"Then a lawyer said, “But what of our Laws, master?”
And he answered:
You delight in laying down laws,
Yet you delight more in breaking them.
Like children playing by the ocean who build sand-towers with constancy and then destroy them with laughter.
But while you build your sand-towers the ocean brings more sand to the shore,
And when you destroy them, the ocean laughs with you.
Verily the ocean laughs always with the innocent.

But what of those to whom life is not an ocean, and man-made laws are not sand-towers,
But to whom life is a rock, and the law a chisel with which they would carve it in their own likeness?
What of the cripple who hates dancers?
What of the ox who loves his yoke and deems the elk and deer of the forest stray and vagrant things?
What of the old serpent who cannot shed his skin, and calls all others naked and shameless?
And of him who comes early to the wedding-feast, and when over-fed and tired goes his way saying that all feasts are violation and all feasters law-breakers?

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun?
They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws.
And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows?
And what is it to acknowledge the laws but to stoop down and trace their shadows upon the earth?
But you who walk facing the sun, what images drawn on the earth can hold you?
You who travel with the wind, what weathervane shall direct your course?
What man’s law shall bind you if you break your yoke but upon no man’s prison door?
What laws shall you fear if you dance but stumble against no man’s iron chains?
And who is he that shall bring you to judgment if you tear off your garment yet leave it in no man’s path?
People of Orphalese, you can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?"

— Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

kurtz433:

Ray Bradbury, 1938-2012

Photo - the Library at Holland House (1940), mostly destroyed during the Nazi Blitz campaign on London.

(The British culture is not exactly the worst off in terms of destroying, though…)

ifeelbetterer:

obsessionfull:

The biggest gpoy of them all.

YES. I always quite like the puns. XD

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self."

— Aldous Huxley (via thefreenomad)

what’s an actualité littéraire 

What is a literary news

is this green

does it drool

is it evil

would it want to be friends with me

hateshiploveship:

Le cœur de Patrick cognait très fort, peut-être parce qu’il allait cesser de battre à tout jamais dans moins d’une minute, qu’il était encore tout neuf et débordant de choses douces et tendres…
Patrick pensait que cela allait vite, trop vite. Il n’osait pas lâcher la galerie, le vent lui arrachait des larmes, la terreur l’envahissait tout entier tandis que les gens se retournaient sur les trottoirs, stupéfaits ou pressentant le drame.
Libérant une main, Patrick tapa sur la vitre arrière en répétant:
-Arrête… Je t’en supplie… Je t’en supplie

Lopez n’était pas qu’un simple salaud. Salaud, il l’était, c’est évident, mais ce dernier cohabitait avec un être blessé, humilié, crevant de solitude dans son malheur et qui venait dans sa misère et son délire de trouver une victime expiatoire.
Il maugréa:
-Je vais t’apprendre à vivre, moi!
Puis il freina brutalement au carrefour des rues de Renard et de la Verrerie.
Le choc foudroya Patrick qui conserva une expression d’horreur et d’incompréhension sur son visage jeune à tout jamais.
Quant à l’épitaphe, elle tomba des lèvres dures d’un lepéniste en vadrouille:
-Il avait qu’à pas s’accrocher.
Sauf que Patrick ne s’accrochait pas vraiment. Dans une société à vomir, il se raccrochait simplement aux branches de cet arbre de vie qu’un autre appelle les “Grandes Espérances”.

Frédéric Fajardie, Apprendre à vivre (extrait) 

menandbutterflies:

Le cancer, c’est vraiment qu’une saloperie égalitariste.

Tiens, j’ai oublié de penser à vous le premier mai… Pas qu’on en ait quelque chose à faire des dates, simplement je me rends compte que ça fait longtemps que je n’ai pas lu de Fajardie et qu’on a toujours besoin d’un peu de tendresse.

bookporn:

Bookstore Scene 2 by `bQw

insideofbooks:

April 2012 - Fleamarket in Bremen

violent-buddhist:

Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus (Taken with instagram)

bookporn:

library (by 19/77)

bookporn:

reading corner (by b-real)

Allright, Camus, you win. I’ll read Hölderlin.

geisterseher:

By John Falconer, decipherer. To include the title here would be redundant.

Brofist to anyone who thinks “spinach” when Aramis says “theology”.