State of innocence by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

John Atkinson Grimshaw Art

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings
their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble
of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak
ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

What was any art by Willa Cather

Richard Johnson Art

What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment
the shining elusive element which is life itself-
life hurrying past us and running away, to strong
to stop, too sweet to lose.
Willa Cather

Bound to You by Charlotte Brontë

Vladimir Volegov ART

You are my sympathy–my better self–my good angel–I am bound to you
with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent,
a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you
to my centre and spring of life, wrap my existence about you–and,
kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.
Charlotte Brontë,Jane Eyre

Romance by Sanober Khan

Valdimir Volegov Art

To fall in love with someone's thoughts -
the most intimate, splendid romance.
Sanober Khan

Not words. nor laughter. but rather someone
who will fall in love with your silence.
Sanober Khan

Van Gogh Paintings

Luca Agnani's "Van Gogh Shadow"brings Vincent Van Gogh paintings
to life using 3D animation and visual mapping.

Thoughts and poems for home and missing:Do They Think of Me at Home? by Martha Lavinia Hoffman***Home by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Music:
OMAR AKRAM - A Day With You

Do They Think of Me at Home?
Martha Lavinia Hoffman

When sunset tints the western skies
With evening's roseate flush,
When the woodlands lie in shadows
In the twilight's deepening hush;
When the shadows lengthen round the
Lowly cot and stately dome,
When the toilsome day is over,
Do they think of me at home?

Do they think of me when morning
Calls from slumber to awake,
When the lark is skimming gaily
O'er the bosom of the lake,
When the meadows lie serenely
'Neath the blue ethereal skies;
And the saucy sprightly bluejay
Wakes the forest with his cries?

Do they think of me and miss me,
In the noontide's glowing heat,
When the cottage echoes gaily
To the tread of little feet;
When the oriole and warbler
Sing their merry roundelay;
Do they think of me and miss me
In the busy, bustling day?

Do they think of me in winter,
When the falling of the rain
Makes a pattering on the shingles,
Trickles down the window-pain;
When the low night-winds are whispering,
Like some far-off mournful lyre,
When they gather in the evening,
'Round a brightly glowing fire?

When the children's merry laughter
Makes the cozy home-nest ring;
Do they think of me, I wonder,
When the evening songs they sing?
What is sweeter than that music,
When their childish voices raise
In their songs of flowers and fancies,
In their songs of prayer and praise.

Oft I sit beside my window,
When the day's long march is o'er,
When the waves are slowly creeping
O'er the distant ocean's shore;
And I wonder as I sit there,
In the twilight, all alone,
Do they pause amid life's bustle
To think of me at home?

Michael Gorban Art

Home
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The greatest words are always solitaires,
Set singly in one syllable; like birth,
Life, love, hope, peace. I sing the worth
Of that dear word toward which the whole world fares -
I sing of home.

To make a home, we should take all of love
And much of labour, patience, and keen joy;
Then mix the elements of earth's alloy
With finer things drawn from the realms above,
The spirit home.

There should be music, melody and song;
Beauty in every spot; an open door
And generous sharing of the pleasure store
With fellow-pilgrims as they pass along,
Seeking for home.

Make ample room for silent friends--the books,
That give so much and only ask for space.
Nor let Utility crowd out the vase
Which has no use save gracing by its looks
The precious home.

To narrow bounds let mirrors lend their aid
And multiply each gracious touch of art;
And let the casual stranger feel the part -
The great creative part--that love has played
Within the home.

Here bring your best in thought and word and deed,
Your sweetest acts, your highest self-control;
Nor save them for some later hour and goal.
Here is the place, and now the time of need,
Here in your home.

When I would know thee by Ben Jonson

Henry Lamb Art

When I would know thee * * * my thought looks
Upon thy well-made choice of friends and books;
Then do I love thee, and behold thy ends
In making thy friends books, and thy books friends.
Ben Jonson

Don Quixote & Sancho Panza

Vincent Van Gogh Art

"For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza,” said Don Quixote, “that there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove.”
“And what greater misfortune can there be,” replied Panza, “than the one that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it?”
Cervantes—Don Quixote

Within every one of us there lives both a Don Quixote and a Sancho Panza to whom we hearken by turns; and though Sancho most persuades us, it is Don Quixote that we find ourselves obliged to admire.
Anatole France

Famous Quotes from Marcus Tullius Cicero

Vicente Romero Redondo Art

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.

To make a mistake is only human; to persist in a mistake is idiotic.

I prefer the most unfair peace to the most righteous war.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle
to those who want to learn.

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and
more numerous than those of the body.

A youth of sensuality and intemperance delivers
over a worn-out body to old age.

Law stands mute in the midst of arms.

Extreme justice is extreme injustice.

Superstition is a senseless fear of God.

Wise men are instructed by reason; men of less understanding by experience; the most ignorant, by necessity, and beasts, by nature.

Death approaches, which is always impending over us like the stone over Tantalus; then comes superstition, with which he who is racked can never find peace of mind.

