Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos

One night a man had a dream. He dreamt he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints on the sand — one belonging to him and the other to the Lord. When the last scene had flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints and he noticed only one set. He also noticed that this happened during the lowest and saddest times of his life. This bothered him and he questioned the Lord. “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk all the way with me, but I noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you most, you deserted me.”

The Lord replied, “My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, those were the times when I carried you in my arms.”

- Footprints by Mary Stevenson

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“Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

- Tyler Durden in Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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This is my 100th post! Thank you to everyone who has been visiting the site since it launched in April. And don’t forget to submit your own tattoos!

“Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.”

- from Meditations at Lagunitas by Robert Hass

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(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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“Cause our days were numbered by nights on too many rooftops.
They said we’re wasting our lives,
Oh at least we know, that if we die - we lived with passion.
They said we’d burn so bright.
We burn this city, and go.”

- Excerpt from the song Burn This City by Cartel

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(4 votes, average: 3.75 out of 5)

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“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

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(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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This tattoo was submitted by Sarah Bohr:

My tattoo is a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien, whom I’ve had a lifelong relationship with through his books. I first read The Hobbit when I was four and five (it took me a while) and Tolkien has been a major influence in my life ever since. It’s also a tribute to my family - the outer ring of the tattoo is the language Quenya written in the Tengwar script, and is the first and middle names of myself and my immediate family. I included my own name because I am named after a close aunt and great grandmother. I translated and designed the tattoo myself, and my baby brother (a 23 year-old professional tattoo artist) did the inkwork.

(3 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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Artwork from Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

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(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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This tattoo was submitted by Austin:

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

- Ernest Hemingway

(1 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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Modblog posted this yesterday:

Her right leg is the lyrics from “The Goodbye Song” by New Found Glory.  Her left leg is the lyrics from “If You Do, If You Don’t” by Cartel.

Click for the lyrics: » Read the rest of the entry..

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The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.
Enough! or Too much.

- Excerpt from “Proverbs of Hell” in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin’ in the sun,
Talkin’ ’bout the things
They woulda coulda shoulda done…
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little Did.

- Woulda Coulda Shoulda by Shel Silverstein (from Falling Up)

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(2 votes, average: 4.5 out of 5)

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“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.”

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

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(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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Dr. Seuss sleeve submitted by Jenny:

The reason i chose Dr. seuss for my left sleeve is because of his background and his amazing stories. He started out drawing cartoons and making anti-nazi war propoganda during WWII …I love his stories because they all have fantastic morals, and are all about understanding and being anti-racist and against discrimination. I admire him very much.

» Read the rest of the entry..

(3 votes, average: 2.67 out of 5)

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be of love (a little) more careful
than of everything
guard her perhaps only
A trifle less (merely beyond how very)
closely than nothing
remember love by frequent
anguish (imagine
her least never with most
memory)
give entirely each
forever its freedom

(dare until a flower,
understanding ceaselessly sunlight
open what thousandth why and
discover laughing)

- e. e. cummings, be of love (a little)

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(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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From The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

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(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

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This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

- Hamlet, Act I, sc. iii

(source 1) (source 2)