Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me
than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with
your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking
alone with you
They who love me do not know that their love brings you to
my heart.
--Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).
If you know the original Bengali source of this quotation, could you please send it to me?
I was with you at my grave today.
You tend it with such care.
I want to reassure you
that I'm not lying there.
I walked with you towards the house, as you fumbled for your key.
I gently put my paw on you--
I smiled and said, "It's me."
--(If you know the name of the author of this poem, or the source of the image, could you please send it to me?) You can find the whole poem here.
who knows
what beautiful adventures
await our spirits
when we die.....
--Nan Witcomb, publishing under the name of Nanushka. Here is >a href= "http://users.senet.com.au/~nanushka/nan2.htm">her website.
How long, how endless is each throb of pain!
O my heart, eaten up, bled white!
My heart? There is no heart to be found in my breast,
only an urn with life's ashes.
--Esaias Tegnér (1782-1846), Swedish poet, in his poem "Mjältsjukan."
Hur lång, hur ändlös är vart pulsslags smärta!
O, mitt förtärda, mitt förblödda hjärta!
Mitt hjärta? I mitt bröst finns intet hjärta,
en urna blott med livets aska i.
Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul …it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature… literature does its best to maintain that its concern is with the mind; that the body is a sheet of plain glass through which the soul looks straight and clear.
--Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in her essay On Being Ill (1926)
Rifle goes up
does what a rifle does.
Star is very beautiful:
doing what a star does.
Tell them, O Sleeper, that some
were slain at the start of the slaughter
Tell them, O Sleeper, that sleet and rain
are falling on those poor riderless heads
Tell them, O Sleeper, that pitiful hands float on the water...
hands that shall reach icily into their warm beds.
--Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972), Selected Poems (1936), "The Soldier and the Star."
Grief be unto one who must long for the beloved.
--"The Wife's Lament" from The Exeter Book (960-990).
Wa bið þam þe sceal of langoþe leofes abidan.
To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
--Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), in his posthumous book Mortality
We curse our hardships, but we don't realize, when they happen to us, that they will make us grow, and take us further. We don't want to know that. The pain is too great for us to see any virtue in it. But after the pain has gone, we look back in awe at the distance we have come because of it.
--French romance novel writer Katherine Pancol (1954- ) in Les écureuils de Central Park sont tristes le lundi [Central Park squirrels are sad on Mondays], part of "The Josephine Trilogy"
On maudit une épreuve, mais on ne sait pas, quand elle nous arrive, qu'elle va nous faire grandir et nous emmener ailleurs. On ne veut pas le savoir. La douleur est trop forte pour qu'on lui reconnaisse une vertu. C'est quand la douleur est passée, qu'on se retourne et qu'on considère, ébahi, le long chemin qu'elle nous a fait parcourir.
As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
--King James translation of the Bible, Psalm 103, verses 15-16
