/lit/ - Literature

the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Satan's speech, Book II of Paradise Lost

Sinon's speech, The Aeneid

Hamlet's 'To Be Or Not To Be'

"smh fam tbh"

JUST

>>6893221
This sentence tbh wow

Your task, in these dreams, is often to pens.

O fortunatam natam me consule romam

-Cicero

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

>>6893221
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

"Yo sea, gull", Profane said.
Sea gull didn't answer.

>>6893478
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

>>6893505
That doesn't seem right.

To meme or not to meme, that is the question. Whether tis' nobler in the mind of anon to meme the frogs and wojaks of outmoded forums, or to cease meming, and thereby end them. But in that cease what memes may come? Ayyyy lmao, there's the rub.

>>6893485
What's that from yo?

>>6893490
rumor is that these words are what swayed the last dissenting editor at J. B. Lippincott & Co.

>>6893485
It's not even good, christfag.

>>6893490
More tarantula close one. Less the sewed snorted consoled where far less less. Meadowlark more some woodchuck expectantly well yikes. Save empiric and less far one. Fox as wolverine far. Honey shined awakened jovially that incoherent as cat goodness.

>>6893536
>>6893531

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

>>6893291
Satan's speeches are majestic displays of self-pity and sophistry, Milton's masterful rendering of the best and worst of angels confirming himself in damnation. I think for this reason they must be short of perfection: for the perfect line of English must be both sublime and true. Satan is a great orator, but he is the devil.

>>6893629
>One fatal tree there stands, of knowledge called,
>Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidden
>Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
>Envy them that? Can it be sin to know?
>Can it be death? And do they only stand
>By ignorance? Is that their happy state,
>The proof of their obedience and their faith?
>O fair foundation laid whereon to build
>Their ruin! hence I will excite their minds
>With more desire to know, and to reject
>Envious commands, invented with design
>To keep them low, whom knowledge might exalt
>Equal with Gods

>>6893221
"Never, never, never, never, never!"

-William Shakespeare, King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

“Oh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian once did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that to this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I now know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor reverence wilt thou be kind; and e’en for hate thou canst but kill; and all are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless, placeless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will dispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of the personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a point at best; whencesoe’er I came; wheresoe’er I go; yet while I earthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal rights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of love, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere supernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted worlds, there’s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou clear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of fire, I breathe it back to thee.”

This bed is on fire with passionate love, the neighbours complain about the noises above, but she only cums when she's on top

>>6893695
[SUDDEN, REPEATED FLASHES OF LIGHTNING; THE NINE FLAMES LEAP LENGTHWISE TO THRICE THEIR PREVIOUS HEIGHT; AHAB, WITH THE REST, CLOSES HIS EYES, HIS RIGHT HAND PRESSED HARD UPON THEM.]

“I own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung from me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can then grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the homage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The lightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my whole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning ground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though thou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of light, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not? There burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my genealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know not. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but thine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself unbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself unbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou omnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear spirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness mechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly see it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast thy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with haughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap with thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly I worship thee!”

...And the more she drank...

>>6893328
This

The start of that book that the tip of the tongue takes three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth: Infinity Jest.

>>6893609

I've always though this was one of Shakespeare's worst "famous" passages. the "quality of mercy" speech from the same play though is actually really good:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

>>6893505
Orally, yes, but it must have the correct punctuation if it is written, at which point the fun is ruined, because it is not a secret

interior crocodile alligator, I drive a chevrolet movie theater

>>6893872
If you say it out loud correctly, then it's still clear what's being said by how you emphasize the words

like the passage of an angel’s tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.

R-Rainbow Dash! I need your cum!

>>6893882
I can kinda understand the meaning of the freestyle rap. Or, at least, meaning can be gleaned from the statements:

>Interior: crocodile, alligator

The interior of my car is pimped out with crocodile/alligator skin

>I drive a Chevrolet movie theater

Yeah; it's so pimpin it might as well be called a movie theater on wheels

>>6893629
Why must it be true?

Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

- E.E. Cummings

Cada estação da vida é uma edição, que corrige a anterior, e que será corrigida também, até a edição definitiva, que o editor da de graça aos vermes.

>>6894864

Nice

"...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciatingly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his father's. I give it to you not that so you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."

Crowley, an Angel who did not so much fall as saunter vaguely downwards.

Et ignotas animum demittit in artes

The opening of Iliad

Anger be now your song, immortal one

Not to be trite with more Shakespeare but,
"Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

"sunset found her squatting in the grass..." well, ya'll know the rest

>>6896357
>>6893728
dammit I was too late

http://archive.org/stream/MollyBloomMonologEnd/MollyBloomMonologhyEnd_djvu.txt

>>6893934
This seems like it to me.

It's a tough choice (lots of good candidates in this thread), but for sheer beauty, truth, and mastery of English as an artform, I think >>6893960 takes the cake. It's brief, it's eloquent, it's sublimely constructed.

