
Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.
quote by Bertrand Russell
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Related quotes
Authority Song
They like to get you in a compromising position
They like to get you there and smille in your face
They think, theyre so cute when they got you in that condition
Well I think, its a total disgrace
Chorus:
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
So I call up my preacher
I say: gimme strenght for round 5
He said: you dont need no strength, you need to grow up, son
I said: growing up leads to growing old and then to dying,
And dying to me dont sound like all that much fun
Chorus:
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
Oh no
Oh no
I fight authority, authority always wins
Chorus:
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I fight authority, authority always wins
I been doing it, since I was a young kid
Ive come out grinnin
I fight authority, authority always wins
song performed by John Mellencamp
Added by Lucian Velea
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society
Epigraph
Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.
I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.
You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning (1871)
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A Map Of Culture
Culture
Contents
What is Culture?
The Importance of Culture
Culture Varies
Culture is Critical
The Sociobiology Debate
Values, Norms, and Social Control
Signs and Symbols
Language
Terms and Definitions
Approaches to the Study of Culture
Are We Prisoners of Our Culture?
What is Culture?
I prefer the definition used by Ian Robertson: 'all the shared products of society: material and nonmaterial' (Our text defines it in somewhat more ponderous terms- 'The totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior. It includes ideas, values, and customs (as well as the sailboats, comic books, and birth control devices) of groups of people' (p.32) .
Back to Contents
[...] Read more
poem by Nyein Way
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XI. Guido
You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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Don't Underestimate The Power Of...
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Your Embrace
The Power You Hold
In That Timeless Place
When My World Stops
At Your Wonderful Touch
Suspended In Rapture
With You, Giving So Much
… Strength and Comfort
And Tender Care
Don’t Underestimate
The Power There …
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Holding Hands
A Symbol-Bond, Saying,
‘Together, We Stand’
As We Share and Show
As One, We Plan
To Face The Future
With GOD … ‘We Can’
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Seeing Your Face
Eyes of Night-Skies
And Lips Of Berries’ Taste
Those Mystery Eyes
When They Meet With Mine
Passion Pours
As Our Lips, Wine and Dine …
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Our Hearts
Don’t Underestimate The Power
O Love’s Great Art
Tho’ The Heart, May Be Struck
With 10,000 Darts
Love, Has The Power To Make It
To Never Break Apart!
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Your Embrace
Don’t Underestimate The Power
Of Your Sweet Face
[...] Read more
poem by MoonBee Canady
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Social Netowrking Of Robots
end of world war
end of world war 11
end of world scenarios
end of world thursday prophet
end of world wa rtwo
end of world war 2 france
end of world video
end of world war 1 effects
end of world vision
end of world songs
end of world war 2
end of world war 1
end of world wallpapers
end of world scenerio
end of world time clock
end of wortd
end of world wtf mate youtube
end of world west america
end of world war ii
end of world war iii
end of wrestling match signal
end of worlds
end of worldwar 2
end of world war i
end of world war two
end of wrestling match indicator
end of world war 2 wikipedia
end of world war 21945
end of world war one
end of world wite web
end of worled war 2
end of world wide ii
end of world war 2 info
end of world war two date
end of wow
end of ww 2
end of ww2
end of ww1 treaty of versailles
end of ww1 treaty
end of ww ii
end of ww2 in czechoslovakia
end of ww2 date
end of ww1 ghost photos
end of ww1 treaty of vers
end of ww 1
end of ww2 for japanese americans
end of ww-ii
end of ww2 battleship
end of wrold war 2
end of ww11
[...] Read more
poem by Rwetewrt Erwtwer
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Modern Dancing
Modern, modern, modern, modern dancing
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Modern dancing, modern
I see you acting modernly with the boys and girls
Exposure breeds discovery in the modern world
The 60's hairdos 90's eyes are just flashing lights
A touch of neon hinting class for the modern night
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Dancing
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Modern dancing, modern
Mono vision tv face and determined eyes
The clothes are perfect the rips in place just the perfect size
Familiarity breeds contempt but it doesn't show
We've heard the music times before but it still makes you go
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Modern dancing, modern dancing
Modern dancing, dancing
....variations to fade....
song performed by Men Without Hats
Added by Lucian Velea
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Sympathy is worse than death….
