When the ocean comes to you as a lover, marry, at once, quickly, for God’s sake! Don’t postpone it! Existence has no better gift. No amount of searching will find this. A perfect falcon, for no reason, has landed on your shoulder, and become yours. — Rumi, “No Better Gift,” Rumi the Book of Love… Continue reading Rumi
According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their own destiny. — Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy. (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, December 14, 2017)
And if it were true, we do not think all philosophy is worth one hour of pain. ― Blaise Pascal, Pensées. (Penguin Classics, July 27th 1995) Originally published 1670.
For here the day unravels what the night has woven. When we awake each morning, we hold in our hands, usually weakly and loosely, but a few fringes of the tapestry of a lived life, as loomed for us by forgetting. However, with our purposeful activity and, even more, our purposive remembering each day unravels… Continue reading Walter Benjamin
I loved you, so I drew these tides of / Men into my hands / And wrote my will across the / Sky in stars ― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. (Private edition 1922)
Love loves to return, to bring back to the origin, to begin loving from the first instant, love wants to love everything, — Hélène Cixous, from “Poetry, Passion and History,” Rootprints: Memory and Life Writing. (1st edition, June 27, 1997)
A gladness in the air feels almost too cool against the skin. The day is ending not in grey but in pale blue. A hazy blue is even reflecting off the stones of the street. It hurts to live, but the pain is remote. Feeling doesn’t matter. — Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet. (Penguin… Continue reading Fernando Pessoa
