Unlabelled Passage Of The Day

[When_MP_Attacks]

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.--Ross Macdonald

[sundog]

Quote Originally Posted by When_MP_Attacks

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.--Ross Macdonald

That's stolen from Shakespear, Sonnet 94:

They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow,
They rightly do inherit heaven's graces
And husband nature's riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

[Nemonymous]

A quoted passage from 'The Glastonbury Romance' (1933) by John Cowper Powys:

"It was as if his physical form had already sunk into the waters of that Cimmerian sunset-realm which he called 'yr Echwyd,' while some power from outside of him was making his lips move in his corpse-like face!
'They sought for more than a fish, for more than any great chub of Lydford . . . they sought for the knot of the opposites, for the clasping of the Two Twilights, for the mingling-place of the waters, for the fusion of the metals, for the bride-bed of the contradictions, for the copulation-cry of the Yes and No, for the amalgam of the Is and Is Not! What they sought . . . what the Fisher Kings of my people sought, and no other priests of no other race on earth have sought it . . . was not only the Cauldron and the Spear . . . not only the sheath and the knife, not only the Mwys of Gwyddno and the Sword of Arthur, but that which exists in the moment of timeless time when these two are one! What they sought was creation with-out-generation . What they sought was Parthenogenesis and the Self-Birth of Psyche. What they sought was the Stone without Lichen which the people before my people worshipped, when they set up----'
The voice proceeding from the lips of the corpse-face of Mr. Evans became so hoarse and broken at this point that it hardly seemed like a human voice. Lady Rachel could clearly hear the footsteps on the pavement outside, through the street door which they had left ajar; and these steps sounded to her like the steps of all the generations of men treading down the stammerings of the Inanimate Bottom of the World."

--------------------

More quotes I've made from this book during my current second reading of it since the 1970s: Quotations from by John Cowper Powys | WEIRDTONGUE:

[Nemonymous]

CORDELIA'S FACE (needs to be imagined there)

‎”There are faces made for moonlight. There are faces created to respond to the wind. There are faces for sandy deserts, for lonely seashores, for solitary headlands, for misty dawns, for frosty midnights. Cordelia’s face was made for rain. It had nothing in it that was normally beautiful; and yet it became at this moment the living incarnation of all those long hours when rain had mingled with her secretest hopes. Her face was charged with the rain that had streamed down the window-panes at Cardiff Villa, twilight after twilight, while her thoughts had been flying far away; far over dripping forests, far over swollen rivers to green-black castle walls of which she fancied herself the mistress or the captive.”

– from ‘The Glastonbury Romance’ (1933) by John Cowper Powys.

My other quotes from this massive novel: HERE

[Cnev]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

CORDELIA'S FACE (needs to be imagined there) ‎”There are faces made for moonlight. There are faces created to respond to the wind. There are faces for sandy deserts, for lonely seashores, for solitary headlands, for misty dawns, for frosty midnights. Cordelia’s face was made for rain. It had nothing in it that was normally beautiful; and yet it became at this moment the living incarnation of all those long hours when rain had mingled with her secretest hopes. Her face was charged with the rain that had streamed down the window-panes at Cardiff Villa, twilight after twilight, while her thoughts had been flying far away; far over dripping forests, far over swollen rivers to green-black castle walls of which she fancied herself the mistress or the captive.” – from ‘The Glastonbury Romance’ (1933) by John Cowper Powys. My other quotes from this massive novel: HERE

Damn.

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Cnev

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous CORDELIA'S FACE (needs to be imagined there) ‎”There are faces made for moonlight. There are faces created to respond to the wind. There are faces for sandy deserts, for lonely seashores, for solitary headlands, for misty dawns, for frosty midnights. Cordelia’s face was made for rain. It had nothing in it that was normally beautiful; and yet it became at this moment the living incarnation of all those long hours when rain had mingled with her secretest hopes. Her face was charged with the rain that had streamed down the window-panes at Cardiff Villa, twilight after twilight, while her thoughts had been flying far away; far over dripping forests, far over swollen rivers to green-black castle walls of which she fancied herself the mistress or the captive.” – from ‘The Glastonbury Romance’ (1933) by John Cowper Powys. My other quotes from this massive novel: HERE Damn.

Why?

[Cnev]

[quote=Nemonymous;86449]

Quote Originally Posted by Cnev

Why?

Good stuff.

I keep coming across Powys, although I have never actually read anything by him.

[gveranon]

Maybe this is just an American idiom (?), but I think Cnev meant "Damn" as an expression of appreciation mingled with amazement.

[When_MP_Attacks]

For pleasure, read one chapter of Nabokov. For punishment, two.

--Nassim Nicholas Taleb

[Cnev]

This lyric always made me feel very sad for a reason I do not completely understand:

"I saw the creature fall
Into the swamp from which he spawned
I heard them laugh and say
They never liked him anyway

I tried to talk to them
To help you on your feet again
They laughed and said to me
The swamp is right where I should be

The creature lives
The creature lives
The creature lives
The creature lives"

-Mastodon