Does anyone know the author?

>He cum, but she still suckin

>>6893221
Invictus.

>>6894062
I am wrong; you are right. What I missed was that an untrue statement may be a true picture; and Satan's speech is as true and horrible a picture of human pride as we could ever ask of the poet. In this sense it is, then, undeniably true; and to what extent its content is falsity, it is the falsity of man, and not only a true picture thereof, but an important one also.

>>6893609

this speech is so great. the trick is in making it almost seem as though revenge were OK because it is human; "we are human too, therefore begrudge me not the worst of human vices" is the rotten message which he twists into respectability. Milton's Satan will do the same: "All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, / And study of revenge, immortal hate, / And courage never to submit or yield: / And what is else not to be overcome?" But Shylock falls short of Satan's counterfeited heroism by sounding clearly legalistic.

Of course, if we dig a little deeper into why he holds this rotten desire in his heart, we may not be satisfied with Shakespeare's answer.

>>6893221
>We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan
>Before the year is out.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

>>6893647
Damn that's fucking DANK.

>>6897432
don't forget that Satan hates everything and is constantly in agony. and he used to be the greatest of angels before he came up with the brilliant plan of being a god himself: in so cutting himself off, in so exalting himself, he has cast himself into hell and gets his meagre kicks by flying around God's creation trying to spoil it.

Big promises, big claims, nothing delivered. It's blatant sophistry and empty rhetoric. Milton made it sound so good because Satan really is a tempter, and his abilities as an angel far exceed man's. But his ideas stink. The reader's final impression, when they have seen through Satan's bullshit, should be that Satan breathed evil: proud, pompous, self-righteous, self-respecting awfulness. This is an extraordinary picture Milton has drawn, but its subject is beneath contempt.

>>6897146
Go to bed, Senator Brandis.

"It ain't gonna suck itself."

>>6897878
or, maybe he's right; and doesn't think he's simply trying to spoil god's creation? God's kill count is in the billions while Satan's killed a small handful of people (all or most of which God told him to kill)

it seems like God's doing a good enough job of fucking things up on his own and he's supposed to be omnipotent and outside of time

>>6897936
learn more than a handful of literary memes about theology before you start pulling opinions about a Christian poem out of your ass, son

"The more she drank, the more she shat, but the more she shat, the thirstier she grew".

>>6897432
Not as dank as Mammon's speech:

>Let us not then pursue
>By force impossible, by leave obtain'd
>Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state
>Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek
>Our own good from our selves, and from our own
>Live to our selves, though in this vast recess,
>Free, and to none accountable, preferring
>Hard liberty before the easie yoke
>Of servile Pomp. Our greatness will appear
>Then most conspicuous, when great things of small,
>Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse
>We can create, and in what place so e're
>Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain
>Through labour and endurance.

Übermensch attitude.

>>6897303
One of my favorites. I have it printed and laminated on my desk.

>>6898723
lel you're a fuckin fag

>>6898723
>>6898726

The perfect encapsulation of contemporary /lit/

Ta tête, ton geste, ton air
Sont beaux comme un beau paysage;
Le rire joue en ton visage
Comme un vent frais dans un ciel clair.
Le passant chagrin que tu frôles
Est ébloui par la santé
Qui jaillit comme une clarté
De tes bras et de tes épaules.
Les retentissantes couleurs
Dont tu parsèmes tes toilettes
Jettent dans l'esprit des poètes
L'image d'un ballet de fleurs.
Ces robes folles sont l'emblème
De ton esprit bariolé;
Folle dont je suis affolé,
Je te hais autant que je t'aime!
Quelquefois dans un beau jardin
Où je traînais mon atonie,
J'ai senti, comme une ironie,
Le soleil déchirer mon sein,
Et le printemps et la verdure
Ont tant humilié mon coeur,
Que j'ai puni sur une fleur
L'insolence de la Nature.
Ainsi je voudrais, une nuit,
Quand l'heure des voluptés sonne,
Vers les trésors de ta personne,
Comme un lâche, ramper sans bruit,
Pour châtier ta chair joyeuse,
Pour meurtrir ton sein pardonné,
Et faire à ton flanc étonné
Une blessure large et creuse,
Et, vertigineuse douceur!
À travers ces lèvres nouvelles,
Plus éclatantes et plus belles,
T'infuser mon venin, ma soeur!

>>6894864
Absolutely love this

"When it was light enough to use the binoculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see. The segments of road down there among dead trees. Looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of standing smoke. He lowered the glasses and pulled down the cotton mask from his face and wiped his nose on the back of his wrist and then glassed the country again. Then he just sat there holding the binoculars and watching the ashen daylight congeal over the land. He knew that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God God never spoke."

>>6898916

>>6894908
I love the book as a whole but I found this part more comedic than anything.

I imagine Mr. Compson clutching his sixth glass of whiskey and slurring this line to a deferential, standing Quentin. Because, seriously. What is this even supposed to mean?

