That's the spirit!
Inspirational quotes for the creative soul.
  • Daily
  • Suggest a quote
  • Favs chart

Author

Nicholson Baker

You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.

#520

Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day – it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem". (...) What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things – so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was.

#519

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

#518

The problem with reading: you always have to pick up again at the very thing that made you stop reading the day before.

#513

search

The Spirit! by email ? - Privacy policy - All Authors - Made in Brussels – contact: Mastodon
V for Victory hand sign

?

To do that, you need to log in the Spirit via one of these services. It only takes a click and you're good to go.


  • Facebook

  • Google

  • Github

  • Reddit

  • LinkedIn

  • Bluesky