clyde

“Some people love only those they can condescend to, those they can tenderly despise.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays

“Now you must cast aside your laziness,"
my master said, "for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame;
and he who spends his life without renown
leaves such a vestige of himself on earth
as smoke bequeaths to air or foam to water.
Therefore, get up; defeat your breathlessness
with spirit that can win all battles if
the body's heaviness does not deter it.
A longer ladder still is to be climbed;
it's not enough to have left them behind;
if you have understood, now profit from it.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradiso

“Love, that allows no loved one to be excused from loving, seized me so fiercely with desire for him, it still will not leave me, as you can see. Love led us to one death.”
― Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

“Outsiders pretend to be insiders, and it makes them unlikable. Insiders pretend to be outsiders, and we love to play along.”
― Sarah Manguso, 300 Arguments: Essays