Duras; marguerite. “El Amante”/ “L´Amant”

“Pienso con frecuencia en esta imagen que sólo yo sigo viendo y de la que nunca he hablado… Muy pronto en mi vida fue demasiado tarde”….

Pablo Neruda

Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago

I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour

Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Love is like a tree: it grows by itself, roots itself deeply in our being and continues to flourish over a heart in ruin. The inexplicable fact is that the blinder it is, the more tenacious it is. It is never stronger than when it is completely unreasonable

Barbara Taylor Bradford, A Woman of Substance

We are each the authors of our own lives, Emma. We live in what we have created. There is no way to shift the blame and no one else to accept the accolades.

Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“Usually we walk around constantly believing ourselves. "I'm okay" we say. "I'm alright". But sometimes the truth arrives on you and you can't get it off. That's when you realize that sometimes it isn't even an answer--it's a question. Even now, I wonder how much of my life is convinced "

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
“The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea; and the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes. But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;
and seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.
For self is a sea boundless and measureless. Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.” Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

Christmas Trees, by Robert Frost

A Christmas circular letter The city had withdrawn into itself And left at last the country to the country; When between whirls of snow not come to lie And whirls of foliage not yet laid, there drove A stranger to our yard, who looked the city,  Yet did in country fashion in that there He sat and waited till he drew us out, A-buttoning coats, to ask him who he was. He proved to be the city come again To look for something it had left behind  And could not do without and keep its Christmas. He asked if I would sell my Christmas trees; My woods—the young fir balsams like a place Where houses all are churches and have spires. I hadn’t thought of them as Christmas trees.   I doubt if I was tempted for a moment To sell them off their feet to go in cars And leave the slope behind the house all bare, Where the sun shines now no warmer than the moon. I’d hate to have them know it if I was.     Yet more I’d hate to hold my trees, except As others hold theirs or refuse for them, Beyond the time of profitable growth— The trial by market everything must come to. I dallied so much with the thought of selling.     Then whether from mistaken courtesy And fear of seeming short of speech, or whether From hope of hearing good of what was mine, I said, “There aren’t enough to be worth while.” “I could soon tell how many they would cut,    You let me look them over.”                                      “You could look. But don’t expect I’m going to let you have them.” Pasture they spring in, some in clumps too close That lop each other of boughs, but not a few    Quite solitary and having equal boughs All round and round. The latter he nodded “Yes” to, Or paused to say beneath some lovelier one, With a buyer’s moderation, “That would do.” I thought so too, but wasn’t there to say so.  We climbed the pasture on the south, crossed over, And came down on the north.                                     He said, “A thousand.”  “A thousand Christmas trees!—at what apiece?”  He felt some need of softening that to me:      “A thousand trees would come to thirty dollars.” Then I was certain I had never meant To let him have them. Never show surprise! But thirty dollars seemed so small beside The extent of pasture I should strip, three cents   (For that was all they figured out apiece)— Three cents so small beside the dollar friends I should be writing to within the hour Would pay in cities for good trees like those, Regular vestry-trees whole Sunday Schools    Could hang enough on to pick off enough.  A thousand Christmas trees I didn’t know I had! Worth three cents more to give away than sell, As may be shown by a simple calculation. Too bad I couldn’t lay one in a letter.      I can’t help wishing I could send you one, In wishing you herewith a Merry Christmas.

To Winter by William Blake

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark Deep-founded habitation. Shake not they roofs Nor bend they pillars with thine iron car. He hears me not, but o’er the yawning deep Rides heavy; his storms are unchain’d, sheathed In ribbed steel; I dare not life mine eyes; For he hath rear’d his scepter o’er the world. Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings To his strong bones, strides o’er the groaning rocks: He withers all in silence, and in his hand Unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life. He takes his seat upon the cliffs, the mariner Cries in vain. Poor little wretch! that deal’st With storms, till heaven smiles, and the monster Is driven yelling to his caves beneath Mount Hecla.

Franz Kafka

Pablo Neruda

Simone de Beauvoir

Charles Bukowski. Quotes.

