/lit/ - Literature

ITT : Post phrases, passages, fragments that have stayed with you from the very moment you read them, and that still come back to you from time to time.

Here are three that I've been thinking about a lot recently:

"Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire
Et quod vides perisse perditum ducas". from Catullus, carmen 8 ("Miserable Catullus, cease to be a fool, and that which you see to have been lost, may you consider lost")

"He fished by obstinate isles" - Ezra Pound, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

"Le silence est le parti le plus sûr de celui qui se défie de soi-même" - La Rochefoucauld ("Silence is the best resolve for him who distrusts himself", though the french phrase is infinitely more beautiful than that translation).

>>15217168
Sometimes night revives a singular plant whose gleam breaks up rooms and their furniture into solid masses of shadow.
Its leaf of gold clings impassively to the hollow of a little alabaster column by means of a very black stem.
Seedy moths attack it in preference to the too-high moon, which is vaporizing the woods. But, instantly singed or worn out by the struggle, they lie trembling, on the verge of a madness that is close to stupor.
Meanwhile the candle encourages the reader with the flickering light it throws on his book at each sudden release of an unusual smoke — and then bends over its plate to drown itself in its food.

Also, I like to stare at it 30 minutes every morning.