From Milton, on books and prudent, character-ful reading:
... However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore. (Paradise Regained)
From the ever so clever Regina Spektor (nearly a full song, in fact), some technological metaphor for cold hearts:
You went into the kitchen cupboard
Got yourself another hour
And you gave half of it to me.
We sat there looking at the faces
Of the strangers in the pages
Until we knew them mathematically.
They were in our minds
Until forever,
But we didn't mind
We didn't know better.
So we made our own computer
Out of macaroni pieces,
And it did our thinking
While we lived our lives.
It counted up our feelings
And divided them up even
And it called our calculation perfect love.
...
So we made the hard decision,
And we each made an incision
Past our muscles and our bones,
Saw our hearts were little stones.
Pulled them out, they weren't beating
And we weren't even bleeding
As we lay them on our granite counter top.
We beat 'em up against each other.
We beat 'em up against each other.
We struck 'em hard against each other.
We struck 'em so hard, so hard 'til they sparked.
Hey, this fire, this fire
I'm burning us up.
.... ("The Calculation")
