Monday, November 29

Alan Rickman's "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"


 Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Thursday, November 25

Wedding of reality with the demon of what is impossible

 "World history compels us to recognize Man's continuous, inexhaustible capacity to invent unrealizable projects. In the effort to realize them, he achieves many things, he creates innumerable realities that so-called Nature is incapable of producing for itself. The only thing that Man does not achieve is, precisely, what he he proposes to - let it be said to his credit. This wedding of reality with the demon of what is impossible supplies the universe with the only growth that it is capable of. For that reason, it is very important to emphasize that everything - that is, everything, worthwhile, everything truly human - is difficult, very difficult; so much so, that it is impossible."

José Ortega y Gasset, in The Misery and the Splendor of Translation

Tuesday, November 23

Downtown

 

"I loved Mor, but I never appreciated her enough. I never really understood how wonderful it was to always have someone to talk to who would know what you were talking about, and someone to play with who understood the kind of things I wanted to play."

Jo Walton, in Among others

A pensar em ti, C.