>>6897936
you have to be incredibly stupid to believe that this is a good way of reading Milton's Satan

>>6897085
Well said

They're all actors
Lookin at themselves in the mirror backwards
Can't even face themselves, don't fear no rappers
They're all weirdos, DeNiros in practice
So don't believe everything your earlobe captures;
It's mostly backwards
Unless it happens to be as accurate as me
And everything said in song you happen to see
Then, actually, believe half of what you see
None of what you hear, even if it's spat by me
And with that said, I will kill niggas dead
Cut niggas short, give you wheels for legs
I'm a K-I-double-L-E-R
See y'all in Hell, shoot niggas straight through the E.R
Whoa! This ain't B.R., no
This S.C. CEO, the next Lyor, no
The next leader of the whole free world

>>6896598

made me laugh hard, thanks anon

as for this thread i like this quote from julius caesar

I could be well moved if I were as you.
If I could pray to move, prayers would move me.
But I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fixed and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.
The skies are painted with unnumbered sparks.
They are all fire and every one doth shine,
But there’s but one in all doth hold his place.
So in the world. 'Tis furnished well with men,
And men are flesh and blood, and apprehensive,
Yet in the number I do know but one
That unassailable holds on his rank,
Unshaked of motion. And that I am he
Let me a little show it even in this:
That I was constant Cimber should be banished,
And constant do remain to keep him so.

The last lines of Tennyson's Ulysses

Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

>>6897878
>This is an extraordinary picture Milton has drawn, but its subject is beneath contempt.
I agree with everything you said previously but I will disagree here. I don't think the reader is meant to have contempt for Satan at all. While, yes, his speech is empty and yes, he has no real plan, the reader is meant to feel sorry for Satan. I completely forget who said it, but some contemporary of Milton's said something along the lines of "for him to paint Satan so human, he must have known him personally."
He cannot be below contempt because it's so easy to symparhize. He has lost the fight. His pride is wounded. All of his cohorts have fallen because of his pride and he has doomed them to hell. His speech, yes, is meant to exalt himself. However, I think there is a sense of goodness. A sense of "don't give up yet, we can do this." It isn't altrusitic by any means, but he helped inspire hope in a hopeless situation. I'm not sure if this is evil or not, it's certainly an interesting ethical question

Consensual sex in the missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation

Like Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone;
My thoughts did evermore disdain
A rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet"

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-capped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!

Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').

Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?

L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita;
Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.

Officer, officer, there they go--
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.

Officer, officer, there they are--
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out and take cover.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.

My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.

>>6894864
>E.E. Cummings
>E
>E
>C

‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’

>>6901005
for an angel to seem very human is a huge step down. indeed Satan is very relatable; only total ignorance of Christian doctrine leads people to forget that Satan is supposed to sound very familiar; for he speaks like that temptation we all know to self-pity and self-regard. It is clothed in some remaining virtue, but this does not redeem him:
. . . . . . . . . . . Towards him they bend
With awful reverence prone; and as a God
Extoll him equal to the highest in Heav'n:
Nor fail'd they to express how much they prais'd,
That for the general safety he despis'd
His own: for neither do the Spirits damn'd
Loose all thir vertue; least bad men should boast
Thir specious deeds on earth, which glory excites,
Or clos ambition varnisht o're with zeal.

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her,” I ventured. “You can’t repeat the past.”

“Can’t repeat the past?” he cried incredulously. “Why of course you can!”

He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.

“I’m going to fix everything just the way it was before,” he said, nodding determinedly. “She’ll see.”

He talked a lot about the past, and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was. . . .

. . . One autumn night, five years before, they had been walking down the street when the leaves were falling, and they came to a place where there were no trees and the sidewalk was white with moonlight. They stopped here and turned toward each other. Now it was a cool night with that mysterious excitement in it which comes at the two changes of the year. The quiet lights in the houses were humming out into the darkness and there was a stir and bustle among the stars. Out of the corner of his eye Gatsby saw that the blocks of the sidewalks really formed a ladder and mounted to a secret place above the trees — he could climb to it, if he climbed alone, and once there he could suck on the pap of life, gulp down the incomparable milk of wonder.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something — an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever.

fuck bitches get money

>>6901069

oops meant to just post the last paragraph

>>6901005
funny, cause Satan always seemed to me like G.G. Allin with the voice of Shelley

>>6901052
He never wrote it in lowercase himself.

>>6893888
having never heard it orally it sounds like idiocy

>>6901067
Yes, I have no doubt of this. And certainly, it is a step down. However, the biblical doctrine and Milton's Satan differ in that Milton's Satan shows weakness. He shows regret and frustration and the inability to control his emotions, all of which are human (these can be attributed to the Bible in some cases, but he is mostly seen as an emotionless embodiment of hatred and evil).
Milton was really the first to paint the devil as one to be sympathized with. For that reason, I don't think he wanted the reader to consider him beneath contempt. I think he wanted the reader to see themselves in him

The boy's face was obliterated in a sheet of blood.

“I don’t like anything here at all.” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”

“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam, “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and
looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on, and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same; like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”

I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a gigantic man, and another, a dwarf; and I heard as it were a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and He spake unto me and said: I am thou, and thou art I; and wheresoever thou mayest be I am there. In all am I scattered, and whencesoever thou willest, thou gatherest Me; and gathering Me, thou gatherest Thyself.
-The Gospel of Eve

>>6901067
>>6901094

Just to follow up on this, I always thought of it this way:
Who is more relatable? Satan, the figure with the wounded pride who is frustrated with his failure and seemingly hopeless situation, or God, the all-powerful figure incapable of losing? It's Satan every time. When I read Paradise Lost, I find myself rooting for Satan because I can relate to his human frustrations. I want him to surmount his failures; I want him to beat the odds.

I just don't think I ever had or wanted to have contempt for Satan. Yes, he was fought for evil, but I could sympathize with his situation

>>6901132

that is very beautiful

>>6901142
If I told you a tale about a man who fights against all odds to show that 2+2=5, would you call him a hero or a fool? Truth cannot lose; he cannot win; but, courageous, he never gives up trying.

That is the character of Satan. He picked a fight that could not be won and, if it could, would earn him nothing. Can't you see how ridiculous that is? Why do you sympathize with him? Just because he chooses to fight something? Just because he's the "underdog"?

Your mistake is that you imagine God is an ordinary tyrant. If you had any religion at all you would not make that mistake.

>>6901094
>He shows regret and frustration and the inability to control his emotions, all of which are human
...and none of which are good. Regret is useless without repentance. Frustration is the accustomed (and never productive) response to frustrated ambition and injured pride. As for being an emotional wreck,

Thus while he spake, each passion dimm'd his face
Thrice chang'd with pale, ire, envie and despair,
Which marrd his borrow'd visage, and betraid
Him counterfet, if any eye beheld.
For heav'nly mindes from such distempers foule
Are ever cleer.

What is hell, if not the inner turmoil of eternal self-regard?

Still, aesthetically, Satan is easy to identify with. Not an indefensible position in theology I assume? Satan wouldn't be dangerous if he weren't attractive.

In prose, the reflections of Socrates on the afterlife, the death of Falstaff, Stephen Dedalus' epiphany in The Portrait, and the description of the Aleph in Borges.

In poetry it's so much harder. There's is not a single one. You have the first stanza of 'Chi e questa?', you have 'Full fathom five thy father lies', you have the speech of Francesca da Rimini... There are so many things. I also love Marvell's To His Coy mistress.

Only languages I can read are Portuguese, English, Spanish and some Italian, so my views are very limited.

>>6901195
there is something tragic and relatable in satan. Created by an omnipotent power to struggle and fight ceaselessly, to be the lord of hellfire, the prince of evil, consigned ever to war and never to success. Sisyphus, practically.

>>6901195
But once you have admitted all else, what's left is "Satan reminds us of those worst parts of ourselves". If you are prone to self pity that may endear you to him. I choose instead to regard him as a self-made misery who sets about the task of fucking up everything good. Where I find myself like him I am ruthless to myself. Satan is ugliness.

This may be a matter of taste. I just don't find it interesting to say that Satan is "relatable" as if that has anything to do with sympathy.

>>6894872
A maior sequência de palavras de sempre? Ora, por favor. Não há nada de mais nessa passagem.

>>6901043
He purposely wrote it to be mediocre you know..

>>6901206

>>6901224
Yes, the beauty of it is in how it reflects the character who "wrote" it.

>>6901249
fuck off tbh

I'm the guy saying this "satan is relatable" shit is stupid but knee jerk fedoraposting is dumb too

Do I dare disturb the universe?

>>6901208
Well, we're talking Milton's Satan, no? I think your theology is different than the one espoused by the poem itself. Milton I think wants us to identify with, pity, even root for Satan. It's a way of getting to that contradiction within us and to make it resonate.

In real life, of course, one is not free to follow Satan, if one is bound to a certain religious tradition. But in art I think it's permissible to gaze into that abyss.

>>6898000
>>6898000
This touched me. I have to read that book.

>>6901305
Milton was a serious Christian writer and you don't know what the fuck you're talking about

>>6893221

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."
-W. Somerset Maugham

Probably just because it makes me feel better about the utter disappointment I've been to the world.

>>6901290
Eliot had a certain way with words that no other poet really matches, in my opinion.

"Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."

Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk

>>6901004
Fuck me. Why couldn't I have been born 400 years ago? I would've discovered the shit out of everything

>As if you could kill time without wounding eternity.

All this talk of Paradise Lost is making me want to read it. I bought a Milton: Complete Works Penguin when Borders was going out of business and lo and behold "Penguin Classics" means that someone "translated" an English poem from 1680~ English into modern day American English. Should've checked but it was 80%ish off.

