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97 posts tagged words
‟If you cannot understand my argument, and declare: “It’s Greek to me”, you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare;
if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your…
Happy Birthday Shakespeare and Cervantes!
The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice.
“The word is not a single and separate entity — it’s part of other words… Words belong to each other.”
The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf’s voice.
How to Describe the People in Your Life; or, Exercises in Pretentious Zoomorphism
How prepared are you to be mean? Very? Somewhat? Hardly?
For those of you looking to up your game, I’ve provided a glossary of zoomorphic adjectives with which to slur your enemies, along with examples of usage.
- ant: formicine: ex. “Overwhelmed by the formicine crowds at the officeplex, we sought refuge in the nearest bar.”
- armadillo: tolypeutine: ex. “You couldn’t be brutal enough with that tolypeutine ego. No slight or slur was registered or remembered.”
- bat: pteropine: ex. “The Joker watched in worried fascination as the pteropine form spiraled down the shaft of light.”
- crab: cancrine: ex. “Rick Perry’s cancrine mind finally crawled to a halt as his magic triplet disappeared down the sinkhole of his gunshot-stunted brain.”
- crow: corvine: ex. “Alas, it was time for me to eat my corvine feast.”
- cuckoo: cuculine: ex. “The cuculine ideas bandied about in that debate made that creature’s passion for Cocoa Puffs look staid and mature.”
- dodo: didine: ex. “The didine philosophy competed with the bad prose, and all to create a humorless lonely architect.”
- duck: anatine: ex. “The coach strode with anatine grace onto the court.”
- flea: pulicine: ex. “The bankers’ pulicine endeavors had resulted in debacle.”
- lemur: lemurine: ex. “One lemurine step followed another, until the boy finally reached the school’s front gate.”
- lizard: lacertilian: ex. “After its extended lacertilian deliberations, the majority rejected all efforts at compromise.”
- parrot: psittacine: ex. “The psittacine networks spread the rumors with vicious speed.”
- rattlesnake: crotaline: ex. “With crotaline verve, the candidate offered his pseudo-theological retort.”
- seal: phocine: ex. “The audience erupted into phocine cheers.”
- toad: batrachian: ex. “Newt’s batrachian charisma cannot be denied.”
- wolverine: musteline: “The poor Buckeyes could do nothing in the face of yet another musteline onslaught.”
Further suggestions?
P.S.: The most important of these adjectives is obviously “hircine.” Of, pertaining to, or resembling a goat. Ex. “The man created a new alternative energy source that reduced conflict in the world, and saved the planet. He also wrote a symphony for the ages. As hircine a fellow as you’ll ever find.”
“A snob is anybody who takes a small part of you and uses it to come to a complete vision of who you are. That is snobbery. And the dominant form of snobbery that exists today is job snobbery — you encounter it within minutes at a party when you get asked that famous, iconic question of the 21st century: ‘What do you do?’ The opposite of a snob is your mother.”
(via hlewisallways)
“It’s entirely conceivable that life’s splendor surrounds us all, and always in its complete fullness, accessible but veiled, beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies—not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn’t create but calls.”
Kafka, Tagebucher (via kateoplis)
Tagebucheintrag am 18. October 1921.
[“Es ist sehr gut denkbar, daß die Herrlichkeit des Lebens um jeden und immer in ihrer ganzen Fülle bereit liegt, aber verhängt, in der Tiefe, unichbar, sehr weit. Aber sie liegt dort, nicht feindselig, nicht widerwillig, nicht taub. Ruft man sie mit dem richtigen Wort, beim richtigen Namen, dann kommt sie. Das ist das Wesen der Zauberei, die nicht schafft, sondern ruft.”]
(via catherinewillis)
“Art can be exhilarating despite the darkness… if the reader is sensitive to the music.”
“What for Nietzsche was a necessary but consistently overlooked feature in all philosophy became in his own case, through a lifetime of effort, a self-conscious achievement: he showed that writing is perhaps the most important part of thinking. And since he also believed that thinking “is an action”, we might with some appropriateness attribute to him the hyperbolic view which this book aims to investigate, that writing is also the most important part of living.”
from Nietzsche: Life as Literature by Alexander Nehamas. We’re reading this book for faculty study group and it is the first time I’ve read anything regarding Nietzsche, but I’m finding it a great and edifying read as it forces me to think below the surface level of things and consider a deeper meaning. Since then I’ve picked up the Portable Nietzsche, which is just as ridiculous as it sounds, and it is full of great stuff that helps me dig below the skin-level of things and hopefully improves what I’m working on. All of these things give me a newfound energy to constantly write and that I’m not doing enough, which is tough. (via davepress)
Tragos HQ officially endorses Nehamas’ Nietzsche: Life as Literature, as well as his more recent book, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art.
“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.”
(via byronic)
“But what then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
— Albert Camus, writer, philosopher, Nobel laureate (1913-1960)
From Réflexions sur la peine capitale:
[“Mais qu’est-ce donc que l’exécution capitale, sinon le plus prémédité des meurtres auquel aucun forfait criminel, si calculé soit-il, ne peut être comparé ?
Pour qu’il y ait équivalence, il faudrait que la peine de morte châtiât le criminel qui aurait averti sa victime de l’époque où il lui donnerait une mort horrible et qui, à partir de cet instant, l’aurait séquestrée à merci pendant des mois. Un tel monstre ne se rencontre pas dans le privé.”]
(via theatlantic)
“Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.”
