Sense Sublime

Annmarie. Professor. Literature lover.

[nervebynerve]

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

[sensesublime]

“They slept and ate too little, read too much, and fell completely out of touch with matters outside…They ignored the life of the world; they lived only the life of the mind.”

—R.F. Kuang, Babel

[academic-vampire]

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”

-John Milton, Paradise Lost

Art: “The Triumph of Death” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

[litafficionado]

-Lydia Davis, from Essays One

[macrolit]

“I live an intensely bookish life during a resolutely nonliterary era.”

— Maureen Corrigan (1955 - present) literature professor, author and essayist

[the-hearth-and-the-wild]

“He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

[sensesublime]

[flowerytale]

Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955

[Text ID: I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.]

[quotespile]

“Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful… and decide what you want and need and must do.”

— Zadie Smith, On Beauty

[shisasan]

January, 1933 The diary of Anaïs Nin [Volume One: 1931-1934]

[intheam]

“Beat, happy stars, timing with things below, Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, […] Let all be well, be well.”

Eva Green as VANESSA IVES PENNY DREADFUL

[ancientsstudies]

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them. x

[sensesublime]

“…my childhood falls silently to the bottom of my memory, that library of the soul from which I will draw knowledge and experience for the rest of my life.”

[oldfarmhousefallfeatures]

http://instagram.com/bonjourmoon

[sensesublime]

[bookmania]

"Strange isn’t it? To love a book. When the words on the page become so precious that they feel like part of your own history because they are.” ~ Erin Morgernstern, The Starless Sea

[ig: allora]

[poetry-siir]

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”

— James Baldwin, Conversations with James Baldwin