Linguistically Speaking

Mrs Elton, in her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket, was very ready to lead the way in gathering, accepting, or talking – strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or spoken of. – ‘The best fruit in England – every body’s favourite – always wholesome. – These the finest beds and finest sorts. – Delightful to gather for one’s self – the only way of really enjoying them. – Morning decidedly the best time – never tired – every sort good – […] price of strawberries in London – abundance about Bristol – […] delicious fruit – only too rich to be eaten much of – inferior to cherries – currants more refreshing – only objections to strawberries the stooping – glaring sun – tired to death – could bear it no longer – must go and sit in the shade.'

I love man as my fellow; but his sceptre, real or usurped, extends not to me.

We can all fly as
high as the dreams
we dare to live

unless we are a chicken

Habt ihr das andre Papier gelesen, so werdet Ihr wissen, dass es sich um nichts geringeres handelt, als um die Muse der teutschen Dichtkunst. … Ihr seid gebeten mit Eurer poetischen Haus und Feld-Apotheke bei der Wiederbelebung des Kadavers tätige Hilfe zu leisten; am besten wäre es man suchte ihn in einem Backofen zu erwärmen, denn dies ist noch das einzige Kunstwerk, welches das liebe Teutsche Volk zu bauen und zu geniessen versteht!

Meine Kunst … entsteht nicht primär aus der Kunst …, sondern aus der Welt, aus dem Erlebnis, aus der Auseinandersetzung mit der Welt, und genau dort, wo die Welt in Kunst gleichsam überspringt, steht der Einfall: Weil die Welt mit ihren Ereignissen in mich einfällt (wie ein Feind oft in eine Festung), entsteht eine Gegenwelt, eine Eigenwelt als eine Gegenattacke, als eine Selbstbehauptung.

"I'm sure you have been told that this is the best time of your life. It may be. But if it's true that this is the best time of your life, then you have my condolences. Because you'll want to remain here, stuck in these so-called best years, never maturing, wanting only to look, to feel and be the adolescent that whole industries are devoted to forcing you to remain. One more flawless article of clothing, one more elaborate toy, the truly perfect diet, the harmless but necessary drug, the almost final elective surgery, the ultimate cosmetic all designed to maintain hunger for stasis. While children are being eroticized into adults, adults are being exoticized into eternal juvenilia. There is nothing more satisfying, more gratifying than true adulthood. The process of becoming one is not inevitable. Its achievement is a difficult beauty, an intensely hard-won glory, which commercial forces and cultural vapidity should not be permitted to deprive you of."

The trees waved, brandished. We welcome, the world seemed to say; we accept; we create. Beauty, the world seemed to say. And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked, at the houses, at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly. To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was exquisite joy. Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper – all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now. Beauty was everywhere.

(Virginia Woolf: Mrs Dalloway, 77-8)

Be always drunken.
Nothing else matters: that is the only question.
If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth,
be drunken continually.

Drunken with what?
With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will.
But be drunken.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."