What's the best copy of the OG? Norton's badass but I wish they wouldn't mark up shit with annotations and maybe just force me to flip to the back when things are too obscure, like L&P translations of the Russians.

"I put on my robe and wizard hat"

>>6901433
u can still discover dank memes

>>6893221
On the Death of Prince Meshchersky
-Derzhavin

>>6893221

You, the woman; I, the man; this, the world:
And each is the work of all.

There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger;
The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing
Over the walkers in the village; and there are
Many beautiful arms around us and the things we know.

See how those stars tramp over the heavens on their sticks
Of ancient light: with what simplicity that blue
Takes eternity into the quiet cave of God, where Ceasar
And Socrates, like primitive paintings on a wall,
Look, with idiot eyes, on the world where we two are.

You, the sought for; I, the seeker; this, the search:
And each is the mission of all.

For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes
The built cart out; and where we go is reason.
But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling
Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

How smoothly, like the sleep of a flower, love,
The grassy wind moves over night's tense meadow:
See how the great wooden eyes of the forrest
Stare upon the architecture of our innocence.

You, the village; I, the stranger; this, the road:
And each is the work of all.

Then, not that man do more, or stop pity; but that he be
Wider in living; that all his cities fly a clean flag...
We have been alone too long, love; it is terribly late
For the pierced feet on the water and we must not die now.

Have you ever wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken?
Have you seen the homeless in the open grave of God's hand?
Do you want to aquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war?

There is the muffled step in the snow; the stranger;
The crippled wren; the nun; the dancer; the Jesus-wing
Over the walkers in the village; and there are
Many desperate arms about us and the things we know.

>>6893221
Sing, O muse, of the rage of Achilles

>>6901477
http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/mdenner/Demo/texts/death_of_meshch.htm

>>6901469
This one's a classic

Now, this is a story all about how
My life got flipped-turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute
Just sit right there
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air

In west Philadelphia born and raised
On the playground was where I spent most of my days
Chillin' out maxin' relaxin' all cool
And all shootin some b-ball outside of the school
When a couple of guys who were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighborhood
I got in one little fight and my mom got scared
She said 'You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air'

I begged and pleaded with her day after day
But she packed my suit case and sent me on my way
She gave me a kiss and then she gave me my ticket.
I put my Walkman on and said, 'I might as well kick it'.

First class, yo this is bad
Drinking orange juice out of a champagne glass.
Is this what the people of Bel-Air living like?
Hmmmmm this might be alright.

To be mortal, is to be free.

>>6893629
>>6897085

I like you

>>6893485
everybody knows that the bird is the word

>>6894864
super nice

>>6901466
>someone "translated" an English poem from 1680~ English into modern day American English.

'Translations' of Milton and Shakespeare into contemporary English make me feel like sticking a screwdriver up my urethra

>>6893789
this is beckett though, right?

>>6895001
mah good omens nigga

>>6901963
Translations of early modern English into contemporary modern English is a weird fetish to have

>>6894864
keked

I'm not a fan of Byron, and even in his best lines you can sense the shallowness that plagues almost everything he writes, but he has some lovely lines nonetheless. Is this good enough for this thread? I don't know. Y'all tell me.

from Canto the Third

CXIV

I have not loved the world, nor the world me,—
But let us part fair foes; I do believe,
Though I have found them not, that there may be
Words which are things,—hopes which will not deceive,
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave
Snares for the failing: I would also deem
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve;
That two, or one, are almost what they seem,—
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.

a couple of Hardy's verses from "In Front of a Landscape" that I especially like, if that's worth anything

Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons
Further in date;
Instruments of string with the tenderest passion
Vibrant, beside
Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust
Now corporate.

Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect
Gnawed by the tide,
Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there
Guilelessly glad —
Wherefore they knew not — touched by the fringe of an ecstasy
Scantly descried.

>>6901466
idk I got an awesome collection of all Milton's poetry for 50 cents. not modernized, new condition.

only problem is the outer cover is very 80s-looking

>>6901179
I think your confusing your religious views with authorial intent. Satan is meant to be sympathized with.

>>6901305
You are absolutely correct
>>6901315
You are delusional and I urge you to revisit the work. Telling everyone they are wrong does not make you right. Milton intends for the reader to sympathize with the devil. All of your arguments revolve around your personal theology and do not hinge upon the text at hand. It is not controversial to say that Milton intends for his Audience to sympathize with the devil; this is well-known

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.


Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 1
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.


Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

>>6897962
>ctrl-f shat
Thank you.

>>6901427
Underrated post.

>>6901427

Unsure if FW quotation or troll. Unsure if anyone could ever be sure. Either way, 9/10.

>>6902593
THIS

>>6893221
nah

>>6903536
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_word_in_English#Coinages

>James Joyce made up nine 100-letter words plus one 101-letter word in his novel Finnegans Wake, the most famous of which is Bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk. Appearing on the first page, it allegedly represents the symbolic thunderclap associated with the fall of Adam and Eve. As it appears nowhere else except in reference to this passage, it is generally not accepted as a real word. Sylvia Plath made mention of it in her semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar, when the protagonist was reading Finnegans Wake.

