Barrett's Quotes

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach

You're something between a dream and a miracle.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

We write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves.

No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.

Earth's crammed with heaven... But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.

I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out.

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.

You were made perfectly to be loved and surely I have loved you in the idea of you my whole life long.

Love me sweet With all thou art Feeling, thinking, seeing; Love me in the Lightest part, Love me in full Being.

My sun sets to rise again.

Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.

Who so loves believes the impossible.

The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday Among the fields above the sea, Among the winds at play.

Quick-loving hearts ... may quickly loathe.

Light tomorrow with today.

God's gifts put men's best dreams to shame.

Witch, scholar, poet, dreamer, and the rest...

If in life we are surrounded by death, then in the health of our intellect we are surrounded by madness.

With stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right the music of my nature.

Wish You Were Here So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, Blue skys from pain. Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to trade Your heros for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? And did you exchange A walk on part in the war For a lead role in a cage? How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls Swimming in a fish bowl, Year after year, Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here.

All actual heroes are essential men, And all men possible heroes.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

Parting is all we know of heaven And all we need of hell

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain From that same love this vindicating grace, To live on still in love, and yet in vain

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

Numerous experiments showed that people feel depressed when they fail to live up to their own ideals, but when they fall short of a standard set by others, they feel anxious.

She doesn't speak, and I say nothing more. We just stare at each other, letting the tears roll down our cheeks. That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed.

And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

What I do, and what I dream include thee, as the wine must taste of its own grapes.

Hey, so I told my hoe yesterday that..." Aww, he talks to his shovel. How cute.

What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.

My patience has dreadful chilblains from standing so long on a monument.

The world of books is still the world.

Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat... or a girl?

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me--wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove.

If thou must love me, let it be for naught Except for love's sake only. Do not say, 'I love her for her smile—her look—her way Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'— For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may Be changed, or change for thee—and love, so wrought, May be unwrought so. Neither love me for Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry: A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity. If Thou Must Love Me

An emotion is your brain’s creation of what your bodily sensations mean, in relation to what is going on around you in the world.

I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, - I build it on the moonlit cloud, To which I looked with thee.

There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant, and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment.

Fangirl rage. It demands to be feared.

If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange And be all to me?

She lived, we'll say, A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all (But that she had not lived enough to know)

In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were lov'd, us'd -- well enough, I think, we've far'd, my heart and I.

Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!

As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once observed poetically: "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.

All night long Alec sat in his chair in his pyjamas and dressing gown, socks on his feet to keep out the cold, a cigarette in his fingers with a long ash hovering over a half-full ashtray. He attempted to go to bed but the incident with Father Joe kept his mind in turmoil. This girl, well, woman now – she would be around thirty – was a mystery during the war. She was kidnapped, it was thought, from her school, the day the Germans entered Paris. Her uncle, Sir Jason Barrett MP, was in England; her step-parents were somewhere else in France, on holiday, and found they could not get back; and Charlotte was being cared for by a Swedish couple, a nanny or housekeeper and her chauffeur husband. Was Charlotte actually Freya? What had this baron fellow to do with Freya, apart from marrying her? Had she been a prostitute? And what was the old cleric babbling on about “finding her and protecting her”? From whom?

You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me - my heart was full when you came here today. Henceforward I am yours for everything.

Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day.

You don't have to kiss a lot of frogs to recognize a prince when you find one." -Henrietta Barrett, (Minx, Splendid Trilogy book #3)

That's what tears are for, after all. A way for the soul to bleed. Pg. 109

Beloved, let us live so well our work shall still be better for our love, and still our love be sweeter for our work.

OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.

