the wizard

james joyce

been slowly reading james joyce's 'a portrait of the artist as a young man.' fucking stellar. think about this shit for a moment if you haven't already...

"a cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. at his first violent sin he had felt a wave of vitality pass out of him and had feared to find his body or his soul maimed by the excess. instead the vital wave had carried him on its bosom out of himself and back again when it receded: and no part of his body or soul had been maimed but a dark peace had been established between them." - p. 103

"the sentence of saint james which says that he who offends against one commandment becomes guilty of all had seemed to him first a swollen phrase until he had begun to grope in the darkness of his own state. from the evil seed of lust all other deadly sins had sprung forth: pride in himself and contempt of others, covetousness in using money for the purchase of unlawful pleasure, envy of those whose vices he could not reach to and calumnious murmuring against the pious, gluttonous enjoyment of food, the dull glowering anger amid which he brooded upon his longing, the swamp of spiritual and bodily sloth in which his whole being had sunk." - p. 106