Sympathy makes an organism feel dreadfully weak—as if the world around it had metamorphosed into a coffin of morose blackness; though an infinite streams of scarlet blood still ran enthusiastically through each of its blessed veins,
Sympathy makes an organism feel lividly inferior—with every living being in vicinity appearing to be a boundless times stronger; though they both were royally equal by the grace of the unparalleled Omnipotent Lord,
Sympathy makes an organism inadvertently lick decrepit dust—whereas it should’ve been unflinching marching forward in the fervor of bustling youth; head held high with its compatriot organism and only bowing down before the Lord Almighty,
Sympathy makes an organism a veritably devilish parasite-forever leaning and sucking upon its good-willed befriender; though volcano’s of latent energy itched to fulminate from each of its robustly handsome veins,
Sympathy makes an organism wholesomely lose its own voice—as it started to profusely relish the extravagant attention and care; preferred to fantasize about the things that it’d like to do in life; rather than honestly sweat it out and reach there,
Sympathy makes an organism overwhelmingly finicky and fastidious about the tiniest of things—again and again finding faults with the most majestically perfect of creation; as there was always a person to wholesomely commiserate with its every eccentricity and peevish demand,
Sympathy makes an organism haplessly infertile-pathetically unable to indulge into even the most sensuously bountiful pleasures of life; as inevitable habit compelled it to let others complete its job of proliferating its very own kin,
Sympathy makes an organism miserably fail again and again-as the inexplicably stabbing blackness that it’d enshrouded itself with; incorrigibly denied any beam of optimistic sunlight to triumphantly creep in,
Sympathy makes an organism look frenetically naked even when fully clothed-as it indefatigably kept begging for being fed even that morsel of food; which lay copiously sprawled right into the center of its palms,
Sympathy makes an organism an irrefutable devil on the prowl-inexhaustibly searching for that shoulder to baselessly weep; and then disgustingly sleep-float in an unfathomable ocean of tears,
Sympathy makes an organism a dreadfully unbearable burden upon the planet-as it neither wholesomely died nor lived; just kept flagrantly loitering in-between the dormitories of certainty and uncertainty,
Sympathy makes an organism hopelessly deteriorate into nothingness with every unleashing minute—as his unstoppably taking the support of others; made his very own spine rust and eventually crumble to inconspicuous dust,
Sympathy makes an organism an irrevocably maimed beggar—as he shamefully lost all his ability to sight; hear and fearlessly speak; wantonly clinging like a deplorable leech to the panic button of every second person on the street,
Sympathy makes an organism a coffin of cursed negativity-spreading the wretched stench of satanic dependency upon every step that he dared tread; and thereby maligning the true spirit of symbiotically independent life,
Sympathy makes an organism lose all priceless self respect-an attribute which was profoundly embedded in each of its veins just like an infinite other of its counterpart; right since its very first divinely breath,
Sympathy makes an organism look like an invisible ghost infront of the mirror-such an abominable jinx that was impossible to break; once it surreptitiously passed itself on upon another equally insipid organism,
Sympathy makes an organism come to such an exasperating stage—that it started to unceasingly ridicule its very ownself; as there virtually none else in this world who was as inconsolably sick and helpless as its rapidly flailing form,
Sympathy makes an organism come to an earth-screeching lifeless halt—as after a period of time every door on the Universe brutally shut up on its deliberately tear stained face; and that’s when the true reality and hardship of life hit it right in the center of its eye,
And sympathy makes an organism entirely dead even in the heart of exuberantly infallible life-a lifelessly fetid carcass which was spat upon and shunted by every section of the society; even before it could try lifting its very first footstep on soil by itself…
poem by Nikhil Parekh
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Three Women
My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.
Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where love, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.
Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.
1
I.
A dull little station, a man with the eye
Of a dreamer; a bevy of girls moving by;
A swift moving train and a hot Summer sun,
The curtain goes up, and our play is begun.
The drama of passion, of sorrow, of strife,
Which always is billed for the theatre Life.
It runs on forever, from year unto year,
With scarcely a change when new actors appear.
It is old as the world is-far older in truth,
For the world is a crude little planet of youth.