A boy and a girl were insanely in love with each other,” my mother’s voice was saying. “They decided to become engaged. And that’s when presents are always exchanged. The boy was poor–his only worthwhile possession was a watch he’d inherited from his grandfather. Thinking about his sweetheart’s lovely hair, he decided to sell the watch in order to buy her a silver barrette. The girl had no money herself to buy him a present. She went to the shop of the most successful merchant in the town and sold him her hair. With the money, she bought a gold watchband for her lover. When they met on the day of the engagement party, she gave him the wristband for a watch he had sold, and he gave her the barrette for the hair she no longer had

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I'm with you kid. Let's go.

An actor is a sculptor who carves in snow.

Emotions are not reactions to the world; they are your constructions of the world.

It takes more than one human brain to create a human mind.

That's all I wanted to do as a kid. Play a guitar properly and jump around. But too many people got in the way.

Twice Flush had done his utmost to kill his enemy; twice he had failed. And why had he failed, he asked himself? Because he loved Miss Barrett. Looking up at her from under his eyebrows as she lay, severe and silent on the sofa, he knew that he must love her for ever. Things are not simple but complex. If he bit Mr. Browning he bit her too. Hatred is not hatred; hatred is also love.

XI I sang his name instead of song; Over and over I sang his name: Backward and forward I sang it along, With my sweetest notes, it was still the same! I sang it low, that the slave-girls near Might never guess, from what they could hear, That all the song was a name.

Because God's gifts put man's best dreams to shame.

الكتاب هو المعلم الذي يعلم بلا عصا و لا كلمات و لا غضب . . بلا خبز و لا ماء . . إن دنوت منه لا تجده نائماً وإن قصدته لا يختبىء منك . . وإن أخطأت لا يوبخك وإذا أظهرت جهلك لا يسخر منك

If thou must love me, let it be for naught except for love's sake only.

تغير وجه العالم في ظني..منذ سمعت خطو روحك أول مرة

I do not think I’m easy to define. I have a wandering mind. And I’m not anything that you think I am.

Scientific revolutions tend to emerge not from a sudden discovery but by asking better questions

The human brain is a cultural artifact. We don't load culture into a virgin brain like software loading into a computer; rather, culture helps to wire the brain. Brains then become carriers of culture, helping to create and perpetuate it.

What is art but the life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

The face of all the world is changed, I think, Since first I heard the footsteps of they soul Move still, oh, still, beside me...

I'm full of dust and guitars...

Men could not part us with their worldly jars, Nor the seas change us, nor the tempests bend; Our hands would touch for all the mountain-bars,-- And, heaven being rolled between us at the end, We should but vow the faster for the stars.

Instead think, “We have a disagreement,” and engage your curiosity to learn your friend’s perspective. Being curious about your friend’s experience is more important than being right.

If a man has learned to think, no matter what he may think about, he is always thinking of his own death. All philosophers were like that. And what truth can there be, if there is death?

...But the child's sob in silence curses deeper / Than the strong man in his wrath.

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

Golf: A plague invented by the Calvinistic Scots as a punishment for man's sins.

Love doesn't make the world go round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile!

Home, he murmured. It’s always the hardest to leave. ...because it gives you the biggest punch in the gut as you’re on your way off. All the memories come flooding in… and you’re left with a feeling of emptiness. You’re homesick before you’re even gone.

A cheerful genius suits the times, / And all true poets laugh unquenchably / Like Shakespeare and the gods.

Our Euripides the human, With his droppings of warm tears, and his touchings of things common Till they rose to meet the spheres.

The word “smile” doesn’t even exist in Latin or Ancient Greek. Smiling was an invention of the Middle Ages, and broad, toothy-mouthed smiles (with crinkling at the eyes, named the Duchenne smile by Ekman) became popular only in the eighteenth century as dentistry became more accessible and affordable.

I think that it is a great tragedy that a child can lose their mother, father, sister or brother, because you and I made a decision that getting loaded was more important than they are.

