The Smell of Burnt Wood

"When you're standing at the plate and you hit a sharp foul ball to the backstop, the spot on the bat that made contact gets hot; the American dream forgot to tell me to step back and enjoy the smell of burnt wood."

- Adrian Cárdenas, formerly a player for the Chicago Cubs, who quit baseball to pursue an education in creative writing and philosophy (via Kottke)

But Thou Art All Replete With Very Thou

Indwelling

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say—" This is not dead,"—
And fill thee with Himself instead. 
But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says :—" This is enow
Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me."

- T.E. Brown

10 Honest Thoughts on Being Loved by a Skinny Boy

(warning - language)

You are Cloven Apart

But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart,

Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart;

- from The Triumph of Time

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

This Fruit of My Heart

It will grow not again, this fruit of my heart,

      Smitten with sunbeams, ruined with rain.

- from The Triumph of Time

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Bushes Afire

Every common bush [is] afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes.’

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(Aurora Leigh, book 7, lines 822-3)

Learning How to Think

"Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience."

- David Foster Wallace
(from his 2005 commencement speech)