Coming up to official fleeting self improvement season.
This is one of the best parts of the year. Throw all your old socks out. Face fate full on.
Coming up to official fleeting self improvement season.
Good stuff this
Proverbs of HellIn seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. 26Drive your cart and your plough over the bones of the dead. 27The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. 28Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity. 29He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. 30The cut worm forgives the plough. 31Dip him in the river who loves water. 32A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. 33He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star. 34Eternity is in love with the productions of time. 35The busy bee has no time for sorrow. 36The hours of folly are measur’d by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure. 37All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap. 38Bring out number, weight, and measure in a year of dearth. 39No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. 40A dead body revenges not injuries. 41The most sublime act is to set another before you. 42If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. 43Folly is the cloak of knavery. 44Shame is Pride’s cloak. 45Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion. 46The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. 47The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. 48The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. 49The nakedness of woman is the work of God. 50Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps. 51The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man. 52The fox condemns the trap, not himself. 53Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth. 54Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep. 55The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship. 56The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod. 57What is now proved was once only imagin’d. 58The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tiger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits. 59The cistern contains: the fountain overflows. 60One thought fills immensity. 61Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you. 62Everything possible to be believ’d is an image of truth. 63The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow. 64The fox provides for himself; but God provides for the lion. 65Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night. 66He who has suffer’d you to impose on him, knows you. 67As the plough follows words, so God rewards prayers. 68The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction. 69Expect poison from the standing water. 70You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. 71Listen to the fool’s reproach! it is a kingly title! 72The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth. 73The weak in courage is strong in cunning. 74The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey. 75The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest. 76If others had not been foolish, we should be so. 77The soul of sweet delight can never be defil’d. 78When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head! 79As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys. 80To create a little flower is the labour of ages. 81Damn braces. Bless relaxes. 82The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest. 83Prayers plough not! Praises reap not! 84Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not! 85The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion. 86As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible. 87The crow wish’d everything was black, the owl that everything was white. 88Exuberance is Beauty. 89If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning. 90Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. 91Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires. 92Where man is not, nature is barren. 93Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d. 94Enough! or Too much. 95
its the proverbs of hell, blake, not lukaMad how he came up with that list. It's so odd and wide ranging. Lot of conceptual leaps going on.
Poetix with rhymes.I want to self-improve myself into being able to write like poetix![]()
There is a relation between discipline and the theatrical sense. If we cannot imagine ourselves as different from what we are and try to assume that second self, we cannot impose a discipline upon ourselves, though we may accept one from others. Active virtue as distinguished from the passive acceptance of a current code is therefore theatrical, consciously dramatic, the wearing of a mask.
It is the condition of an arduous full life. One constantly notices in very active natures a tendency to pose, or a preoccupation with the effect they are producing if the pose has become a second self. One notices this in Plutarch's heroes, and every now and then in some modern who has tried to live by classical ideas, in Oscar Wilde, for instance, and less obviously in men like Walt Whitman.
Wordsworth is so often flat and heavy because his moral sense has no theatrical element, it is an obedience, a discipline which he has not created. This increases his popularity iwth the better sort of journalists, the Spectator writers, for instance, with all who are part of the machine and yet care for poetry.