We couldn't bear to be apart. So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy." Unhappy? Why's that?" With her fingers, Naoko combed her hair back several times. She had taken her barrette off, which made the hair fall over her face when she dropped her head forward. Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last forever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside world. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course." I nodded. I wouldn't want you to think that we were using you, though. Kizuki really loved you. It just so happened that our connection with you was our first connection with anyone else. And it still is. Kizuki may be dead, but you are still my only link with the outside world. And just as Kizuki loved you, I love you. We never meant to hurt you, but we probably did; we probably ended up making a deep wound in your heart. It never occurred to us that anything like that might happen.

O Life, How oft we throw it off and think, — 'Enough, Enough of life in so much! — here's a cause For rupture; — herein we must break with Life, Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!' — And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes And think all ended. — Then, Life calls to us In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, Above us, or below us, or around . . Perhaps we name it Nature's voice, or Love's, Tricking ourselves, because we are more ashamed To own our compensations than our griefs: Still, Life's voice! — still, we make our peace with Life.

We could be on opposite sides of the world, but you would still be mine, as I am yours.

You can love the ocean, and many do, but don't expect it to love you back. It's too forever

I take her as God made her, and as men Must fail to unmake her, for my honoured wife.

I'm treading the backward path. Mostly, I just waste my time.

barrettes

Man's feeling of homelessness, of alienation has been intensified in the midst of a bureaucratized, impersonal mass society. He has come to feel himself an outsider even within his own human society. He is trebly alienated: a stranger to God, to nature, and to the gigantic social apparatus that supplies his material wants. But the worst and final form of alienation, toward which indeed the others tend, is man's alienation from his own self. In a society that requires of man only that he perform competently his own particular social function, man becomes identified with this function, and the rest of his being is allowed to subsist as best it can - usually to be dropped below the surface of consciousness and forgotten.

Use your intuition. Picture how things happen, why they happen. Don’t stick rigidly to first impressions, and once you’ve read the rule book, throw it away. Better still, burn the bastard.

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

The face of all the world is changed, I think Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul.

You’re amazing. Don’t ever, ever forget that, Cheyenne. And as long as I’m around, I don’t intend to let you forget.

No one asks to be born, to be black or white or any color in between and yet the identity a person is born into becomes the hardest to explain to the world

I am one who could have forgotten the plague, listening to Boccaccio's stories; and I am not ashamed of it.

The people of the United States will do anything for Latin America, except read about it.

I have no appetite,' she sighed. 'Not for food, not for work. Not for anything.' I looked at her and wondered what I am except appetite.

Shapes began to appear in the mist as it thickened. Clary saw herself and Simon as children, holding hands, crossing a street in Brooklyn,; she had barrettes in her hair and Simon was adorably rumpled, his glasses sliding off his nose. There they were again, throwing snowballs in Prospect Park; and at Luke's farmhouse, tanned from summer, hanging upside down from tree branches. She saw them in Java Jones, listening to Eric's terrible poetry, and on the back of a flying motorcycle as it crashed into a parking lot, with Jace there, looking at them, his eyes squinted against the sun. And there was Simon with Isabelle, his hands curved around her face, kissing her, and she could see Isabelle as Simon saw her: fragile and strong, and so, so beautiful. And there was Valentine's ship, Simon kneeling on Jace, blood on his mouth and shirt, and blood at Jace's throat, and there was the cell in Idris, and Hodge's weathered face, and Simon and Clary again, Clary etching the Mark of Cain onto his forehead. Maureen, and her blood on the floor, and her little pink hat, and the rooftop in Manhattan where Lilith had raised Sebastian, and Clary was passing him a gold ring across a table, and an Angel was rising out of a lake before him and he was kissing Isabelle...

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As Heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart and I .... In this abundant earth no doubt Is little room for things worn out: Disdain them, break them, throw them by! And if before the days grew rough We once were loved, used, - well enough, I think, we've fared, my heart and I.

I do go to hell. Every day. For you." And then he whirled around and stalked out of the library, leaving me trembling and confused, angry and hurt. But I didn't cry. I refused to cry another tear over Kyland Barrett.

The wisest word man reaches is the humblest he can speak.

Much of your strength as a woman can come from the resolve to replenish and fill your own well and essence first, before taking care of others.

A harmless life, she called a virtuous life, A quiet life, which was not life at all . . .

The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes.

I shall but love thee bitter after death

I begin to think that none are so bold as the timid, when they are fairly roused.

And trade is art, and art's philosophy, In Paris.

I AM the current curator of the black trunk and the stories it holds within.

Sometimes we're responsible for things not because they're our fault, but because we're the only ones who can change them.

We would worry less about what others think of us if we realized how seldom they do.

I want to feel again,” Lucas whispered, taking the last few steps that bridged the distance between them. “You make me feel something, and I need to feel again.” His long arms encircled her waist. -Lucas Bennett

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair...now could I but unloose my soul! We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room.

But one thing is certain: every day in America, thousands of people appear before a jury of their peers and hope they will be judged fairly, when in reality they are judged by human brains that always perceive the world from a self-interested point of view. To believe otherwise is a fiction that is not supported by the architecture of the brain.

Every time you make a commitment to your own self-care, self-love and self-respect and then follow through, you build trust in yourself.

You take far too many chances," she murmured. "And you don't take nearly enough. I propose to change that.

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.

The soul hath snatched up mine all faint and weak, And placed it by thee on a golden throne, -- And that I love (O soul, we must be meek!) Is by thee only, whom I love alone.

Rituals help us change modes.

I have observed over a long lifetime that mental stability is not all it's cracked up to be.

Good-bye Holmes. It… hasn’t really been a pleasure. But thank you for the information. Be careful to keep out of prison. Unless you want an upgrade to your current living conditions, then I wish you the best.

Life is smoke, plain and simple; we just fool ourselves that it’s otherwise. All it takes is one good gust and we float away and disappear, leaving behind only the scent of our passing in the form of memories.

Our words allow us to enter each other’s affective niches, even at extremely long distances. You can regulate your friend’s body budget (and he yours) even if you are an ocean apart—by phone or email or even just by thinking about one another.

My letters! all dead paper, mute and white! And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ... Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed As if God's future thundered on my past. This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

The voices may propel you to warble along, or to dance, they may inspire you to seduction or insurrection or inspection or merely to watching a little less television. The voices of Barrett Rude Jr. and the Subtle Distinctions lead nowhere, though, if not back to your own neighborhood. To the street where you live. To things you left behind. And that's what you need, what you needed all along.

It is rather when We gloriously forget ourselves, and plunge Soul-forward, headlong, into a book’s profound, Impassioned for its beauty and salt of truth— ’Tis then we get the right good from a book.

He’ll be successful, finally, this coming Sunday, at the modest ceremony to be held in the living room. It’s all so clear. Tyler will write a beautiful, meaningful song. Barrett will find a love that abides, and work that matters. And Liz. Liz will tire of boys, tire of her resolution to grow into a tough, colorful old woman who lives defiantly alone.

Your brain is not more evolved than a rat or lizard brain, just differently evolved.

Fear was a wonderful propellant, and such a strong exponent of survival, even at the cost of others. Civility, it seemed, was the first to perish in a disaster.

I love thee to the level of every day's Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.

...as the old saying goes: if you teach a man to fish, he will feed himself for a lifetime. But if you just give him a fishing pole, he’ll have to teach himself.

As you become your own advocate and your own steward, your life will beautifully transform.

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink, Was caught up into love, and taught the whole Of life in a new rhythm.

Say over again, and yet once over again, That thou dost love me...-toll The silver iterance!

Thou comest! all is said without a word.

Good aims not always make good books.

True knowledge comes only through suffering

If I was half the writer that you are, I would be a three foot poet.

You are continually cultivating your past as a means of controlling your future

Life is about having a laugh, positive thinking & looking after loved ones

I'll sing forever and never hear a word.

As much as we might like to break, we’re really only made to bend.