>Appearing on the first page
/lit/ confirmed for NOT even reading the first page of Finnegan's Wake.

Ideology at it's purest!

>>6903567
This makes me never want to read Joyce

>>6902420
My "personal theology" is the Christianity which, until the 19th century, was accepted by pretty much every serious writer. It supposes, among other things, that man is fallen, and the devil tempts him to evil.

I am not the first to say that Milton was orthodox for his time. It was mostly accepted as orthodox by readers of his period, for whom the most controversial thing about it was the absence of rhyme. And readers went on finding it pretty substantially religious just about until it was reimagined by Blake and Shelley (who probably got his ideas about it from Godwin). Neither can be called very serious about orthodoxy. Cowper got it much better than either of them when he wrote,

But he, who addresses himself to the perusal of this work with a mind entirely unaccustom'd to serious and spiritual contemplation, unacquainted with the word of God, or prejudiced against it, is ill-qualified to appreciate the value of a poem built upon it, or to taste its beauties. Milton is the Poet of Christians: an infidel may have an ear for the harmony of his numbers, may be aware of the dignity of his expression, and in some degree of the sublimity of his conceptions, but the unaffected, and masculine piety, which was his true inspirer, and is the very soul of his poem, he will either not perceive, or it will offend him.

His words have become something like prophetic. Aside from a handful of good critics in the 20th century, things have gone on somewhat dismally. Charles Williams wrote a wonderful preface to an edition of Milton's English poetry, which inspired a full treatment by C. S. Lewis which is much easier to obtain and easily one of his best works, and Stanley Fish wrote a yet longer work of criticism which deals more closely with some of the pro-Satan critics, though he mostly accepts that behind it all is same orthodox theology that Lewis argues. Northrop Frye, while he finds Milton's God sort of awful, knows that the reader must "swallow him" to get Milton's point. There are others, notably Empson, who miss that point. Some others, like Waldock, propose that Milton did intend a theodicy, but may have inadvertently, and somewhat unconsciously, made Satan more desirable than he intended. The debates have not found any consensus, partly because Christianity is not palatable to most people. But even when critics don't like Milton's God they are starting to say that Milton may have made him bad by accident. There is no ground to say that Milton intended Satan as the good guy, or "sympathetic", except inasmuch as that means "we are tempted to pity or admire him", either because Milton fucked up or he intended us to perceive the fallenness of human perspective (that our heart might rise against it).

Go back and read Paradise Lost without bullshit notions of Milton the Rebel and you'll see what I mean. Satan is convincing because he is the father of lies—Milton builds subtle fallacies and outright lies into everything Satan says.

>>6903567
Look, it's not that I haven't read the first page, but... go try reading one page of a language you don't know. Then tell me how much you remember.

>>6903738
>>6903738
>Go back and read Paradise Lost without bullshit notions of Milton the Rebel and you'll see what I mean
You're misunderstand me. Milton creating sympathy for the devil within the reader does not mean that he was saying that the devil should be embraced. It is more a message akin to "we, too, are like him." Instead of sunscribing to the typical devil=bad, god=good, Milton paints a scene with more dimensions than that; a scene in which Satan comes off as human, rather than unrelatable evil. Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with Milton's religion. Milton is not saying that God stinks and Satan is a misunderstood good guy, he is just painting a more complex portrait of the fall; a portrait in which the reader sees themselves in Satan.

I can see that you've taken a cult following to his work and have somehow conflated his writings to be lost passages of the Bible and I really don't wish to continue this conversation with somebody that takes interpretations personally.

But saying that Milton didn't want the reader to see the human qualities within Satan and relate to them is pretty delusional

>>6903767
>Instead of sunscribing to the typical devil=bad, god=good

I never said Milton didn't put human qualities in Satan. Don't pretend I did. The point is he put the worst human qualities in Satan. Where do you think people got the idea of what the devil is like? Only if you never took Christianity seriously for a second can you believe that "the devil is like us" is a new statement that Milton is making, or that it in any way disrupts the "devil=bad, god=good" formula. Remember that men are fallen? Remember that we are low, and awful, and must be saved?

>he is just painting a more complex portrait of the fall; a portrait in which the reader sees themselves in Satan.

Now you are not disagreeing with me at all. I never said he didn't want us to see ourselves in Satan. I argued with the other poster because he said Milton wants us to "root for" Satan. Which is obviously not true.

>>6901023
I really like this. Where is it from?

>>6903815

It's from my new book "When summer is here, learn to google shit"

Cellar door.

>>6893248
Every letter.

"OP here, disregard that, I suck cocks" - Anon

>>6904190
I'd like it more if it had every letter, but only once each

>>6904489
I'd like it more if it also had every English sound

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Murciélago.

I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection.

