Found 19 posts tagged ‘John Cowper Powys’ |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
November 15, 2018 |
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"Good is stronger than Evil, if you take it on its simplest terms and set yourself to forget the horror! It's mad to refuse to be happy because there's a poison in the world that bites into every nerve. After all, it's short enough! I know very well that Chance could set me screaming like a wounded baboon — every jot of philosophy gone! Well, until that happens, I must endure what I have to endure!" —John Cowyer Powys, Wolf Solent
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
October 31, 2017 |
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Wolf said: “This world is made of clouds and of the shadows of clouds. It is made of mental landscapes, porous as air, where we are as trees walking, and as reeds shaken by the wind.”
But the skull answered, “To turn the world again into mist and vapour is easy and weak. To keep it alive, to keep it real, to hold it at arm’s length, is the way of gods and demons.”
Wolf cried out: “There is no reality but what the mind fashions out of itself. There is nothing but a mirror opposite a mirror, and a round crystal opposite a round crystal, and a sky in water opposite water in a sky.”
“Ho! Ho!” laughed the hollow skull. “I am alive still, though I am dead; and you are dead, though you’re alive. For life is beyond your mirrors and your waters. It’s at the bottom of your pond; it’s in the body of your sun; it’s in the dust of your star spaces; it’s in the eyes of weasles and the noses of rats and the pricks of nettles and the tongues of vipers and the spawn of frogs and the slime of snails. Life in me still; and honey is sticky and tears are salt, and yellow-hammers’ eggs have mischievous crooked scrawls!”
—From the divine Wolf Solent by John Cowper Powys [with slight edits for brevity]
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Forgotten Wisdom –
January 28, 2014 |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
The text reads: "If one's portentous shadow precedes, the unknown future into which one advances will dread one's arrival. — John Cowper-Powys, Porius (paraphrased)"
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Forgotten Wisdom –
August 23, 2013 |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
The text reads: "I’ll tell you something else … that you can’t know, because a man’s got to be old to know this, that the more ashes there are on the top of a living heart the longer it’ll burn.” — Merlin, in John Cowper Powys’ novel Porius
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
March 4, 2013 |
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"No one is to be blamed for all this horror except everybody and everything." — John Cowper Powys, Porius |
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The Right Word –
February 13, 2013 |
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On the magical quality of philosophical phrases: "They have something, a sort of magic — I don't know what — that makes like rich and exciting to me. . . . I think we're thrilled by the weight of history that lies behind each one of these phrases. It isn't just the world itself, or just its immediate meaning. It's a long, trailing margin of human sensations, life by life, century by century, that gives us this peculiar thrill. . . . I know they're absurd, these phrases . . . Words like 'pluralism' and 'dualism' and 'monism.' But what they make me think of is just a particular class of vague, delicious, physical sensations! And it's the idea of there having been feelings like these, in far-off, long-buried human nerves, that pleases. . . . It makes life seem so thick and rich and complicated." — John Cowper Powys, Wolf Solent
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Forgotten Wisdom –
February 13, 2013 |
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The caption reads, "From whence the owner vanishes into the immeasurable Hades of all the forgotten crustaceans of the world. — John Cowper Powys, Porius.)
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Book of Whispers –
January 2, 2013 |
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"The secret of life included within its immeasurable orbit the secret of death." — John Cowper Powys, Porius
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* The most profound secrets lie not wholly in knowledge, said the poet. They lurk invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning—the seeker's soul. Solitary digging for facts can reward one with great discoveries, but true secrets are not discovered—they are shared, passed on in confidence from one to another. The genuine seeker listens attentively. No secret can be transcribed, save in code, lest it—by definition—cease to be. This Book of Whispers collects and encodes more than one hundred of humankind's most cherished secrets. To be privy to the topics alone is a supreme achievement, as each contains and nurtures the seed of its hidden truth. As possessor and thereby guardian of this knowledge, may you summon the courage to honor its secrets and to bequeath it to one worthy. |
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Forgotten Wisdom –
December 19, 2012 |
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A doll possesses a "dim, vague, blurred, vicarious, secondary consciousness of a soul embodied in an intensely loved but inanimate companion" and looks forward to encountering "the legendary doll of dolls" ( John Cowper Poyws, Porius). From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
The text reads, "Dolls never contemplate the past (except for those in a vacuum). Figurines suspended in a vacuum, like the theorems of mathematics, are outside of time."
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Forgotten Wisdom –
December 8, 2012 |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
The text reads: "If you find a dying echo and promise to build an altar
for it when it is dead, you can persuade it to tell you all manner of
extraordinary things." — John Cowper Powys, Porius
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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Forgotten Wisdom –
November 25, 2012 |
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The text reads: "Just as the sounds made by various birds, such as crows and wild geese and curlews and seagulls, are carried to various distances according to the air-dividing shape of each particular cry, so it is with human language, and of all languages the Latin tongue carries the furthest." — John Cowper Powys, PoriusFrom Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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Forgotten Wisdom –
November 9, 2012 |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
The text reads: "How much heavier are people's souls than their bodies. Compared with their souls their bodies are light as feathers." — John Cowper Powys, Porius
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
November 6, 2012 |
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We elect to quote this today: "He felt as though, since the purposes of destiny would be fulfilled whatever anybody did or didn't do, that it was more than lawful, that it was natural and wise, to enjoy the spectacle of the rushing torrent of good and evil and let what would be, be." — John Cowper Powys, Porius |
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I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought –
June 20, 2012 |
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Original Content Copyright © 2025 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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