Orators are most vehement when they have the weakest cause, as men get on horseback when they cannot walk.

Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something, as a support, which ever in the sincerest friend is most delightful.

No liberal man would impute a charge of unsteadiness to another for having changed his opinion.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

For fear is but a poor safeguard of lasting power; while affection, on the other hand, may be trusted to keep it safe for ever.

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

For there is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked.

Excerpt from the novel"The mother" by Maxim Gorky

Music:
Brian Crain & Rita Chepurchenko - Solitary Hill

Gustave Leonard de jonghe Art

From the novel "The mother" (Excerpt)
Maxim Gorky

Pavel arose and began to pace the room,folding his hands behind his back.

It goes all right," he said. "... At the same time, however, life itself is opening our eyes to its bitter meaning and is itself showing man the way to accelerate its pace. We all of us think just as we live."

"True. But wait!" Rybin stopped him. "Man ought to be renovated-- that's what I think! When a man grows scabby, take him to the bath, give him a thorough cleaning, put clean clothes on him--and he will get well. Isn't it so? And if the heart grows scabby, take its skin off, even if it bleeds, wash it, and dress it up all afresh. Isn't it so? How else can you clean the inner man? There now!"

Pavel began to speak hotly and bitterly about God, about the Czar, about the government authorities...

Here the mother intervened. When her son spoke about God and about everything that she connected with her faith in him, which was dear and sacred to her, she sought to meet his eyes, she wanted to ask her son mutely not to chafe her heart with the sharp, bitter words of his unbelief...and said firmly: "When you speak of God, I wish you were more careful. You can do whatever you like. You have your compensation in your work."
Catching her breath she continued with still greater vehemence: "But I, an old woman, I will have nothing to lean upon in my distress if you take my God away from me."

Her eyes filled with tears.

"You did not understand us, mother!" Pavel said softly and kindly.

"Beg your pardon, mother!"

"I did not speak about that good and gracious God in whom you believe, but about the God with whom they threaten us as with a stick, about the God in whose name they want to force all of us to the evil will of the few."

They have mutilated even our God for us, they have turned everything in their hands against us. Mark you, mother, God created man in his own image and after his own likeness. Therefore he is like man if man is like him. But we have become, not like God, but like wild beasts! ... mother; we must cleanse him! They have dressed him up in falsehood and calumny; they have distorted his face in order to destroy our souls!"

... In the heart and in the mind. There's the rub. It's this that makes all the trouble and misery and misfortune. We have severed ourselves from our own selves. The heart was severed from the mind, and the mind has disappeared. Man is not a unit. It is God that makes him a unit, that makes him a round, circular thing. God always makes things round. Such is the earth and all the stars and everything visible to the eye. The sharp, angular things are the work of men."

Perspective by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Leonid Afremov Art

It sometimes happened that you might be familiar with a person for several years thinking he or she was a wild animal, and you would regard that person with contempt. And then suddenly a moment would arrive when some uncontrollable impulse would lay his or her soul bare, and you would behold in it such riches, such sensitivity and warmth, such a vivid awareness of its own suffering and the suffering of others, that the scales would fall from your eyes and at first you would hardly be able to believe what you had seen and heard.The reverse also happens.
Fyodor Dostoevsky,The House of the Dead

On the path of love:City of love by Rumi*Pull the thorns from your heart*Those Who Don't Feel This Love

Music:
Yedi Karanfil- Saki Seven Cloves-Saki )

Leonid Afremov Art

City of Love
Rumi

I've travelled around
raced through every city
while i knew all along
no place could be found
like the city of love

If i could have known
to value what i owned
i would not have suffered
like a fool
the life of a vagabond

I've heard many tunes
all over the globe
all empty
as a kettledrum
except the music of love

It was the sound of
that hollow drum
that made me fall
from the heavens
to this mortal life

I used to soar
among souls
like a heart's flight
winglessly roaming and
celestially happy

I used to drink
like a flower that drinks
without lips or throat
of the wine that overflows
with laughter and joy

Suddenly
i was summoned by love
to prepare for a journey
to the temple of
suffering

I cried desperately
i begged and pleaded
and shredded my clothes
not to be sent
to this world

Just the way i fear now
going away
to the other world
i was frightened then
to make my descent

Love asked me to go
with no fear to be alone
promising to be close
everywhere i go
closer than my veins

Love threw its spell
its magic and allure
using coyness and charm
i was totally sold and
bought everything with joy

Who am i to resist
love's many tricks
and not to fall
while the whole world
takes love's bait

Love showed me
a path but then
lost me on the way
if i could have resisted
i would have found my way

I can show you my friend
surely how you can get there
but here and now
my pen has broken down
before telling you how...

Pull the thorns from your heart
Rumi

Behind the blood-stained curtains of Love
there are fields of flowers
where the lovers wander.

While the mind sees only boundaries
Love knows the secret way there.

While the mind smells profit and quickly sets up shop
Love sees untold of treasures far beyond.

Lovers trust in the wealth of their hearts
while the all-knowing mind sees only thorns ahead.