Or

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie
Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;

Use your keys to rip her creamy little dick cavity to shreds.

>>6893221
Et tu, Brute?

>>6904515
>real human bean

Hurry up with my damn croissant.

>>6905004
have you ever had sex
with a pharaoh?

putthepussyinasarcophagus

>>6904678

The reason I like JC as a play is how you can make compelling arguments for Brutus being a hero or a villain and likewise for Caesar.

>>6905201
Head of the class
and she just wants a swallowship

>>6905286
I'm like Socrates but way more chocolatey

>>6905294
Your titties, let em out, free at last
Thank God almighty, they free at last

>A Tale of Two Cities
No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end.

>Pale Fire
I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane

>Romeo and Juliet
When the devout religion of mine eye
Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires,
And these, who, often drowned, could never die,
Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!
One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sun
Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.

She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever have seen then.

>>6894908
What does this mean?

>>6905489
Quentin's dad sent him to a good college to learn how fucking insane and pointless all human activities are

>>6905501
oh, but he's talking about a watch he gave him as well. fuck man idk it is from Sound and the Fury by Fuckner

>>6893221
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

>>6901057
What is this from?

>>6901014

Not gonna lie this is a really nice sounding sentence

>>6893221
Love loves to love love.

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay,” said Gatsby. “You always have a green light that burns all night at the end of your dock.”

Daisy put her arm through his abruptly, but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to her, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted objects had diminished by one.

>>6905540
and the love that loves to love the love that loves to love the love that loves to love, to love the love that loves

>Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

>>6904502
>>6904489

There are more English sounds than letters, by a long shot, so to accomplish a grammatically correct and meaningful sentence that fulfills both of those expectations is probably impossible.

It's the literary equivalent of a "Millennium Problem."

>>6901427
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1rCKXUemd5Y

>>6897085
you are a good man.
have you written or are you writing anything?
i must keep tabs on this.

Christopher Marlowe:
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. [Kisses her.]
Her lips suck forth my soul; see where it flies!—
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for Heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena."

Lord Tennyson
"And a new sun rose, bringing a new year"

>>6905518
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGLE

>>6901492
This line always gives me chills. There's just something so forbidding about it.

Hello again
Welcome my friend
to the wishing well
Relax and with closed eyes
toss your change
for pennywise

So fair and foul a day I had not seen.

I wanted the gold and I sought it
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave
Was it famine or scurvy, I fought it
I hurled my youth into the grave

I wanted the gold and I got it
Came out with a fortune last fall
Yet somehow life's not what I thought it
And somehow the gold isn't all

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

>>6905557
Was just listening to this the other day

Sublime

Breathe deep the gathering gloom,
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energy spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one,
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son,
Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right.
And which is an illusion

Dr. Pavel, I'm CIA.

>>6895001
I know both of those authors get shit on here but damn that's fun to read

>>6901317
that was a great book

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

Naked Lunch was pretty amazing in general, but I loved the style of this line:

"His street-boy face, torn with black scars of junk, retained a wild, broken innocence; shy animals peering out through grey arabesques of terror"

"And on and on it went--that duet between the dumb, praying lady and the big, hollow man who was so full of loving echoes"

>>6905582
Really an amazing poem, I've got it in my pocket today. Every time I go back it yields new rewards

>>6898829
Baby's first poem

>>6893654
Funny as it is to say it, this line may be in the running. But it's great in a way that is not usual, and if this were a competition, it would be disappointing to see such a winner.

I have no doubt, however, that the greatest sequence of words in the English language is somewhere in Shakespeare.

>>6901004
>the baths of all the western stars

ooh Tenny you know how to gimme them spine tickles boy

>>6901433
lemme quote some prose for your woes

That's the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up. What's so laughable, that a Jacqueline, for instance, as hard used as that by rough forces, will still refuse to live a disappointed life? Or is the laugh at nature—including eternity—that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will. But that probably is the joke, on one or the other, and laughing is an enigma that includes both. Look at me, going everywhere! Why, I am a sort of Columbus of those near-at-hand and believe you can come to them in this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every gaze. I may well be a flop at this line of endeavor. Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains, which didn't prove there was no America.

The great masses could be saved, if only with the gravest sacrifice in time and patience.

But a Jew could never be parted from his opinions.

At that time I was still childish enough to try to make the madness of their doctrine clear to them; in my little circle I talked my tongue sore and my throat hoarse, thinking I would inevitably succeed in convincing them how ruinous their Marxist madness was; but what I accomplished was often the opposite. It seemed as though their increased understanding of the destructive effects of Social Democratic theories and their results only reinforced their determination.

