#essays

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails…and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.” — Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#essays #literature #quotes-to-live-by #change

As life in general constituted much pain in the form of struggles against poverty, disease, ignorance, and emotional anguish, what more civilized way for people to alleviate the same than by giving themselves to one another as brothers and sisters in deed as well as in word? A society of people hoping to become politically superior needed first to become spiritually valid. ↗

— Aberjhani

#essays #global-community #philosophy #spirituality #w-e-b-du-bois

Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her. ↗

— Junot Díaz

#essays #fiction #junot #literature #love

The essay is a modest genre. It doesn't mean to change the world. Instead it says: let me tell you what happened to me. ↗

— Sara Levine

#change

Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable. ↗

— Erwin Chargaff

#essays #language-literature #nature

Mon métier et mon art c’est vivre. [My craft and my skill is living.] ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#essays #montaigne #writing #art

I sort of was good at writing essays. I was never very good at mathematics, and I was never very good at algebra. I loved science, but I wasn't sure of it. ↗

— Diane Cilento

#essays #good #i #loved #mathematics

My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich. ↗

— James Wolcott

#high-school #like #mailer #norman #norman mailer

I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting. ↗

— Tina Brown

#essays #i #i love #kind #love

Maybe I will write a memoir, perhaps I'll do some essays, or maybe I will write a mystery story. ↗

— David Herbert Donald

#i #maybe #memoir #mystery #perhaps