To wander in the fields of flowers
pull the thorns from your heart.

Those Who Don't Feel This Love
Rumi

Those who don`t feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don`t drink dawn
like a cup of springwater
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don`t want to change,

let them sleep

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,

sleep on

I`ve given up on my brain.
I`ve torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you`re not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,

and sleep.

Life too much visual:Life quote by D.H. Lawrence

Robert Hagan Art

I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual - we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.
D.H. Lawrence, Women in Love

Our past by Virginia Woolf

Daniel F.Gerhartz Art

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf

Why We Write by Anaïs Nin

Vladimir Volegov Art

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
Anaïs Nin

Me Gustas Cuando Callas de Pablo Neroda

Christina Nguyen art

Poema XV
Me Gustas Cuando Callas
Pablo Neruda

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.

Art & Morality by Robert Ingersoll

Music:
Kiss the Rain - Bevani Flute
Original Music:yiruma

Daniel Gerhartz Art

To express desires, longings, ecstasies, prophecies and passions in form and color; to put love, hope, heroism and triumph in marble; to paint dreams and memories with words; to portray the purity of dawn, the intensity and glory of noon, the tenderness of twilight, the splendor and mystery of night, with sounds; to give the invisible to sight and touch, and to enrich the common things of earth with gems and jewels of the mind -- this is Art.

Every brain is a gallery of art, and every soul is, to a greater or less degree, an artist. The pictures and statues that now enrich and adorn the walls and niches of the world, as well as those that illuminate the pages of its literature, were taken originally from the private galleries of the brain.

Art is not a sermon, and the artist is not a preacher. Art accomplishes by indirection. The beautiful refines. The perfect in art suggests the perfect in conduct. The harmony in music teaches, without intention, the lesson of proportion in life. The bird in his song has no moral purpose, and yet the influence is humanizing. The beautiful in nature acts through appreciation and sympathy. It does not browbeat, neither does it humiliate. It is beautiful without regard to you.

Art creates an atmosphere in which the proprieties, the amenities, and the virtues unconsciously grow. The rain does not lecture the seed. The light does not make rules for the vine and flower.

The heart is softened by the pathos of the perfect.

Art in its highest forms increases passion, gives tone and color and zest to life. But while it increases passion, it refines. It extends the horizon. The bare necessities of life constitute a prison, a dungeon. Under the influence of art the walls expand, the roof rises, and it becomes a temple.

Art cultivates and kindles the imagination, and quickens the conscience. It is by imagination that we put ourselves in the place of another. When the whigs of that faculty are folded, the master does not put himself in the place of the slave; the tyrant is not locked in the dungeon, chained with his victim. The inquisitor did not feel the flames that devoured the martyr. The imaginative man, giving to the beggar, gives to himself. Those who feel indignant at the perpetration of wrong, feel for the instant that they are the victims; and when they attack the aggressor they feel that they are defending themselves.

Art civilizes because it enlightens, develops, strengthens, ennobles. It deals with the beautiful, with the passionate, with the ideal. It is the child of the heart. To be great, it must deal with the human. It must be in accordance with the experience, with the hopes, with the fears, and with the possibilities of man. No one cares to paint a palace, because there is nothing in such a picture to touch the heart. It tells of responsibility, of the prison, of the conventional. It suggests a load -- it tells of apprehension, of weariness and ennui. The picture of a cottage, over which runs a vine, a little home thatched with content, with its simple life, its natural sunshine and shadow, its trees bending with fruit, its hollyhocks and pinks, its happy children, its hum of bees, is a poem -- a smile in the desert of this world.

Art creates, combines, and reveals. It is the highest manifestation of thought, of passion, of love, of intuition. It allows us to look at an unmasked soul, to fathom the abysses of passion,to understand the heights and depths of love.

Spring’s Immortality by Mackenzie Bell

Émile Vernon Art

Spring’s Immortality
Mackenzie Bell

THE BUDS awake at touch of Spring
From Winter’s joyless dream;
From many a stone the ouzels sing
By yonder mossy stream.

The cuckoo’s voice, from copse and vale,
Lingers, as if to meet
The music of the nightingale
Across the rising wheat—

The bird whom ancient Solitude
Hath kept forever young,
Unaltered since in studious mood
Calm Milton mused and sung.

Ah, strange it is, dear heart, to know
Spring’s gladsome mystery
Was sweet to lovers long ago—
Most sweet to such as we—

That fresh new leaves and meadow flowers
Bloomed when the south wind came;
While hands of Spring caressed the bowers,
The throstle sang the same.

Unchanged, unchanged the throstle’s song,
Unchanged Spring’s answering breath,
Unchanged, though cruel Time was strong,
And stilled our love in death.

A poet by Hafiz

Vladimir Gussev Art

A poet is someone who can
pour light into a cup,
then raise it to nourish
your beautiful, parched holy mouth.
Hafiz

Two modes of criticism by Margaret Fuller

Graham Gercken Art

There are two modes of criticism.One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant.

There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.
Margaret Fuller,
"Poets of the People"in Art,Literature and the Drama