/lit/ - Literature

Is there a chart for essential non-fiction and if not can we get one going?

>>4548192

When all the people on a site are fags, they know it. because they can see, and they see fags around them. Are you the exception you think? if all you see is shit, then you are shit.

Hey guise, muh poem, judge it.
Tenderness

Sometimes when you’re asleep I put my ear against your belly and listen to the sounds. The contractions and twitches of muscle as they push around gas and wastes and acids, it’s gross. Then I’ll look at you, sleeping with your mouth half open, at the roof of your mouth. This is your insides I say. And I love you.
I remember when we were spun out and we were both so disgusting that when we made love we turned out the lights, but that didn’t stop our tongues from feeling like slime coated sandpaper wiggling together.
But that’s okay, it wasn’t like when we got on smack, and Marx’ ghost left us both. We only lived together out of convenience; and when I thought you’d stolen my dope I slapped you and you bit me, and you had stolen my dope.
Thankfully, that’s over. Now I have you just as you are, and none of those were really you, you say. That doesn’t matter, I say, because you don’t believe in free will anyway. You are what you are and that’s okay. Neither of us chose to be here, but here we are and why shouldn’t we be?
I think if a diety told me “You or her have to go to hell forever, who’s it gonna be?” I sure as hell wouldn’t say me. And you wouldn’t say you. There would be an awkward silence where we glanced at each other, then at the ground.
Be that as it may, I don’t think either of us could blame the other, even after a trillion years in hell. Because we both know why we did what we did. We understand the other’s motives and desires, and I think because of this we are in love. It’s not selfishness, but rationality that drives us.

Let's figure this out once and for all.

We know that the portrait is of Voltaire but is the quote actually from Descartes? I've had doubts about it and I tried to google it but, unfortunately, it only shows the same exact image or blog posts containing the phrase. Maybe some of you have read the actual text from which it came?