Charles Bukowski

Sonnet by Pablo Neruda

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

A Day, by Emily Dickinson

I’ll tell you how the sun rose, — A ribbon at a time. The steeples swam in amethyst, The news like squirrels ran. The hills untied their bonnets, The bobolinks begun. Then I said softly to myself, “That must have been the sun!” But how he set, I know not. There seemed a purple stile Which little yellow boys and girls Were climbing all the while Till when they reached the other side, A dominie in gray Put gently up the evening bars, And led the flock away.

Willow Poem, by William Carlos Williams

It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the sun turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, swing and grow paler over the swirling waters of the river as if loath to let go, they are so cool, so drunk with the swirl of the wind and of the river— oblivious to winter, the last to let go and fall into the water and on the ground.

Letter From Robert Louis Stevenson to Arthur Connan Doyle

Percy B. Shelley, comic strip

Song of Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mine are the night and morning, The pits of air, the gulf of space, The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, The innumerable days. I hid in the solar glory, I am dumb in the pealing song, I rest on the pitch of the torrent, In slumber I am strong. No numbers have counted my tallies, No tribes my house can fill, I sit by the shining Fount of Life, And pour the deluge still; And ever by delicate powers Gathering along the centuries From race on race the rarest flowers, My wreath shall nothing miss. And many a thousand summers My apples ripened well, And light from meliorating stars With firmer glory fell. I wrote the past in characters Of rock and fire the scroll, The building in the coral sea, The planting of the coal. And thefts from satellites and rings And broken stars I drew, And out of spent and aged things I formed the world anew; What time the gods kept carnival, Tricked out in star and flower, And in cramp elf and saurian forms They swathed their too much power. Time and Thought were my surveyors, They laid their courses well, They boiled the sea, and baked the layers Or granite, marl, and shell. But he, the man-child glorious,— Where tarries he the while? The rainbow shines his harbinger, The sunset gleams his smile. My boreal lights leap upward, Forthright my planets roll, And still the man-child is not born, The summit of the whole. Must time and tide forever run? Will never my winds go sleep in the west? Will never my wheels which whirl the sun And satellites have rest? Too much of donning and doffing, Too slow the rainbow fades, I weary of my robe of snow, My leaves and my cascades; I tire of globes and races, Too long the game is played; What without him is summer’s pomp, Or winter’s frozen shade? I travail in pain for him, My creatures travail and wait; His couriers come by squadrons, He comes not to the gate. Twice I have moulded an image, And thrice outstretched my hand, Made one of day, and one of night, And one of the salt sea-sand. One in a Judaean manger, And one by Avon stream, One over against the mouths of Nile, And one in the Academe. I moulded kings and saviours, And bards o’er kings to rule;— But fell the starry influence short, The cup was never full. Yet whirl the glowing wheels once more, And mix the bowl again; Seethe, fate! the ancient elements, Heat, cold, wet, dry, and peace, and pain. Let war and trade and creeds and song Blend, ripen race on race, The sunburnt world a man shall breed Of all the zones, and countless days. No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, My oldest force is good as new, And the fresh rose on yonder thorn Gives back the bending heavens in dew.

At the Window, by D. H. Lawrence

The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical                         laughter; While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters. Further down the valley the clustered tombstones recede, Winding about their dimness the mist’s grey cerements, after The street lamps in the darkness have suddenly started to bleed. The leaves fly over the window and utter a word as they pass To the face that leans from the darkness, intent, with two dark-filled               eyes That watch for ever earnestly from behind the window glass.

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself. 

Jack Kerouac: 'On the Road'

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' 

"Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.”

From "Funeral Blues" by W. H. Auden

The Solitary Reaper, by William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,  Yon solitary Highland Lass!  Reaping and singing by herself;  Stop here, or gently pass!  Alone she cuts and binds the grain, And sings a melancholy strain;  O listen! for the Vale profound  Is overflowing with the sound.   No Nightingale did ever chaunt  More welcome notes to weary bands Of travellers in some shady haunt,  Among Arabian sands:  A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard  In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,  Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides.    Will no one tell me what she sings?—  Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow  For old, unhappy, far-off things,  And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay,  Familiar matter of to-day?  Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,  That has been, and may be again?   Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang As if her song could have no ending;  I saw her singing at her work,  And o’er the sickle bending;—  I listen’d, motionless and still;  And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore,  Long after it was heard no more.

Tea at the Palaz of Hoon by Wallace Stevens

Not less because in purple I descended
The western day through what you called
The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
I was myself the compass of that sea:

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought (Sonnet 30) by William Shakespeare

Sonnet 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 

I summon up remembrance of things past, 

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 

And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: 

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 

For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 

And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe, 

And moan the expense of many a vanished sight: 

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 

And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 

The sad account of fore-bemoanèd moan, 

Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 

All losses are restored and sorrows end.

The Wound-Dresser by Walt Whitman

1

An old man bending I come among new faces,
Years looking backward resuming in answer to children,
Come tell us old man, as from young men and maidens 

   that love me,
(Arous'd and angry, I'd thought to beat the alarum, and 

   urge relentless war,
But soon my fingers fail'd me, my face droop'd and I 

   resign'd myself,
To sit by the wounded and soothe them, or silently 

   watch the dead;)
Years hence of these scenes, of these furious 

   passions, these chances,
Of unsurpass'd heroes, (was one side so brave? the 

   other was equally brave;)
Now be witness again, paint the mightiest armies 

   of earth,
Of those armies so rapid so wondrous what saw you 

   to tell us?
What stays with you latest and deepest? of curious 

   panics,
Of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous 

   what deepest remains?

2

O maidens and young men I love and that love me,
What you ask of my days those the strangest and 

   sudden your talking recalls,
Soldier alert I arrive after a long march cover'd with 

   sweat and dust,
In the nick of time I come, plunge in the fight, loudly 

   shout in the rush of successful charge,
Enter the captur'd works--yet lo, like a swift running 

   river they fade,
Pass and are gone they fade--I dwell not on soldiers' 

   perils or soldiers' joys,
(Both I remember well--many of the hardships, few 

   the joys, yet I was content.)

But in silence, in dreams' projections,
While the world of gain and appearance and mirth 

   goes on,
So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the 

   imprints off the sand,
With hinged knees returning I enter the doors, (while 

   for you up there,
Whoever you are, follow without noise and be of 

   strong heart.)

Bearing the bandages, water and sponge,
Straight and swift to my wounded I go,
Where they lie on the ground after the battle 

   brought in,
Where their priceless blood reddens the grass, 

   the ground,
Or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the 

   roof'd hospital,
To the long rows of cots up and down each side 

   I return,
To each and all one after another I draw near, not 

   one do I miss,
An attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a 

   refuse pail,
Soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, 

   and fill'd again.

I onward go, I stop,
With hinged knees and steady hand to dress wounds,
I am firm with each, the pangs are sharp yet 

   unavoidable,
One turns to me his appealing eyes--poor boy! I 

   never knew you,
Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for 

   you, if that would save you.

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare

Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] The three witches, casting a spell Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights hast thirty one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.         Double, double toil and trouble;         Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.          Double, double toil and trouble;          Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.           Double, double toil and trouble;           Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

A Nation's Strength by Ralph Waldo Emerson

What makes a nation's pillars high
And it's foundations strong?
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?

It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.

Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.

And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.

Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly...
They build a nation's pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.

Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd by Walt Whitman

1

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

2

(Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient—a little space—know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)

Guillaume Apollinaire by Gertrude Stein

Give known or pin ware.
Fancy teeth, gas strips.
Elbow elect, sour stout pore, pore caesar, pour state at.
Leave eye lessons I. Leave I. Lessons. I. Leave I lessons, I.

