What a beautiful book. The afterword of made me cry after a long emotional journey of small glimpses of his life:
"...the coffin had been covered with yellow flowers, 'his favorite color [...] a symbol of the light of which he dreamed both in his heart and in his work.'"
— Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
•omnia iam fient quae posse negabam - everything which I used to say could not happen, will happen now
•poeta nascitur, non fit - the poet is born, not made
•qui dedit benificium taceat; narrat qui accepit - let him who has done a good deed be silent; let him who has received it tell it
•saepe ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit - often, it is not advantageous to know what will be
•sedit qui timuit ne non succederet - he who feared he would not succeed sat still
•si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war
•struit insidias lacrimis cum feminia plorat - when a woman weeps, she is setting traps with her tears
•sub rosa - under the rose
•trahimir omnes laudis studio - we are led on by our eagerness for praise
•urbem latericium invenit, marmoream reliquit - he found the city a city of bricks; he left it a city of marble
•ut incepit fidelis sic permanet - as loyal as she began, so she remains.
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
temple of horus | edfu, egypt
Every time I read or watch Lord of the Rings I can’t help but think about how Tolkien had survived one of the bloodiest, most cruel, most dirtiest and darkest wars in human history, came back and wrote this:
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
And this:
"'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.
'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'"
And this:
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
And this:
“Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise cannot see all ends."
And this:
“True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”
And clearly they were all written partly because he survived the war, because of what he’d seen and done and learned. But at the same time the unwillingness to lose faith, the courage and strength that this man had to believe in these things after going through hell! It makes the nihilists look so cheap, so uninteresting! People who’ve went through concentration camps and wars believe in humanity anyway, isn’t that proof that hope and love exist? And many, many, many of them did not return or returned broken and cruel and traumatised to the point when no faith in others was possible for them, and nobody can blame them. But there were many who refused to lose faith and hope. They have seen some the worst that life has to offer and came back believing that we shouldn’t be eager to deal out death and judgement and should love only that which the sword defends.
No matter how many people say that humanity is horrible and undeserving of love, and life is dark and worthless, and love doesn’t exist I remember this and have hope anyway. Because there were people who have actually had all reason to believe in the worst and still believed in the good, so the good must be real. The good is real, even despite the evil, and we must trust in it.
"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in."
-Virginia Woolf
When a physicist falls in love :)
Richard Feynman's love letter to his deceased wife, 1946.
one day my bookshelves will be filled with penguin classics. one day.
just another thursday: studies, readings & coffee
good things to pay attention to more often
the color of trees
clouds and how they look different throughout the day
the different colors the mornings can have. sometimes it's an orange hue and sometimes pink and sometimes it's too misty to tell
pretty color schemes in random places (the trees and your neighbors wooden patio and the color of their car)
the states of the vehicles passing you by, dents and scratches and the different trinkets suspended from their rearview mirrors
the sound of silence
the shadows the lights cast in your home, like how sunset looks different than sunrise, and the shadows the sun casts look different than those of your lamps and candles
pretty details in buildings and houses like certain types of windows or doorknobs or archways
the movement of things in the wind. flags, leaves, flowers, people's hair and coats
the divine, only in dreams