Compelling passages, notable quotables, bon mots, disjecta, ephemera, and miscellany.

Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but equations for human emotions. If one have a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite. Speaking generally, the spells or equations of “classic” art invoke the beauty of the normal, and spells of “romantic” art are said to invoke the beauty of the unusual.

—From The Spirit of Romance (1910) by Ezra Pound