I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people.
I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to
question stars and books; I have begun to listen to
the teachings my blood whispers to me.
My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams — like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.
Each man's life represents the road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that — one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can.
Hermann Hesse
To be loved for what one is, that is the greatest exception.
The great majority love in others only what they lend him;
their own selves, their version of him.
Johann Wolfgang goethe
The power of thought is the light of knowledge,
the power of will is the energy of character,
the power of heart is love.
Reason, love and power of will are perfections of man.
Ludwig Feuerbach
Is it man that possesses love,
or is it not much rather love that possesses man?
Ludwig Feuerbach
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
W. B. Yeats
Dear creature!—you'd swear
When her delicate feet in the dance twinkle round,
That her steps are of light, that her home is the air,
And she only par complaisance touches the ground.
Thomas Moore
Filled is Life's goblet to the brim;
And though my eyes with tears are dim,
I see its sparkling bubbles swim,
And chant a melancholy hymn
With solemn voice and slow.
No purple flowers,--no garlands green,
Conceal the goblet's shade or sheen,
Nor maddening draughts of Hippocrene,
Like gleams of sunshine, flash between
Thick leaves of mistletoe.
This goblet, wrought with curious art,
Is filled with waters, that upstart,
When the deep fountains of the heart,
By strong convulsions rent apart,
Are running all to waste.
And as it mantling passes round,
With fennel is it wreathed and crowned,
Whose seed and foliage sun-imbrowned
Are in its waters steeped and drowned,
And give a bitter taste.
Above the lowly plants it towers,
The fennel, with its yellow flowers,
And in an earlier age than ours
Was gifted with the wondrous powers,
Lost vision to restore.
It gave new strength, and fearless mood;
And gladiators, fierce and rude,
Mingled it in their daily food;
And he who battled and subdued,
A wreath of fennel wore.
Then in Life's goblet freely press,
The leaves that give it bitterness,
Nor prize the colored waters less,
For in thy darkness and distress
New light and strength they give!
And he who has not learned to know
How false its sparkling buhbles show,
How bitter are the drops of woe,
With which its brim may overflow,
He has not learned to live.
The prayer of Ajax was for light;
Through all that dark and desperate fight
The blackness of that noonday night
He asked but the return of sight,
To see his foeman's face.
Let our unceasing, earnest prayer
Be, too, for light,--for strength to bear
Our portion of the weight of care,
That crushes into dumb despair
One half the human race.
O suffering, sad humanity!
O ye afflicted one; who lie
Steeped to the lips in misery,
Longing, and yet afraid to die,
Patient, though sorely tried!
I pledge you in this cup of grief,
Where floats the fennel's bitter leaf!
The Battle of our Life is brief
The alarm,--the struggle,--the relief,
Then sleep we side by side.
Stay in the company of lovers.
Those other kinds of people, they each
want to show you something.
A crow will lead you to an empty barn,
A parrot to sugar.
Rumi
Properly speaking, man inhabits only his head and his heart.
All other places are vainly before his eyes, at his sides,
and under his feet: he himself is not there at all.
joseph Joubert
If I knew that today would be the last time I’d see you,
I would hug you tight and pray the Lord be the keeper of your soul.
If I knew that this would be the last time you pass through this door,
I’d embrace you, kiss you, and call you back for one more.
If I knew that this would be the last time I would hear your voice,
I’d take hold of each word to be able to hear it over and over again.
If I knew this is the last time I see you, I’d tell you I love you,
and would not just assume foolishly you know it already.
Gabriel García Márquez,one hundred years of solitude
Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
Fulke Greville
Proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail
because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is
something you have always known.
Frank Herbert,Dune
Alas, that my heart is a lute,
Whereon you have learned to play!
For a many years it was mute,
Until one summer's day
You took it, and touched it, and made it thrill,
And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still!
Anne Barnard
But,who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like hers?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows? If fancy then
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do? Ah, where find words
Tinged with so many colours; and whose power,
To life approaching, may perfume my lays
With that fine oil, those aromatic gales,
That inexhaustive flow continual round?
James Thomson
Every flower that gives its fragrance to the wandering air leaves
its influence on the soul of man. The wheel and swoop of the winged
creatures of the air suggest the flowing lines of subtle art.
The roar and murmur of the restless sea, the cataract's solemn chant,
the thunder's voice, the happy babble of the brook, the whispering
leaves, the thrilling notes of mating birds, the sighing winds,
taught man to pour his heart in song and gave a voice to grief
and hope, to love and death.
Robert Ingersoll
There Is Pleasure In The Pathless Woods
George Gordon Byron
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something for more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting sins,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky and the mind of Man
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts
And rolls through all things.
William Wordsworth
I trust in Nature for the stable laws
Of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant
And Autumn garner to the end of time.
I trust in God—the right shall be the right
And other than the wrong, while he endures;
I trust in my own soul, that can perceive
The outward and the inward, Nature's good
And God's.
Robert Browning
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Music is love in search of a word.
Sidney Lanier
Music was a thing of the soul—a rose-lipped shell
that murmured of the eternal sea—a strange bird
singing the songs of another shore.
Josiah Gilbert Holland
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.
John Keats
Hell is wherever Love is not, and Heaven
Is Love's location. No dogmatic creed,
No austere faith based on ignoble fear
Can lead thee into realms of joy and peace.
Unless the humblest creatures on the earth
Are bettered by thy loving sympathy
Think not to find a Paradise beyond.
Ella wheeler Wilcox
"Truth will prevail." It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles;
but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag
of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after
the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.
Lydia Maria Child
