Obvious State

WE TWO ALONEA November NightBy Sara Teasdale  Illustrated by Evan Robertson  Sara Teasdales’s dreamy, amorous walk, visually reimagined. This fu...

"Exit, pursued by a bear." - William Shakespeare "Exit, pursued by a bear" is a stage direction from Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale" that is inf...

"I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it." - William Shakespeare What is it about an undersized box that cats find so irresistib...

"What, you egg! [Stabs him.]" - William Shakespeare Wait, I can explain. It began when we asked our super-smart-Shakespeare-scholar friend what he...

"Better a witty fool than a foolish wit." - William Shakespeare In Shakespeare’s plays, the rich and powerful are sometimes clueless, and the penn...

"Enter pirates." - Shakespeare Huh? Why, of everything the Bard wrote would we pick this absurd stage direction?  Because it was there, my friend....

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" - William Shakespeare This line belongs to Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. One of Shakespeare's most popu...

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep." - Shakespeare The illustration, inspired by the magic of ...

"Exit pursued by a bear." - William Shakespeare "Exit, pursued by a bear" is a stage direction from Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale" that is infa...

"Nothing vast enters the realm of mortals without a curse." - Sophocles From his play Antigone, on the temptation to sacrifice wisdom at the altar...

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." - Soren Kierkegaard This simple observation from Kierkegaard’s journals se...

"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity." - Sun Tzu From The Art of War, the Chinese military treatise dating back to the 5th century BC...

"Do I dare disturb the universe?" - T.S. Eliot A man is trapped in a universe as vast as his desires and as constrained as the expectations that b...

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons " - T. S. Eliot Move over, tea, your petticoat needs fluffing. Enter the bold and bitter beverage...

LET US GO THEN  The Love Song of J. Alfred PrufrockBy T. S. Eliot  Illustrated by Evan Robertson   T.S. Eliot’s timeless modernist masterpiece v...

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson From his extraordinary poem Ulysses. The complete excerpt reads; Tho' much is taken, m...

"To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." - Lord Tennyson • Pocket sized: 3.5 x 5 inches • Proudly made in Portland Oregon • Offset printed ...

THE MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius  Illustrated by Evan Robertson  “Strive to be the person philosophy has tried to make you." The Meditations ...

"I went t o the woods because I wished to live deliberately." - Henry David Thoreau Frost’s most anthologized and beloved poem, “Stopping by Wood...

"To love or have loved, that is enough." - Victor Hugo The entire quote from Les Miserables is, "To love or have loved, that is enough. Demand not...

"When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter, do they?" - Virginia Woolf Sometimes we can all use a little perspecti...

"Desiring truth, awaiting it, laboriously distilling a few words, forever desiring - truth." - Virginia Woolf, Monday or Tuesday From her first sh...

"Doubt is unpleasant, but certainty is absurd." - Voltaire Italy had the Renaissance, Germany had the Reformation, and France had Voltaire. Ever th...

"It is dangerous to be right when the established authorities are wrong." - Voltaire "Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes...