William Shakespeare
Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter—In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. — William Shakespeare, from “Sonnet 87,” The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford University Press, 2008)
Category: Renaissance
William Shakespeare
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death! — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene iii
William Shakespeare
There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it,And nothing is at a like goodness still,For goodness, growing to a plurisy,Dies in his own too much. — William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act IV, Scene vii
Ioan P. Couliano
Melancholy, being a kind of vacatio, separation of soul from body, bestowed the gift of clairvoyance and premonition. In the classifications of the Middle Ages, melancholy was included among the seven forms of vacatio, along with sleep, fainting, and solitude. The state of vacatio is characterized by a labile link between soul and body which… Continue reading Ioan P. Couliano
William Shakespeare
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,Are of imagination all compact. —William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Act V, Scene i
John Donne
For I am every dead thing,In whom Love wrought new alchemy.For his art did expressA quintessence even from nothingness,From dull privations, and lean emptiness;He ruin’d me, and I am re-begotOf absence, darkness, death—things which are not.” — John Donne, from “A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy’s Day, Being the Shortest Day,” The Complete English Poems. (Penguin… Continue reading John Donne
William Shakespeare
For death remembered should be like a mirror,Who tells us life’s but breath, to trust it error.” ― William Shakespeare, Pericles. Act I, Scene i
William Shakespeare
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere wellIt were done quickly —William Shakespeare, Macbeth Act IV Scene vii
William Shakespeare
My tongue will tell the anger of my heart / Or else my heart, concealing it, will break, ― William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew : Act IV, Scene iii
John Donne
Our two souls therefore, which are one,Though I must go, endure not yetA breach, but an expansion,Like gold to aery thinness beat. — John Donne, from “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” Songs and Sonnets. Written in 1611/1612 for his wife Anne, and later published in the 1633 collection Songs and Sonnets, two years after Donne’s death.
The Vale of Soul-Making 