i collect things

2/28/08

The separation of church and state is a source of strength, but the conscience of our nation does not call for separation between men of state and faith in the Supreme Being.

-Lyndon B. Johnson

2/27/08

KNOW then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,	5
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reasoning but to err;	10
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;	15
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! -Alexander Pope (I've never understood humanism better than after reading this)

2/26/08

The first Photoshop icon

People may or may not say what they mean... but they always say something designed to get what they want.

-David Mamet

2/25/08

To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.

-E. M. Cioran

2/24/08

The great writers usually break a few rules, and the greater the writer the larger the transgressions...

Forgive me if I got carried away back there. Sometimes we scribblers do indeed become drunk with power.

-Alexander Steele

All books are either dreams or swords.

-Amy Lowell

You shall love your crooked neighbour

  With your crooked heart.

-W.H. Auden

2/23/08

The Temptation of Adam
by Josh Ritter

...I never had to learn to love her like I learned to love the Bomb,
she just came along and started to ignore me...

We could hold each other close and stay up every night
looking up into the dark like it's the night sky.
Pretend this giant missile is an old oak tree instead
and carve our name in hearts into the warhead.

Oh Marie there's something tells me things just won't work out above,
that our love would live a half-life on the surface.
So at night while you are sleeping
I hold you closer just because
as our time grows short I get a little nervous.

I think about the Big One, W.W.I.I.I.
Would we ever really care the world had ended?
You could hold me here forever like you're holding me tonight
I think about that great big button and I'm tempted.

2/22/08

2/20/08

Wealth and Religiosity
via More than 95 Theses

2/19/08

-via Jesus Creed

Photo

By Small and Small: Midnight to 4 A.M.
by Jack Gilbert

For eleven years I have regretted it,
regretted that I did not do what
I wanted to do as I sat there those
four hours watching her die. I wanted
to crawl in among the machinery
and hold her in my arms, knowing
the elementary, leftover bit of her
mind would dimly recognize it was me
carrying her to where she was going.

Each one of us has... an inner life story that we spend all our lives telling to ourselves alone.... our inner life story is the content of our most private level of consciousness. It is the actual reason, the final basis of the decisions we make--decisions that are often so baffling to others.

-John Charles Cooper, Fantasy and the Human Spirit

2/18/08

Tony Jones' banned lecture at Wheaton.

-via iamjoshbrown

2/14/08

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but O, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
but is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor even chaste, except you ravish me.

-John Donne, Holy Sonnet XIV

-photo

2/13/08

“Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

-T.S. Eliot
Thomas in Murder in the Cathedral

2/11/08

Unholy we sang this morning, and prayed
as if we were not broken, crooked
the Christ-figure hung, splayed
on bloodied beams above us;
devious God, dweller in shadows,
mercy on us;
immortal, cross-shattered Christ—
your gentling grace down upon us.

-"Mercy" from Manhandling the Deity, by John F. Deane