotes kids.

"For ,fashion is not good sense absolute, but relative; not good sense private, but good sense entertaining company. It hates corners and sharp points of character, hates quarrelsome, egotistical, solitary and gloomy people; hates whatever can interfere with total blending of parties; whilst it values all the peculiarities as in the highest degree refreshing, which can consist of good fellowship."

"The secret of success in society is heartiness and sympathy."

"Every natural function can be dignified by deliberation and privacy."

"I like that every chair should be a throne, and hold a king"

"...good sense and character make their own forms every movement, and speak or abstain, take wine or refuse it, stay or go, sit in a chair or sprawl with children on the floor or stand on their head, or what else soever, in a new and aboriginal way; and that strong will is always in fashion, let all who will be unfashionable. All that fashion demands is composure and self-content".

"We are lovers of self-reliance that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any mans good opinion."

"Even the line of heroes is no utterly extinct. There is still ever some admirable person in plain clothes, standing on teh wharf, who jumps in to rescue a drowning man; there is still some absurd inventor of charities; some guide and comforter of runaway slaes; some friend of Poland... some fanatic who plants shade-tress for the second and third generation, and orchards when he is grown old; some well-concealed piety; some just man happy in an ill-fame; some youth ashamed of the favors of fortune, and impatiently casting them on other shoulders'. These are the creators of Fashion, which is an attempt to organize beauty of behavior."

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Experience

"Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere. Life is not intellectual or critical, but sturdy. Its chief goodness is for well-mixed people who can enjoy what they find, without question."

Of Regiment of Health - Francis Bacon

Entertain hopes, mirth rather than joy, variety of delights rather than surfeit of them, wonder and admiration (and therefore novelties), studies that fill the mind with splendid and illustrious objects (as histories, fables, and contemplations of nature).

#bacon #life

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Friendship

"It is thought a disgrace to love unrequited. But the great will see that true love cannot be unrequited. True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles it feels its independency the surer. Yet these things may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the relation. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magnanimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its obejct as god, that it may deify both.

#emerson #friendship #love

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Circles (long one!)

"The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified."

"A mans growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends. For every friend whom he loses in truth, he gains a better."

"...but some petrach or Ariosto, filled with the new wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eyes to my own possibilities."

"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."

"The simplest words, - we do not know what they mean, except when we love and aspire."

"The one thing which we seek with insatiable desire is to forget ourselves, to be surprised out of our propriety, to lose our sempiternal memory, and to do something without knowing how or why; in short, to draw a new circle. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment."

TRUTH BOMBS LEFT AND RIGHT PEOPLE. HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU READ THE WHOLE DARN THING! (in Essays: First Series) ALSO, the image is Mark Rothko's "Three" .. I think you put painting names in quotes?

#emerson #Rothko #favorite #life #friendship #Writing

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Friendship, Essays #1

"I do not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with the roughest courage. When they are real, they are not glass threads or frost-work, but the solidest thing we know."

#emerson #friendship

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Spiritual Laws #2

"Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote the Iliad nor drove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery...The lesson which these observations convey is, BE, and not seem."

- Don't you just wish this kid was in your corner ALL THE TIME?! Ya? Me too.

#emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Spiritual Laws

"What attracts my attention shall have it... a few traits of character, manners, face, a few incidents have an emphasis in your memory out of all proportion to their apparent significance, if you measure them by the ordinary standards. They relate to your gift. Let them have their weight, and do not reject them and cast about for illustration and facts more usual in literature. What your heart thinks great is great. The soul's emphasis is always right. "

#emerson #self

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

“How do you know you're going to do something, until you do it?”

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Second Hand Excerpts