And back in the eras before it was formed,
The passions of hearts through the Universe stormed.
Maurice Somerville passed the cluster of girls
Who twisted their ribbons and fluttered their curls
In vain to attract him; his mind it was plain
Was wholly intent on the incoming train.
That great one eyed monster puffed out its black breath,
Shrieked, snorted and hissed, like a thing bent on death,
[...] Read more
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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What Part Of Life Are You Living
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.
And what part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
And what part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you giving to live.
What part of life are you giving.
What part of life are you living.
What part of life is a drive by.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life are you living to give?
What part of life are you willing to live.
What part of life is a downslide.
What part of life is a drive by.
And...
What part of life are you living.
What part of life are you living to give?
[...] Read more
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi
Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.
"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!
"Let him but decently disembroil himself,
"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,
"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—
"Counsel the Court in this extremity,
"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips!
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, was retaken by the same,
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—
(I being disallowed to interfere,
Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,
For you and law were guardians quite enough
O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—
And that he has butchered her accordingly,
As she foretold and as myself believed,—
And, so foretelling and believing so,
We were punished, both of us, the merry way:
Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?
Pompilia is only dying while I speak!
Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?
My masters, there's an old book, you should con
For strange adventures, applicable yet,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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IX. Juris Doctor Johannes-Baptista Bottinius, Fisci et Rev. Cam. Apostol. Advocatus
Had I God's leave, how I would alter things!
If I might read instead of print my speech,—
Ay, and enliven speech with many a flower
Refuses obstinate to blow in print,
As wildings planted in a prim parterre,—
This scurvy room were turned an immense hall;
Opposite, fifty judges in a row;
This side and that of me, for audience—Rome:
And, where yon window is, the Pope should hide—
Watch, curtained, but peep visibly enough.
A buzz of expectation! Through the crowd,
Jingling his chain and stumping with his staff,
Up comes an usher, louts him low, "The Court
"Requires the allocution of the Fisc!"
I rise, I bend, I look about me, pause
O'er the hushed multitude: I count—One, two—
Have ye seen, Judges, have ye, lights of law,—
When it may hap some painter, much in vogue
Throughout our city nutritive of arts,
Ye summon to a task shall test his worth,
And manufacture, as he knows and can,
A work may decorate a palace-wall,
Afford my lords their Holy Family,—
Hath it escaped the acumen of the Court
How such a painter sets himself to paint?
Suppose that Joseph, Mary and her Babe
A-journeying to Egypt, prove the piece:
Why, first he sedulously practiseth,
This painter,—girding loin and lighting lamp,—
On what may nourish eye, make facile hand;
Getteth him studies (styled by draughtsmen so)
From some assistant corpse of Jew or Turk
Or, haply, Molinist, he cuts and carves,—
This Luca or this Carlo or the like.
To him the bones their inmost secret yield,
Each notch and nodule signify their use:
On him the muscles turn, in triple tier,
And pleasantly entreat the entrusted man
"Familiarize thee with our play that lifts
"Thus, and thus lowers again, leg, arm and foot!"
—Ensuring due correctness in the nude.
Which done, is all done? Not a whit, ye know!
He,—to art's surface rising from her depth,—
If some flax-polled soft-bearded sire be found,
May simulate a Joseph, (happy chance!)—
Limneth exact each wrinkle of the brow,
Loseth no involution, cheek or chap,
Till lo, in black and white, the senior lives!
Is it a young and comely peasant-nurse
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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V. Count Guido Franceschini
Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of … why, 't is wine,
Velletri,—and not vinegar and gall,
So changed and good the times grow! Thanks, kind Sir!
Oh, but one sip's enough! I want my head
To save my neck, there's work awaits me still.
How cautious and considerate … aie, aie, aie,
Nor your fault, sweet Sir! Come, you take to heart
An ordinary matter. Law is law.
Noblemen were exempt, the vulgar thought,
From racking; but, since law thinks otherwise,
I have been put to the rack: all's over now,
And neither wrist—what men style, out of joint:
If any harm be, 't is the shoulder-blade,
The left one, that seems wrong i' the socket,—Sirs,
Much could not happen, I was quick to faint,
Being past my prime of life, and out of health.
