“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” ~ E. L. Doctorow
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on” ~ Louis L’Amour
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know. Ernest Hemingway
“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.” ~ Ray Bradbury
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ― Franz Kafka
“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” ~ Anais Nin
“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” ~ William Wordsworth
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick. -Robert A. Heinlein
“You must write every single day of your life… You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads… may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.” ― Ray Bradbury
In the interest of gritty and honest hard-hitting journalism I am out to sin and not just once but seven times! You guessed that right my friends, I am out to commit the Seven Deadly Sins and no one can stop me!
Theda Bara as the star of Cleopatra
Just to clarify; the seven deadly sins are something the Catholics came up with, along with other lists as well. I’m not going to get into all that but suffice to say these particular sins seem tame as sins go. They are not so deadly; no killing or maiming or any bloodshed at all. They can’t be all that bad I’m reasoning to myself. Not enough to get struck down by lightning or anything drastic. Maybe some light finger-wagging by the guy upstairs?? And really what better time to go out and conquer sin? I’ve spent the great part of the last 20 years lost in some sort of June Clever-ish world, immersed in a certain domestic passivity that has separated me from anything even vaguely resembling sin. That being said, I think that it’s high time to embark on a wondrous journey of mild debauchery.
But then again…
The truth is that I am too lazy to go out and commit SIN
It is wintertime and the downtown area of Portland where I was planning to sin gets mighty cold this time of year. Perhaps I will wait for the summer when it is HOT.
I will just have to get by with some light preliminary sinning from the comfort of my home. My favorite chocolate chocolate ice cream with chocolate and whipped cream sounds like a great start. I think I’ve got the sloth and gluttony down! RIGHT ON!!
…and while I think of other ways I can mildly sin from home let’s explore the world of THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS through the following quotes and images:
~NLM
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
~Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
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~ ♦ ♦ The 7 ♦ ♦ ~
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Pride
Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.
~Alexander Pope
“I would always rather be happy than dignified.”
~Charlotte Brontë
ENVY
“I envy the cup of coffee that gets to kiss your sleepy lips awake every cold and bitter morning.”
~Sade Andria Zabala
“Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn’t that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.”
~Marilyn Monroe
GLUTTONY
“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”
~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”
~George Bernard Shaw
SLOTH
“You know, sloth is a sin,” he says softly. “I prefer to think of it as an adorable animal.”
~Ella James
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“Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.”
~Robert A. Heinlein
WRATH
“The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.”
~Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita
GREED
Cree Indian Prophecy
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“Three great forces rule the world: stupidity, fear and greed.”
~Albert Einstein
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‘The Last Supper’ by Art Young (January 1,1920)
“Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.”
~Aristophanes
LUST
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves”
~Laura Esquivel
“Desire is the kind of thing that eats you and leaves you starving.” ~Nayyirah Waheed
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“Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other “sins” are invented nonsense.”
~Robert A. Heinlein
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In Roman Catholicism, the Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the capital vices or cardinal sins, are a list of the worst vices that cut a person off from God’s grace. In Latin and English, the Seven Deadly Sins are: superbia (pride), avaritia (greed), luxuria (extravagance, later lust), invidia (envy), gula (gluttony), ira (wrath), and acedia (sloth). Each of the Seven Deadly Sins corresponds to one of the Seven Holy Virtues (see below), and together these lists were the moral standards and tests of the early Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes the seven virtues as opposites to the seven sins:
I have been torn about the theme of this month’s fresh quotes. At first I planned to do it on fools, as in April Fool, but at the last-minute I changed my mind and decided on taxes. As I write this, I find the two to be somehow pathetically linked.
A fool and his money are soon parted and I know some of us feel like fools after immersing ourselves in these inane and overcomplicated tax forms and to add injury to insult, we then shell out our hard-earned money for the privilege while some corporate fat cats pay nothing. It’s enough to pull one’s hair out! UGH!
I can only speak for Americans here but that dreaded day will be soon upon us and I better get on with it! I have a shoebox full of receipts and big bottle of aspirin, or would a bottle of Tequilla do it? Wish me luck….and while I am wading through this insane minutiae, take a gander at some quotes I have collected; perfect for the occasion…
~SBI
“Isn’t it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with April Fool’s Day…”
~Rob Knauerhase
Credit: Public Domain
“Be wary of strong drink, it can make you shoot at the tax collector…and miss.”
“The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”
~Gore Vidal
Credit: Wikicom
“WE DO NOT PAY TAXES. ONLY THE LITTLE PEOPLE PAY TAXES.”
“The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”
― Albert Einstein
Credit: Public Domain
“Tomorrow you’re all going to wake up in a brave new world, a world where the Constitution gets trampled by an army of terrorist clones, created in a stem-cell research lab run by homosexual doctors who sterilize their instruments over burning American flags. Where tax-and-spend Democrats take all your hard-earned money and use it to buy electric cars forNational Public Radio, and teach evolution to illegal immigrants. Oh, and everybody’s high!”
― Stephen Colbert, I am America
Life Is Color 