Meet your new alpha, bitch.

David Hume, in a moment of acute skepticism, felt panicky in the solitude of his study and had to go out and join his friends in the billiard room in order to be reassured that the external world was really there.

The heart doth recognise thee, Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet, Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete,—- Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.

Learn to win a lady's faith Nobly, as the thing is high; Bravely as for life and death - With a loyal gravity. Lead her from the festive boards, Point her to the starry skies, Guard her, by your truthful words, Pure from courtship's flatteries.

Some things in life could not be solved or even contemplated by a rational mind. Roger’s mind, however, had ceased being anywhere near rational about half a bottle of Grand Marnier ago.

... Such a scribe you pay and praise for putting life in stones, Fire into fog, making the past your world. There's plenty of 'How did you contrive to grasp The thread which led you through this labyrinth? How build such solid fabric out of air? How on so slight foundation found this tale, Biography, narrative?' or, in other words, How many lies did it require to make The portly truth you here present us with?

The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself sublimely helpless and impotent I had done living I thought Was ever life so like death before? My face was so close against the tombstones, that there seemed no room for tears.

..one true thing among all these paths is the need to tap a deep vein of connection between our own uncontrollable interior preoccupations and what we're most concerned about in the world around us. We write in response to that world; we write in response to what we read and learn; and in the end we write out of our deepest selves, the live, breathing, bleeding place where the picture form, and where it all begins.

The Troll was well over seven feet tall, and smelled of body odour and Germolene.

We exist within the question of God.

Italy/Is one thing, England one.

A good novel is the biography of an imaginary person--and when the biography is completed, the person is no longer imaginary; he is as real as his creator

There are no answers, just questions.

His answer was - not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of me - but simply that he loved me - he met argument with fact. He told me - that with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by, & that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman - that he loved now for the first time & the last.

The great chasm between the thing I say, & the thing I would say, wd be quite dispiriting to me, in spite even of such kindnesses as yours, if the desire did not master the despondency.

I love to read, but all through school I hated it when books were pulled apart and analyzed. Winnie-the-pooh as a political allegory, that sort of thing. It never really worked for me. There's a line in The Barretts of Wimpole Street - you know, the play - where Elizabeth Barrett is trying to work out the meaning of one of Robert Browning's poems, and she shows it to him, and he reads it and he tells her that when he wrote that poem, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant and now only God knows. And that's how I feel about studying English. Who knows what the writer was thinking, and why should it matter? I'd rather just read for enjoyment." 'The Winter Sea

The chances are that, being a woman, young, And pure, with such a pair of large, calm eyes, You write as well...and ill...upon the whole, As other women. If as well, what then? If even a little better,..still, what then? We want the Best in art now, or no art." (L144-149)

Twilight Surprise” poem: “The sky burns down, A rim of coals glowing gold and red, Limned with orange again And kissed with hints of pink. The clouds reflect tangerine and plum, Overshadowing the silent glory. Darkness and light, Balanced upon this equinox, Dance together like old lovers … … and beget beauty.

I only thought Of lying quiet there where I was thrown Like sea-weed on the rocks, and suffer her To prick me to a pattern with her pin, Fibre from fibre, delicate leaf from leaf, And dry out from my drowned anatomy The last sea-salt left in me.

And wilt thou have me fashion into speech The love I bear thee, finding words enough, And hold the torch out, while the winds are rough, Between our faces, to cast light on each? - I dropt it at thy feet. I cannot teach My hand to hold my spirits so far off From myself--me--that I should bring thee proof In words, of love hid in me out of reach. Nay, let the silence of my womanhood Commend my woman-love to thy belief, - Seeing that I stand unwon, however wooed, And rend the garment of my life, in brief, By a most dauntless, voiceless fortitude, Lest one touch of this heart convey its grief.

The simple fact is that evil preys on good, and today, good had a bad day. Which brings with it an acceptance of the other side of that argument, that tomorrow might be evil's turn for some rain. And that's called hope.

When you travel with your family, you may not get the volume of work done you would if you were alone, but you can still do something while recharging. If nothing else, you can gather your own thoughts, write down ideas, observe people around you, and reflect on experiences. Working doesn't always mean putting words on paper.

The critics say that epics have died out with Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods; I'll not believe it. I could never deem as Payne Knight did, that Homer's heroes measured twelve feet high. They were but men: -his Helen's hair turned grey like any plain Miss Smith's who wears a front; And Hector's infant whimpered at a plume as yours last Friday at a turkey-cock. All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes: every age, heroic in proportions, double faced, looks backward and before, expects a morn and claims an epos.

To a Vase "How do I break thee? Let me count the ways. I break thee if thou art at any height My paw can reach, when, smarting from some slight, I sulk, or have one of my crazy days. I break thee with an accidental graze Or twitch of tail, if I should take a fright. I break thee out of pure and simple spite The way I broke the jar of mayonnaise. I break thee if a bug upon thee sits. I break thee if I'm in a playful mood, And then I wrestle with the shiny bits. I break thee if I do not like my food. And if someone they shards together fits, I'll break thee once again when thou art glued.

Yet, love, mere love, is beautiful indeed And worthy of acceptation. Fire is bright, Let temple burn, or flax; an equal light Leaps in the flame from cedar-plank or weed: And love is fire. And when I say at need I love thee ... mark! ... I love thee -- in thy sight I stand transfigured, glorified aright, With conscience of the new rays that proceed Out of my face toward thine. There's nothing low In love, when love the lowest: meanest creatures Who love God, God accepts while loving so. And what I feel, across the inferior features Of what I am, doth flash itself, and show How that great work of Love enhances Nature's.

In a fascinating study, Barrett (1999) demonstrated that children as young as three years of age have a sophisticated cognitive understanding of predator-prey encounters. Children from both an industrialized culture and a traditional hunter-horticulturalist culture were able to spontaneously describe the flow of events in a predator-prey encounter in an ecologically accurate way. Moreover, they understood that after a lion kills a prey, the prey is no longer alive, can no longer eat, and can no longer run and that the dead state is permanent. This sophisticated understanding of death from encounters with predators appears to be developed by age three to four.

Simulations are your brain’s guesses of what’s happening in the world. In every waking moment, you’re faced with ambiguous, noisy information from your eyes, ears, nose, and other sensory organs. Your brain uses your past experiences to construct a hypothesis—the simulation—and compares it to the cacophony arriving from your senses. In this manner, simulation lets your brain impose meaning on the noise, selecting what’s relevant and ignoring the rest.

Why, conquering May prove as lordly and complete a thing In lifting upward, as in crushing low! And as a vanquished soldier yields his sword To one who lifts him from the bloody earth, Even so, Belovëd, I at last record, Here ends my strife. If thou invite me forth, I rise above abasement at the word. Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth!

If science could comprehend all phenomena so that eventually in a thoroughly rational society human beings became as predictable as cogs in a machine, then man, driven by this need to know and assert his freedom, would rise up and smash the machine. What the reformers of the Enlightenment, dreaming of a perfect organization of society, had overlooked, Dostoevski saw all too plainly with the novelist's eye: namely, that as modern society becomes more organized and hence more bureaucratized it piles up at its joints petty figures like that of the Underground Man, who beneath their nondescript surface are monsters of frustration and resentment.

This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here.

Your body-budgeting regions can therefore trick your brain into believing that there is tissue damage, regardless of what is happening in your body. So, when you’re feeling unpleasant, your joints and muscles might hurt more, or you could develop a stomachache. When your body budget’s not in shape, meaning your interoceptive predictions are miscalibrated, your back might hurt more, or your headache might pound harder—not because you have tissue damage but because your nerves are talking back and forth. This is not imaginary pain. It is real.

