A Momentary Taste of Being

Some insights into the letters of DPM

A review of the Pasternak Family Correspondence

Baudelaire on sacred vegetables This was particularly amusing: I'd still hold my own soul of higher price than that of these sanctified vegetables. Indeed, I've always thought that there was something distressing and almost vulgar in the eternal reflowering and renewal of nature.

Derived from Ron Chernow's biography, but found in full here, George Washington's advice to George S. Washington (see page 2 of the letter): "Should you enter upon the course of studies here marked out you must consider it as the fulfillment of your education, and, therefore, as time is limited, that every hour misspent is lost forever--and that future years cannot compensate for lost days ." While he is speaking to someone quite useful, the words here are probably useful for us all to remember.  Time is limited, wasted time is forever lost--but more importantly, nothing you can do in the future can fully recapture the opportunities seized today.  I think we sometimes forget that--sometimes we seem to think that we will be allowed endless revisits of the same day, the same opportunities opening before us in the same ways.

via Books Inq.  Philip Larkin's Letters (some of them at least)

The written correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell