What the Thrush Said, by John Keats

O Thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind, Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist, And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars, To thee the spring will be a harvest-time. O thou, whose only book has been the light Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on Night after night when Phœbus was away, To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn. O fret not after knowledge—I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge—I have none, And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens At the thought of idleness cannot be idle, And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. You're not telling me anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?

[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in] BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Forbearance, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? At rich men’s tables eaten bread and pulse? Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? And loved so well a high behavior, In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, Nobility more nobly to repay? O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!

Mist, by Henry David Thoreau

Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air, Fountain-head and source of rivers, Dew-cloth, dream-drapery, And napkin spread by fays; Drifting meadow of the air, Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, And in whose fenny labyrinth The bittern booms and heron wades; Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers,— Bear only perfumes and the scent Of healing herbs to just men’s fields.

Cheerfulness Taught by Reason, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
To muse upon eternity’s constraint
Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,—
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road—
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints?—At least it may be said,
“Because the way is short, I thank thee, God!”

Sputnik sweetheart

Sputnik sweetheart

Bei Hennef, by D. H. Lawrence

The little river twittering in the twilight,
The wan, wondering look of the pale sky,
             This is almost bliss.

And everything shut up and gone to sleep,
All the troubles and anxieties and pain
             Gone under the twilight.

Only the twilight now, and the soft “Sh!” of the river
             That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here,
I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight,
It is large, so large, I could not see it before
Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions,
             Troubles, anxieties, and pains.

             You are the call and I am the answer,
             You are the wish, and I the fulfillment,
             You are the night, and I the day.
                          What else—it is perfect enough,
                          It is perfectly complete,
                          You and I.
Strange, how we suffer in spite of this!

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann (1920)

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly to the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

The Sea of Glass, by Ezra Pound

I looked and saw a sea
                               roofed over with rainbows,
In the midst of each
                               two lovers met and departed;
Then the sky was full of faces
                               with gold glories behind them.

Haruki Murakami, After Dark

“You know what I think?" she says. "That people's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper.” 

The Thaw, by Henry David Thoreau

I saw the civil sun drying earth’s tears — Her tears of joy that only faster flowed, Fain would I stretch me by the highway side, To thaw and trickle with the melting snow, That mingled soul and body with the tide, I too may through the pores of nature flow. But I alas nor tinkle can nor fume, One jot to forward the great work of Time, ‘Tis mine to hearken while these ply the loom, So shall my silence with their music chime.

To Summer, by William Blake

O Thou who passest thro’ our vallies in Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer, Oft pitched’st here thy golden tent, and oft Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld With joy, thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair. Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car Rode o’er the deep of heaven; beside our springs Sit down, and in our mossy vallies, on Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream: Our vallies love the Summer in his pride. Our bards are fam’d who strike the silver wire: Our youth are bolder than the southern swains: Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance: We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy, Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven, Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.

Shades, by D. H. Lawrence

Shall I tell you, then, how it is?— There came a cloven gleam Like a tongue of darkened flame To flicker in me. And so I seem To have you still the same In one world with me. In the flicker of a flower, In a worm that is blind, yet strives, In a mouse that pauses to listen Glimmers our Shadow; yet it deprives Them none of their glisten. In every shaken morsel I see our shadow tremble As if it rippled from out of us hand in hand. As if it were part and parcel, One shadow, and we need not dissemble Our darkness: do you understand? For I have told you plainly how it is.

Books are my prozac

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.” 

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

and both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday & eternal reality was love...

Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.

In a Whispering Gallery, by Thomas Hardy

That whisper takes the voice
Of a Spirit, speaking to me,
Close, but invisible,
And throws me under a spell
At the kindling vision it brings;
And for a moment I rejoice,
And believe in transcendent things
That would make of this muddy earth
A spot for the splendid birth
Of everlasting lives,
Whereto no night arrives;
And this gaunt gray gallery
A tabernacle of worth
On this drab-aired afternoon,
When you can barely see
Across its hazed lacune
If opposite aught there be
Of fleshed humanity
Wherewith I may commune;
Or if the voice so near
Be a soul’s voice floating here.

The Thinker, by William Carlos Williams

My wife’s new pink slippers have gay pom-poms. There is not a spot or a stain on their satin toes or their sides. All night they lie together under her bed’s edge. Shivering I catch sight of them and smile, in the morning. Later I watch them descending the stair, hurrying through the doors and round the table, moving stiffly with a shake of their gay pom-poms! And I talk to them in my secret mind out of pure happiness.

Spirits of the Dead Edgar Allan Poe

Thy soul shall find itself alone ‘Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone; Not one, of all the crowd, to pry Into thine hour of secrecy. Be silent in that solitude, Which is not loneliness—for then The spirits of the dead, who stood In life before thee, are again In death around thee, and their will Shall overshadow thee; be still. The night, though clear, shall frown, And the stars shall not look down From their high thrones in the Heaven With light like hope to mortals given, But their red orbs, without beam, To thy weariness shall seem As a burning and a fever Which would cling to thee for ever. Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish, Now are visions ne’er to vanish; From thy spirit shall they pass No more, like dew-drop from the grass. The breeze, the breath of God, is still, And the mist upon the hill Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token. How it hangs upon the trees, A mystery of mysteries!

The Vantage Point, by Robert Frost

If tired of trees I seek again mankind,
    Well I know where to hie me—in the dawn,
    To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid lolling juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
    Far off the homes of men, and farther still
    The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by noon I have too much of these,
    I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
    The sunburned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
    I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
    I look into the crater of the ant.

Patience Taught by Nature, by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“O Dreary life!” we cry, “O dreary life!”
And still the generations of the birds
Sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds
Serenely live while we are keeping strife
With Heaven’s true purpose in us, as a knife
Against which we may struggle. Ocean girds
Unslackened the dry land: savannah-swards
Unweary sweep: hills watch, unworn; and rife
Meek leaves drop yearly from the forest-trees,
To show, above, the unwasted stars that pass
In their old glory. O thou God of old!
Grant me some smaller grace than comes to these;—
But so much patience, as a blade of grass
Grows by contended through the heat and cold

ATONEMENT

I've never had a moment's doubt. I love you. I believe in you completely. You are my dearest one. My reason for life.

THE MAP OF LOVE

Is it that happy stretch of time when the lovers set to chronicling their passion. When no glance, no tone of voice is so fleeting but it shines with significance. When each moment, each perception is brought out with care, unfolded like a precious gem from its layers of the softest tissue paper and laid in front of the beloved - turned this way and that, examined, considered.

IN AN ARTIST'S STUDIO

He feeds upon her face by day and night, And she with true kind eyes looks back on him, Fair as the moon and joyful as the light.

THE CLOD AND THE PEBBLE

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care; But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

UNACCUSTOMED EARTH

That the last two letters in her name were the first two in his, a silly thing he never mentioned to her but caused him to believe that they were bound together.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring

THE ENGLISH PATIENT

Her life with others no longer interests him. He wants only her stalking beauty, her theatre of expressions. He wants the minute secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.

DAVID COPPERFIELD

She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don't know what she was - anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.

THE AMBER GODS

The winds were warm about us, the whole earth seemed the wealthier for our love.

SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; - it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others.

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.

THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Each time you happen to me all over again.

THE WHITE COMPANY

You are my heart, my life, my one and only thought.

JANE EYRE

Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.

MY LUVE IS LIKE A RED RED ROSE

O, my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June.

ADAM BEDE

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?

ROMEO AND JULIET

Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

BELOVED

She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

WINNIE THE POOH

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

HAMLET

Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love

STOP ALL THE CLOCKS

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest.

VANITY FAIR

It is better to love wisely, no doubt: but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING YOUNG CHARMS

h the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close.

THE ROVER

One hour of right down love is worth an age of dully living on

THE ROAD

Lying under such a myriad of stars. The sea’s black horizon. He rose and walked out and stood barefoot in the sand and watched the pale surf appear all down the shore and roll and crash and darken again. When he went back to the fire he knelt and smoothed her hair as she slept and he said if he were God he would have made the world just so and no different.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY

It has made me better loving you ... it has made me wiser, and easier, and brighter. I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.

POSSESSION

I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed

OUR MUTUAL FRIEND

You know what I am going to say. I love you. What other men may mean when they use that expression, I cannot tell; what I mean is, that I am under the influence of some tremendous attraction which I have resisted in vain, and which overmasters me. You could draw me to fire, you could draw me to water, you could draw me to the gallows, you could draw me to any death, you could draw me to anything I have most avoided, you could draw me to any exposure and disgrace. This and the confusion of my thoughts, so that I am fit for nothing, is what I mean by your being the ruin of me. But if you would return a favourable answer to my offer of myself in marringe, you could draw me to any good - every good - with equal force.

IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.

Tis better to have loved and lost, Than never to have loved at all.

THE GREAT GATSBY

He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Soul meets soul on lovers' lips.

MAURICE

Love had caught him out of triviality and Maurice out of bewilderment in order that two imperfect souls might touch perfection.

NORTH AND SOUTH

All this gladness in life, all honest pride in doing my work in the world, all this keen sense of being, I owe to her!" And it doubles the gladness, it makes the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till I hardly know if it is pain or pleasure, to think that I owe it to one - nay, you must, you shall hear" - said he, stepping forwards with stern determination - "to one whom I love, as I do not believe man ever loved woman before

LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER

All hopes of eternity and all gain from the past he would have given to have her there, to be wrapped warm with him in one blanket, and sleep, only sleep. It seemed the sleep with the woman in his arms was the only necessity.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS

Now, I'm not going to deny that I was aware of your beauty. But the point is, this has nothing to do with your beauty. As I got to know you, I began to realise that beauty was the least of your qualities. I became fascinated by your goodness. I was drawn in by it. I didn't understand what was happening to me. And it was only when I began to feel actual, physical pain every time you left the room that it finally dawned on me: I was in love, for the first time in my life. I knew it was hopeless, but that didn't matter to me. And it's not that I want to have you. All I want is to deserve you. Tell me what to do. Show me how to behave. I'll do anything you say.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA

I have waited for this opportunity for more than half a century, to repeat to you once again my vow of eternal fidelity and everlasting love.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.

DOCTOR ZHIVAGO

You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

CLARISSA, OR THE HISTORY OF A YOUNG LADY

By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her

PERSUASION, Jane Austen

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.

THE GOOD-MORROW

"I wonder by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then?"

CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN

"When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are to become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the desire to mate every second of the day. It is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every part of your body. No ... don't blush. I am telling you some truths. For that is just being in love; which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over, when being in love has burned away. Doesn't sound very exciting, does it? But it is!"

GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell

"You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”

TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”

Flood by James Joyce

 

Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.

Sometimes with One I Love, by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for    fear I effuse unreturn'd love, But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay    is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was    not return'd, Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260) Emily Dickinson, 1830 - 1886

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –  
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –  
To an admiring Bog!

Dreams, by Edgar Allan Poe

Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream! My spirit not awakening, till the beam Of an Eternity should bring the morrow. Yes! tho’ that long dream were of hopeless sorrow, ’Twere better than the cold reality Of waking life, to him whose heart must be, And hath been still, upon the lovely earth, A chaos of deep passion, from his birth. But should it be—that dream eternally Continuing—as dreams have been to me In my young boyhood—should it thus be given, ’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven. For I have revell’d when the sun was bright I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light, And loveliness,—have left my very heart In climes of mine imagining, apart From mine own home, with beings that have been Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen? ’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour From my remembrance shall not pass—some power Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind Came o’er me in the night, and left behind Its image on my spirit—or the moon Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was That dream was as that night-wind—let it pass. I have been happy, tho’ [but] in a dream. I have been happy—and I love the theme: Dreams! in their vivid colouring of life As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife Of semblance with reality which brings To the delirious eye, more lovely things Of Paradise and Love—and all our own! Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.

Leaves of grass

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“On the Grasshopper and Cricket” John Keats’s Poems (C. & J. Ollier, 1817).

The poetry of earth is never dead:
  When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
  And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
That is the Grasshopper’s—he takes the lead
  In summer luxury,—he has never done
  With his delights; for when tired out with fun
He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.
The poetry of earth is ceasing never:
  On a lone winter evening, when the frost
    Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills
The Cricket’s song, in warmth increasing ever,
  And seems to one in drowsiness half lost,
    The Grasshopper’s among some grassy hills.

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun (Sonnet 130). WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
     And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
     As any she belied with false compare.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

D.H. Lawrence, Sons and lovers

“And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof.” 

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Her heart did whisper that he had done it for her.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Moonrise, by D. H. Lawrence

And who has seen the moon, who has not seen Her rise from out the chamber of the deep, Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw Confession of delight upon the wave, Littering the waves with her own superscription Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us Spread out and known at last, and we are sure That beauty is a thing beyond the grave, That perfect, bright experience never falls To nothingness, and time will dim the moon Sooner than our full consummation here In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

Francesca, by Ezra Pound

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hands,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.
I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion seed-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

It's too short,' she said, 'ever so much too short.' Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain-top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R.

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, "Now I am rid of all that", find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.

Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans

“beautiful insane
in the rain”