In short, I thank you,—yes, and mean the word.
Needs must the Court be slow to understand
How this quite novel form of taking pain,
This getting tortured merely in the flesh,
Amounts to almost an agreeable change
In my case, me fastidious, plied too much
With opposite treatment, used (forgive the joke)
To the rasp-tooth toying with this brain of mine,
And, in and out my heart, the play o' the probe.
Four years have I been operated on
I' the soul, do you see—its tense or tremulous part—
My self-respect, my care for a good name,
Pride in an old one, love of kindred—just
A mother, brothers, sisters, and the like,
That looked up to my face when days were dim,
And fancied they found light there—no one spot,
Foppishly sensitive, but has paid its pang.
That, and not this you now oblige me with,
That was the Vigil-torment, if you please!
The poor old noble House that drew the rags
O' the Franceschini's once superb array
Close round her, hoped to slink unchallenged by,—
Pluck off these! Turn the drapery inside out
And teach the tittering town how scarlet wears!
Show men the lucklessness, the improvidence
Of the easy-natured Count before this Count,
The father I have some slight feeling for,
Who let the world slide, nor foresaw that friends
Then proud to cap and kiss their patron's shoe,
Would, when the purse he left held spider-webs,
Properly push his child to wall one day!
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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The Ghost - Book IV
Coxcombs, who vainly make pretence
To something of exalted sense
'Bove other men, and, gravely wise,
Affect those pleasures to despise,
Which, merely to the eye confined,
Bring no improvement to the mind,
Rail at all pomp; they would not go
For millions to a puppet-show,
Nor can forgive the mighty crime
Of countenancing pantomime;
No, not at Covent Garden, where,
Without a head for play or player,
Or, could a head be found most fit,
Without one player to second it,
They must, obeying Folly's call,
Thrive by mere show, or not at all
With these grave fops, who, (bless their brains!)
Most cruel to themselves, take pains
For wretchedness, and would be thought
Much wiser than a wise man ought,
For his own happiness, to be;
Who what they hear, and what they see,
And what they smell, and taste, and feel,
Distrust, till Reason sets her seal,
And, by long trains of consequences
Insured, gives sanction to the senses;
Who would not (Heaven forbid it!) waste
One hour in what the world calls Taste,
Nor fondly deign to laugh or cry,
Unless they know some reason why;
With these grave fops, whose system seems
To give up certainty for dreams,
The eye of man is understood
As for no other purpose good
Than as a door, through which, of course,
Their passage crowding, objects force,
A downright usher, to admit
New-comers to the court of Wit:
(Good Gravity! forbear thy spleen;
When I say Wit, I Wisdom mean)
Where (such the practice of the court,
Which legal precedents support)
Not one idea is allow'd
To pass unquestion'd in the crowd,
But ere it can obtain the grace
Of holding in the brain a place,
Before the chief in congregation
Must stand a strict examination.
Not such as those, who physic twirl,
Full fraught with death, from every curl;
[...] Read more
poem by Charles Churchill
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VII. Pompilia
I am just seventeen years and five months old,
And, if I lived one day more, three full weeks;
'T is writ so in the church's register,
Lorenzo in Lucina, all my names
At length, so many names for one poor child,
—Francesca Camilla Vittoria Angela
Pompilia Comparini,—laughable!
Also 't is writ that I was married there
Four years ago: and they will add, I hope,
When they insert my death, a word or two,—
Omitting all about the mode of death,—
This, in its place, this which one cares to know,
That I had been a mother of a son
Exactly two weeks. It will be through grace
O' the Curate, not through any claim I have;
Because the boy was born at, so baptized
Close to, the Villa, in the proper church:
A pretty church, I say no word against,
Yet stranger-like,—while this Lorenzo seems
My own particular place, I always say.
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant,
With half his body rushing from the wall,
Eating the figure of a prostrate man—
(To the right, it is, of entry by the door)
An ominous sign to one baptized like me,
Married, and to be buried there, I hope.
And they should add, to have my life complete,
He is a boy and Gaetan by name—
Gaetano, for a reason,—if the friar
Don Celestine will ask this grace for me
Of Curate Ottoboni: he it was
Baptized me: he remembers my whole life
As I do his grey hair.
