il n'y a pas de hors-texte
ACADEMY, FRENCH: Run it down, but try to belong to it if you can.
ACHILLES: Add “fleet of foot”: people will think you’ve read Homer.
AIR: Beware of drafts of air. The depths of the air are invariably unlike the surface. If the former are warm, the latter is cold, and vice versa.
ASP: Animal known through Cleopatra’s basket of figs.
BACK: A slap
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat sucks everything
That passeth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all,
Flyer and follower, in this whirlpool fall.
O might not states of more equality
Consist? And is it of necessity
That thousand guiltless smalls, to make one great, must die?
There is perhaps nothing so admirable in Christianity and Buddhism as their art of teaching even the lowest to elevate themselves by piety to a seemingly higher order of things, and thereby to retain their satisfaction with the actual world in which they find it difficult enough to live—this very difficulty being necessary.
It is wrong to give birth out of necessity, it is wrong to use a child to alleviate loneliness, it is wrong to give purpose to life by producing another copy of oneself. It is also wrong to seek immortality by vomiting your seed into the future, as if the sperm contains your consciousness!
Just as moms often feel unappreciated for the dusting, laundry, and dishes, dads often feel unappreciated for working the hours necessary to pay for car payments; insurance for the car, home, health: rent, or mortgage, and property tax: utilities…
Perhaps the most solemn conceptions that have caused the most fighting and suffering, the conceptions "God" and "sin," will one day seem to us of no more importance than a child's plaything or a child's pain seems to an old man;—and perhaps another plaything and another pain will then be necessary once more for "the old man"—always childish enough, an eternal child!