Poetry
Quotes - When Great Trees Fall
“Have
you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just
lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the
greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners
of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence
of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back
to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss
that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource
is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God,
all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and
understanding”
―
Saul Williams, , said the shotgun to the head.
“All
my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were
fate to exile the rest of me from your presence forever.”
―
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
“Out
of the night that covers me,
Black
as the Pit from pole to pole,
I
thank whatever gods may be
For
my unconquerable soul.
In
the fell clutch of circumstance
I
have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under
the bludgeonings of chance
My
head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond
this place of wrath and tears
Looms
but the Horror of the shade,
And
yet the menace of the years
Finds,
and shall find, me unafraid.
It
matters not how strait the gate,
How
charged with punishments the scroll,
I am
the master of my fate:
I am
the captain of my soul.”
―
William Ernest Henley, Invictus
“You
give but little when you give of your possessions.
It
is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
― Kahlil
Gibran, The Prophet
“I
dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I
dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I
dreamed I was my own beloved,
I
dreamed I was a tiger's kin.
I
dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And
when I breathed a garden came,
I
dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I
dreamed I knew the Creator's name.
I
dreamed--and this dream was the finest--
That
all I dreamed was real and true,
And
we would live in joy forever,
You
in me, and me in you.”
―
Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
“When
Great Trees Fall
When
great trees fall,
rocks
on distant hills shudder,
lions
hunker down
in
tall grasses,
and
even elephants
lumber
after safety.
When
great trees fall
in
forests,
small
things recoil into silence,
their
senses
eroded
beyond fear.
When
great souls die,
the
air around us becomes
light,
rare, sterile.
We
breathe, briefly.
Our
eyes, briefly,
see
with
a
hurtful clarity.
Our
memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws
on kind words
unsaid,
promised
walks
never
taken.
Great
souls die and
our
reality, bound to
them,
takes leave of us.
Our
souls,
dependent
upon their
nurture,
now
shrink, wizened.
Our
minds, formed
and
informed by their
radiance,
fall
away.
We
are not so much maddened
as
reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark,
cold
caves.
And
when great souls die,
after
a period peace blooms,
slowly
and always
irregularly.
Spaces fill
with
a kind of
soothing
electric vibration.
Our
senses, restored, never
to
be the same, whisper to us.
They
existed. They existed.
We
can be. Be and be
better.
For they existed.”
―
Maya Angelou
“Those
who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
―
Theodore Roethke, Straw for the Fire: From the Notebooks of Theodore Roethke
“A
woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her
judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means
signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will
refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
―
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
“The
purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.”
―
Rainer Maria Rilke
“Stephen
kissed me in the spring,
Robin
in the fall,
But
Colin only looked at me
And
never kissed at all.
Stephen’s
kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s
lost in play,
But
the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts
me night and day.”
―
Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems
“Love
is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and
awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)”
―
William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
“Given
the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”
―
William Faulkner, The Wild Palms
“Though
much is taken, much abides; and though
We
are not now that strength which in old days
Moved
earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One
equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made
weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
―
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems
“Closed
in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is
missing out.”
―
Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
“I
don't care what you say to me. I care what you share with me.”
―
Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
“I
want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I
want to be light and frolicsome.
I
want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as
though I had wings.”
―
Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
“How
I go to the wood
Ordinarily,
I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend,
for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore
unsuitable.
I
don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds
or
hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of
praying,
as you no doubt have yours.
Besides,
when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit
on
the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds,
until
the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost
unhearable
sound of the roses singing.
If
you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love
you
very much.”
―
Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