The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid. If all this didn't help, they pretended not to understand, or, if challenged, they changed the subject in a hurry, quoted platitudes which, if you accepted them, they immediately related to entirely different matters, and then, if again attacked, gave ground and pretended not to know exactly what you were talking about. Whenever you tried to attack one of these apostles, your hand closed on a jelly-like slime which divided up and poured through your fingers, but in the next moment collected again. But if you really struck one of these fellows so telling a blow that, observed by the audience, he couldn't help but agree, and if you believed that this had taken you at least one step forward, your amazement was great the next day. The Jew had not the slightest recollection of the day before, he rattled off his same old nonsense as though nothing at all had happened, and, if indignantly challenged, affected amazement; he couldn't remember a thing, except that he had proved the correctness of his assertions the previous day.

Sometimes I stood there thunderstruck.

I didn't know what to be more amazed at: the agility of their tongues or their virtuosity at lying.

>>6901433 #
lemme quote some prose for your woes

That's the animal ridens in me, the laughing creature, forever rising up. What's so laughable, that a Jacqueline, for instance, as hard used as that by rough forces, will still refuse to live a disappointed life? Or is the laugh at nature—including eternity—that it thinks it can win over us and the power of hope? Nah, nah! I think. It never will. But that probably is the joke, on one or the other, and laughing is an enigma that includes both. Look at me, going everywhere! Why, I am a sort of Columbus of those near-at-hand and believe you can come to them in this immediate terra incognita that spreads out in every gaze. I may well be a flop at this line of endeavor. Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains Which didn't prove there was no America.

>Dying is an art
>Like everything else
>I do it exceptionally well

>I do it so it feels like hell
>I do it so it feels real
>I guess you could say I've call

>>6907853
This is true. But it's not only true of Jews. This is what it's like to argue with people in general.

There is one thing which gives me some hope, which I must credit to C. S. Lewis, though I can't remember which book of his it's from. It is that, though we seldom win arguments on the spot, sometimes we win people over in the long run. People often need time to digest what they've heard, and often they will later change their minds thanks to arguments that, at the time, they thought they won.

In this I don't think Jews any worse than you or I.

this thread is great

/lit/ is a pleasant place when people are talking about what they love rather than what they hate

>>6907905
Fuck you

>>6903815

http://www.bartleby.com/101/334.html

>>6905596
tbh I don't think it sounds that much like thunder

I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death.

Nigger nigger nigger

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

Zero to a hunned, nigga. real quick. real quick nigga

Whan that april with hise shoures soote

>>6901052

He preferred it capitalized, as he said in multiple interviews throughout his life.

"But it isn't over when it ends, it goes on after it's all over, she's still inside you like a sweet liquor, you are filled with her, everything about her has kind of bled into you, her smell, her voice, the way her body moves, it's all inside you, at least for a while after, the you begin to lose it, and I'm beginning to lose it, you're afraid of how weak you are, that you can't get her all back into you again and now the whole thing is going out of your body and it's more in your mind than your body, the pictures come to you one by one and you look at them, some of them last longer than others[.] The pictures come to you and you have to hope they won't lose their life too fast and dry up though you know they will and that you'll also forget some of what happened, because already you're turning up little things that you nearly forgot."

Just cuts me to the fucking bone.

There ticked through
the blood of all, who
bustled, shouted, watched and waited, the strange quick-slow metronome of
energy, the jagged heartbeat of Brazil

>>6909237
came here to post this

>>6893505
i don't get how this works at all

In a nervous and slender-leaved mimosa grove at the back of their villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. She trembled and twitched as I kissed the corner of her parted lips and the hot lobe of her ear. A cluster of stars palely glowed above us between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. Her legs, her lovely live legs, were not too close together, and when my hand located what it sought, a dreamy and eerie expression, half-pleasure, half-pain, came over those childish features. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy she was led to kiss me, her head would bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement that was almost woeful, and her bare knees caught and compressed my wrist, and slackened again; and her quivering mouth, distorted by the acridity of some mysterious potion, with a sibilant intake of breath came near to my face. She would try to relieve the pain of love by first roughly rubbing her dry lips against mine; then my darling would draw away with a nervous toss of her hair, and then again come darkly near and let me feed on her open mouth, while with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my heart, my throat, my entrails, I gave her to hold in her awkward fist the scepter of my passion.

Girls are like apples...the best ones are at the top of the trees. The boys don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just get the rotten apples that are on the ground that aren't as good, but easy. So the apples at the top think there is something wrong with them, when, in reality, they are amazing. They just have to wait for the right boy to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree...

>>6909487
>i'm a whore who cheated on my past two boyfriends. why can't I just have a nice boy who won't make me cheat on them?

i'm the real kind of nigger, my nutz a lil' bigger

For me, the hurdle to clear is:

"Sold out arenas, you can suck my penis / Gilbert Arenas, guns on deck"

If it's better than that, it has the potential to qualify as aesthetically pleasing. If not, it fails.

I submitted these findings to an aesthetics journal and you can expect to hear my presentation at aesthetics conferences if you're making the rounds in Europe in 2016.

>>6909736
>2chainz as the benchmark for prose

I fucking love you

>>6893221
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

>>6909487

I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

>>6909725
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZL5p2Ju7Y
>Relevant

so foul and fair a day i have not seen