All these few things
I know are true,—will you remember them?
Because time flies. The surgeon cared for me,
To count my wounds,—twenty-two dagger-wounds,
Five deadly, but I do not suffer much—
Or too much pain,—and am to die to-night.
Oh how good God is that my babe was born,
—Better than born, baptized and hid away
Before this happened, safe from being hurt!
That had been sin God could not well forgive:
He was too young to smile and save himself.
When they took two days after he was born,
My babe away from me to be baptized
And hidden awhile, for fear his foe should find,—
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Everybody Needs A 303
Check this out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
Check this out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
Everybody needs love
Everybody needs love
Check this out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
Everybody needs love
Everybody needs love
Check this out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
This out
Everybody needs love
Everybody needs love
Everybody needs love
Everybody needs love
Needs love
Needs love
[...] Read more
song performed by Fatboy Slim
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Interpretation of Nature and
I.
MAN, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature: beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.
II.
Neither the naked hand nor the understanding left to itself can effect much. It is by instruments and helps that the work is done, which are as much wanted for the understanding as for the hand. And as the instruments of the hand either give motion or guide it, so the instruments of the mind supply either suggestions for the understanding or cautions.
III.
Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.
IV.
Towards the effecting of works, all that man can do is to put together or put asunder natural bodies. The rest is done by nature working within.
V.
The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all (as things now are) with slight endeavour and scanty success.
VI.
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
VII.
The productions of the mind and hand seem very numerous in books and manufactures. But all this variety lies in an exquisite subtlety and derivations from a few things already known; not in the number of axioms.
VIII.
Moreover the works already known are due to chance and experiment rather than to sciences; for the sciences we now possess are merely systems for the nice ordering and setting forth of things already invented; not methods of invention or directions for new works.
IX.
The cause and root of nearly all evils in the sciences is this -- that while we falsely admire and extol the powers of the human mind we neglect to seek for its true helps.
X.
The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding; so that all those specious meditations, speculations, and glosses in which men indulge are quite from the purpose, only there is no one by to observe it.
XI.
As the sciences which we now have do not help us in finding out new works, so neither does the logic which we now have help us in finding out new sciences.
XII.
The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search after truth. So it does more harm than good.
XIII.
[...] Read more
poem by Sir Francis Bacon
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III. The Other Half-Rome
Another day that finds her living yet,
Little Pompilia, with the patient brow
And lamentable smile on those poor lips,
And, under the white hospital-array,
A flower-like body, to frighten at a bruise
You'd think, yet now, stabbed through and through again,
Alive i' the ruins. 'T is a miracle.
It seems that, when her husband struck her first,
She prayed Madonna just that she might live
So long as to confess and be absolved;
And whether it was that, all her sad life long
Never before successful in a prayer,
This prayer rose with authority too dread,—
Or whether, because earth was hell to her,
By compensation, when the blackness broke
She got one glimpse of quiet and the cool blue,
To show her for a moment such things were,—
Or else,—as the Augustinian Brother thinks,
The friar who took confession from her lip,—
When a probationary soul that moved
From nobleness to nobleness, as she,
Over the rough way of the world, succumbs,
Bloodies its last thorn with unflinching foot,
The angels love to do their work betimes,
Staunch some wounds here nor leave so much for God.
Who knows? However it be, confessed, absolved,
She lies, with overplus of life beside
To speak and right herself from first to last,
Right the friend also, lamb-pure, lion-brave,
Care for the boy's concerns, to save the son
From the sire, her two-weeks' infant orphaned thus,
And—with best smile of all reserved for him—
Pardon that sire and husband from the heart.
A miracle, so tell your Molinists!
There she lies in the long white lazar-house.
Rome has besieged, these two days, never doubt,
Saint Anna's where she waits her death, to hear
Though but the chink o' the bell, turn o' the hinge
When the reluctant wicket opes at last,
Lets in, on now this and now that pretence,
Too many by half,—complain the men of art,—
For a patient in such plight. The lawyers first
Paid the due visit—justice must be done;
They took her witness, why the murder was.
Then the priests followed properly,—a soul
To shrive; 't was Brother Celestine's own right,
The same who noises thus her gifts abroad.