My Heart Leaps Up, by William Wordsworth

My heart leaps up when I behold 
   A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man; 
So be it when I shall grow old, 
   Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

Preludes [excerpt] by T. S. Eliot

IV His soul stretched tight across the skies That fade behind a city block, Or trampled by insistent feet At four and five and six o'clock; And short square fingers stuffing pipes, And evening newspapers, and eyes Assured of certain certainties, The conscience of a blackened street Impatient to assume the world. I am moved by fancies that are curled Around these images, and cling: The notion of some infinitely gentle Infinitely suffering thing. Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh; The worlds revolve like ancient women Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

Coda by Ezra Pound

O my songs, Why do you look so eagerly and so curiously into     people's faces, Will you find your lost dead among them?

House or Window Flies, by John Clare

These little window dwellers, in cottages and halls, were always entertaining to me; after dancing in the window all day from sunrise to sunset they would sip of the tea, drink of the beer, and eat of the sugar, and be welcome all summer long. They look like things of mind or fairies, and seem pleased or dull as the weather permits. In many clean cottages and genteel houses, they are allowed every liberty to creep, fly, or do as they like; and seldom or ever do wrong. In fact they are the small or dwarfish portion of our own family, and so many fairy familiars that we know and treat as one of ourselves.

My Childhood Home I See Again by Abraham Lincoln

 

My childhood home I see again,

And sadden with the view; 

And still, as memory crowds my brain,

There's pleasure in it too. 

O Memory! thou midway world

'Twixt earth and paradise, 

Where things decayed and loved ones lost

In dreamy shadows rise, 

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 

Seem hallowed, pure, and bright, 

Like scenes in some enchanted isle 

All bathed in liquid light. 

As dusky mountains please the eye 

When twilight chases day; 

As bugle-notes that, passing by, 

In distance die away; 

As leaving some grand waterfall, 

We, lingering, list its roar-- 

So memory will hallow all 

We've known, but know no more. 

Near twenty years have passed away 

Since here I bid farewell 

To woods and fields, and scenes of play, 

And playmates loved so well. 

Where many were, but few remain 

Of old familiar things; 

But seeing them, to mind again 

The lost and absent brings. 

The friends I left that parting day, 

How changed, as time has sped! 

Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray, 

And half of all are dead. 

I hear the loved survivors tell 

How nought from death could save, 

Till every sound appears a knell, 

And every spot a grave. 

I range the fields with pensive tread, 

And pace the hollow rooms, 

And feel (companion of the dead) 

I'm living in the tombs.

Wanting is -- What? by Robert Browning

Wanting is -- what?                 Summer redundant,                 Blueness abundant,                  -- Where is the blot? Beamy the world, yet a blank all the same, -- Framework which waits for a picture to frame: What of the leafage, what of the flower? Roses embowering with naught they embower! Come then, complete incompletion, O comer, Pant thro' the blueness, perfect the summer!                 Breathe but one breath                 Rose-beauty above,                 And all that was death                 Grows life, grows love,                      Grows love!

Weave in, My Hardy Life, by Walt Whitman

Weave in, weave in, my hardy life, Weave yet a soldier strong and full for great campaigns to come, Weave in red blood, weave sinews in like ropes,       the senses, sight weave in, Weave lasting sure, weave day and night the weft, the warp,       incessant weave, tire not, (We know not what the use O life, nor know the aim, the end,       nor really aught we know, But know the work, the need goes on and shall go on, the death-       envelop’d march of peace as well as war goes on,) For great campaigns of peace the same the wiry threads to weave, We know not why or what, yet weave, forever weave.

The Outlet (162), by Emily Dickinson

My river runs to thee: Blue sea, wilt welcome me? My river waits reply. Oh sea, look graciously! I’ll fetch thee brooks From spotted nooks,— Say, sea, Take me!

Love, by William Carlos Williams

Love is twain, it is not single, Gold and silver mixed to one, Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle Glist’ring then for aye undone. Pain it is not; wondering pity Dies or e’er the pang is fled; Passion ‘tis not, foul and gritty, Born one instant, instant dead. Love is twain, it is not single, Gold and silver mixed to one, Passion ‘tis and pain which mingle Glist’ring then for aye undone.