commonplace
"As those presents are always the most fashionable, and sometimes the most valued, which cannot be used, I give you this book, which you will not be able to read, but which, perhaps, you will kindly preserve in memory of its writer."
- W. Winwood Readea book in which records are made of things to be remembered
This commonplace book contains the quotes and passages, from books and websites, that have been collected on whiskey river. They are arranged here in random order, the way they were found. Quotes found on the internet link back to the author and the webpage where they were found. Eventually, these links may become outdated. The same cannot be said for the words themselves.
Like all commonplace books, this is a work in progress.
1. hidden things
2. the ars memoria
3. imaginary preamble
4. to feel oneself lost
5. the archaic revival
6. a known world
7. magical miraculous things
8. out on the edge
9. seeing the waterfall
10. a peculiar notion
11. the psychic theater
12. on the contrary
13. some reckless words
14. eternal spectators
15. the natural curve
16. monkey mind
17. a little improbable
18. listen to the answer
19. things half-glimpsed
20. an incurably abstract intellect
21. take careful detailed notes
22. reductio ad absurdum
23. don't turn your head
24. filled with paradoxes
25. rag-and-bone shop
26. city of the blind
27. the intellectual landscape
28. you are dreaming
29. the more wakeful glimpse
30. the joy of elevated thoughts
31. we work in the dark
32. one world at a time
33. stranger within
34. the magic monastery
35. an invisible temple
36. the pursuit of fantasy
37. the abracadabra instinct
38. the designated light
39. all mirrors
40. no such thing
41. ordinary life
42. timelessness and nowhere
43. immaculate perception
44. a bridge of boats
45. a myriad eyes
46. the soul's infernal rivers
47. the silence of words
48. the tongue is a fire
49. life's fitful fever
50. 359° blind
51. expression of being
52. airs and echoes
53. strike a chord
54. how wondrous this
55. writ in water
56. 84,000 joys abounding
57. everyday koans
58. turtles all the way down
59. secret teaching
60. priests and poets
61. the dragons song
62. running the asylum
63. visiting monks
64. the theatre of thought
65. in the midst of too much
66. a mystic in the garden of mistakes
67. the dailiness of life
68. viable alternative
69. extravagant gesture
70. wise and otherwise
71. not always so
72. wabi sabi
73. mysterium fascinas
74. mono no aware
75. future ghosts
76. nobody in particular
77. a pain in the abyss
78. flowers in the sky
79. ten thousand things
80. know mind | no mind
81. each one teach one
82. a lions roar in a skull
83. monks and mermaids
84. right spiraling conch
85. the transparent air
86. sages and mystics
87. the other deepest thing
88. caught in the gyre
89. forest for the trees
90. magical mystery tour
91. houses of the holy
92. first do no harm
93. snake oil elixir
94. strange were my travels
95. the devil's playground
96. smoke and mirrors
97. the roof of hell
98. wunderkammer
99. painting a thousand words
And all this time, the river flowed
Endlessly to the sea
- Sting
Endlessly to the sea
- Sting
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Robert Darnton
- Henry David Thoreau
"For centuries, philosophers, scholars, lawyers, doctors, theologians, artists, poets and others have taken the time to write down the memorable thoughts and words of others - or kept records of their own personal musings - and collected them in journal or book form. These compilations, known as "commonplace books," have preserved over time a wide array of information, such as famous quotations, anecdotes, maxims, jokes, verses, magical spells, astrological predictions, medicinal and culinary recipes, devotional texts and mathematical tables, among other subjects."
Yale Bulletin and Calendar
"I have long had a thirst for the historical sensibility of the spiritual life, that is, a desire to find others in history whose insight into the human spirit and perhaps even the divine/cosmic/human relationship could enrich my own. By reaching across time and culture to the present through their writings, historical figures provide a special perspective and challenge; and they help to ground us in a humanity that is not merely the conditioning of our present age. One of the ways in which I have learned about and come to appreciate the spiritual writings of the past has been through collections of excerpts, excerpts which have been assiduously gathered by commonplacers."
- Norman Elliott Anderson
Commonplacing in the Spiritual Traditions
"Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out. Even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, and although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed."
- Jeanette Winterson
Art Objects
"Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us.
To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty."
- Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde's commonplace book
an edited collection of striking passages noted in a single place for future reference.
online since 2001
"You know, it is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty."
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
- Sir W. Scott
risky wiver
the mascot here at whiskey river
a wiver is a fabulous two-legged, winged creature,having the head of a dragon, and without spurs.
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The quotes in this weblog have been reproduced under the Fair Use provision of international copyright law. If you are the copyright holder of a quotation, and you wish to have it removed from this site, please contact us, and we will remove it for you.
in this weblog has been garnered from the minds of others.
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