But many more, who found they were old friends,
Pushed in to have their stare and take their talk
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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IV. Tertium Quid
True, Excellency—as his Highness says,
Though she's not dead yet, she's as good as stretched
Symmetrical beside the other two;
Though he's not judged yet, he's the same as judged,
So do the facts abound and superabound:
And nothing hinders that we lift the case
Out of the shade into the shine, allow
Qualified persons to pronounce at last,
Nay, edge in an authoritative word
Between this rabble's-brabble of dolts and fools
Who make up reasonless unreasoning Rome.
"Now for the Trial!" they roar: "the Trial to test
"The truth, weigh husband and weigh wife alike
"I' the scales of law, make one scale kick the beam!"
Law's a machine from which, to please the mob,
Truth the divinity must needs descend
And clear things at the play's fifth act—aha!
Hammer into their noddles who was who
And what was what. I tell the simpletons
"Could law be competent to such a feat
"'T were done already: what begins next week
"Is end o' the Trial, last link of a chain
"Whereof the first was forged three years ago
"When law addressed herself to set wrong right,
"And proved so slow in taking the first step
"That ever some new grievance,—tort, retort,
"On one or the other side,—o'ertook i' the game,
"Retarded sentence, till this deed of death
"Is thrown in, as it were, last bale to boat
"Crammed to the edge with cargo—or passengers?
"'Trecentos inseris: ohe, jam satis est!
"'Huc appelle!'—passengers, the word must be."
Long since, the boat was loaded to my eyes.
To hear the rabble and brabble, you'd call the case
Fused and confused past human finding out.
One calls the square round, t' other the round square—
And pardonably in that first surprise
O' the blood that fell and splashed the diagram:
But now we've used our eyes to the violent hue
Can't we look through the crimson and trace lines?
It makes a man despair of history,
Eusebius and the established fact—fig's end!
Oh, give the fools their Trial, rattle away
With the leash of lawyers, two on either side—
One barks, one bites,—Masters Arcangeli
And Spreti,—that's the husband's ultimate hope
Against the Fisc and the other kind of Fisc,
Bound to do barking for the wife: bow—wow!
Why, Excellency, we and his Highness here
Would settle the matter as sufficiently
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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II. Half-Rome
What, you, Sir, come too? (Just the man I'd meet.)
Be ruled by me and have a care o' the crowd:
This way, while fresh folk go and get their gaze:
I'll tell you like a book and save your shins.
Fie, what a roaring day we've had! Whose fault?
Lorenzo in Lucina,—here's a church
To hold a crowd at need, accommodate
All comers from the Corso! If this crush
Make not its priests ashamed of what they show
For temple-room, don't prick them to draw purse
And down with bricks and mortar, eke us out
The beggarly transept with its bit of apse
Into a decent space for Christian ease,
Why, to-day's lucky pearl is cast to swine.
Listen and estimate the luck they've had!
(The right man, and I hold him.)
Sir, do you see,
They laid both bodies in the church, this morn
The first thing, on the chancel two steps up,
Behind the little marble balustrade;
Disposed them, Pietro the old murdered fool
To the right of the altar, and his wretched wife
On the other side. In trying to count stabs,
People supposed Violante showed the most,
Till somebody explained us that mistake;
His wounds had been dealt out indifferent where,
But she took all her stabbings in the face,
Since punished thus solely for honour's sake,
Honoris causâ, that's the proper term.
A delicacy there is, our gallants hold,
When you avenge your honour and only then,
That you disfigure the subject, fray the face,
Not just take life and end, in clownish guise.
It was Violante gave the first offence,
Got therefore the conspicuous punishment:
While Pietro, who helped merely, his mere death
Answered the purpose, so his face went free.
We fancied even, free as you please, that face
Showed itself still intolerably wronged;
Was wrinkled over with resentment yet,
Nor calm at all, as murdered faces use,
Once the worst ended: an indignant air
O' the head there was—'t is said the body turned
Round and away, rolled from Violante's side
Where they had laid it loving-husband-like.
If so, if corpses can be sensitive,
Why did not he roll right down altar-step,
Roll on through nave, roll fairly out of church,
Deprive Lorenzo of the spectacle,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
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