I’ve said several times that the brain acts like a scientist. It forms hypotheses through prediction and tests them against the “data” of sensory input. It corrects its predictions by way of prediction error, like a scientist adjusts his or her hypotheses in the face of contrary evidence. When the brain’s predictions match the sensory input, this constitutes a model of the world in that instant, just like a scientist judges that a correct hypothesis is the path to scientific certainty.

Barret thinks- he thinks, briefly- of turning around and leaving the park; of being, this time, the vanisher, the man who leaves you wondering, who offers no explanation, not even the sour satisfaction of a real fight; who simply drifts away, because (it seems) there's affection and there's sex but there's no urgency, no little hooks clasping little eyes; no binding, no dogged devotions, no prayers for mercy, not when mercy can be so easily self-administered. What would it be like, Barrett wonders, to be the other, the man who's had the modest portion he thinks of as enough, who slips away before the mess sets in, before he's available to accusation and recrimination, before the authorities start demanding of him When, and Why, and With Whom

But evolution has provided the human mind with the ability to create another kind of real, one that is completely dependent on human observers. From changes in air pressure, we construct sounds. From wavelengths of light, we construct colors. From baked goods, we construct cupcakes and muffins that are indistinguishable except by name (chapter 2). Just get a couple of people to agree that something is real and give it a name, and they create reality. All humans with a normally functioning brain have the potential for this little bit of magic, and we use it all the time.

Emotions are not reactions to the world. You are not a passive receiver of sensory input but an active constructor of your emotions. From sensory input and past experience, your brain constructs meaning and prescribes action. If you didn’t have concepts that represent your past experience, all your sensory inputs would just be noise. You wouldn’t know what the sensations are, what caused them, nor how to behave to deal with them. With concepts, your

I tell you hopeless grief is passionless, That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy dead in silence like to death— Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet; If it could weep, it could arise and go.

Brian Wilson went to bed for three years. Jean-Michel Basquiat would spend all day in bed. Monica Ali, Charles Bukowski, Marcel Proust, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tracey Emin, Emily Dickinson, Edith Sitwell, Frida Kahlo, William Wordsworth, René Descartes, Mark Twain, Henri Matisse, Kathy Acker, Derek Jarman and Patti Smith all worked or work from bed and they’re productive people. (Am I protesting too much?) Humans take to their beds for all sorts of reasons: because they’re overwhelmed by life, need to rest, think, recover from illness and trauma, because they’re cold, lonely, scared, depressed – sometimes I lie in bed for weeks with a puddle of depression in my sternum – to work, even to protest (Emily Dickinson, John and Yoko). Polar bears spend six months of the year sleeping, dormice too. Half their lives are spent asleep, no one calls them lazy. There’s a region in the South of France, near the Alps, where whole villages used to sleep through the seven months of winter – I might be descended from them. And in 1900, it was recorded that peasants from Pskov in northwest Russia would fall into a deep winter sleep called lotska for half the year: ‘for six whole months out of the twelve to be in the state of Nirvana longed for by Eastern sages, free from the stress of life, from the need to labour, from the multitudinous burdens, anxieties, and vexations of existence’.‡ Even when I’m well I like to lie in bed and think. It’s as if

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforth in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore-- Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

When you categorize something as “Not About Me,” it exits your affective niche and has less impact on your body budget. Similarly, when you are successful and feel proud, honored, or gratified, take a step back and remember that these pleasant emotions are entirely the result of social reality, reinforcing your fictional self. Celebrate your achievements but don’t let them become golden handcuffs. A little composure goes a long way.

Barrett said that when we’re dehydrated, we don’t necessarily feel thirsty—we feel exhausted. When we have something odd happening in our stomach, our body doesn’t quite know if we have a menstrual cramp or a stomachache or if we need to poop. We might not even be aware for a long period of time that our stomach hurts. And this isn’t unique to people with PTSD. It’s normal, everyday bodily dissociation that we all suffer from. If we find ourselves in a shitty mood, we might not necessarily be mad about a certain trigger. We could just be running at a metabolic deficit. Our body might be screaming “I NEED FUNYUNS” while we project our hangriness onto, say, this poor sweaty schmuck who’s breathing too loud in the elevator. But Barrett said that PTSD does make these inclinations worse. It affects a variety of systems in the body, throwing them all out of whack. Our hearts might beat faster. Our lungs might pump harder. Our body budget can get tipped off-balance more easily. And when it does, our reactions to these deficits can feel outsized. “Make sure that you get enough sleep, make sure you exercise, make sure that you eat in a healthful way,” she told me when I asked her what I could do to be a better person. When I countered that that didn’t seem like enough, she kindly offered, “You know, all you can do is take as much responsibility as you can. And sometimes it’s the attempt that matters, you know, more than the success.” Then she chuckled at herself. “That’s a very Jewish mother response!” So, first step of hacking my brain: sustaining it with enough oxygen and nutrients

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvèd point,---what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented? Think! In mounting higher, The angels would press on us and aspire To drop some golden orb of perfect song Into our deep, dear silence. Let us stay Rather on earth, Belovèd,---where the unfit Contrarious moods of men recoil away And isolate pure spirits, and permit A place to stand and love in for a day, With darkness and the death-hour rounding it.

I thought once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, Who each one in a gracious hand appears To bear a gift for mortals, old or young; And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware, So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair; And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,-- Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there, The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

Love is not about romance or passion. Love is about a state of grace. You experience it when you accept the absolute truth of the other person, both the cruel and the divine, and they accept these things in you, and you find that you still long to share a life with them. To know the worst in another and still want them with all your soul. To know that they feel the same way. It is a sense of security and power. And once you have arrived at this, the richness of romance and passion that appears is not blinding. Instead, it is invulnerable and forever.

Weirdly, D&D didn't encourage my leanings towards trying magic of my own at all. In fact, it frustrated them. Even the most pompous and ambitious historical magicians, from the Zaroastrian Magi through John Dee, Francis Barrett and Aleister Crowley, never claimed to be able to throw fireballs or lightning bolts like D&D wizards can. So D&D was never going to feed the fantasies of practising magic in the real world. That is all about gaining secret knowledge, a higher level of perception or inflicting misfortune or a boon on someone rather than causing a poisonous cloud of vapor to pour from your fingers (Cloudkill, deadly to creatures with less than 5 hit dice, for those who are interested). The game, as we played it, just doesn't support the occult idea of magic. In fact, it might even be argued that, by giving such a powerful prop to my imagination, D&D stopped me from going deeper into the occult in real life. I certainly had all the qualifications—bullied power-hungry twerp with no discernable skill in conventional fields and no immediate hope of a girlfriend who wasn't mentally ill. It's amazing I'm not out sacrificing goats to this day.

I think of thee!—-my thoughts do twine and bud About thee, as wild vines, about a tree, Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s nought to see Except the straggling green which hides the wood. Yet, O my palm-tree, be it understood I will not have my thoughts instead of thee Who art dearer, better! Rather, instantly Renew thy presence; as a strong tree should, Rustle thy boughs and set thy trunk all bare, And let these bands of greenery which insphere thee Drop heavily down,—-burst, shattered, everywhere! Because, in this deep joy to see and hear thee And breathe within thy shadow a new air, I do not think of thee—-I am too near thee.

Not only do I not know what I believe, but also I cannot know for sure that I believe. How can I define precisely what my attitude is toward something it cannot conceivably grasp? Can I be said to be in the relation of "belief," in any usual sense of that term, toward something that I cheerfully and readily acknowledge to be absolutely incomprehensible to me? (...) No man can be sure that he is in faith; and we can say of no man with certainty that he has or does not have faith. (...) Not only does faith always carry its opposite uncertainty within itself, but also this faith is never a static condition that is -had-, but a movement toward... And toward what? In the nature of the case we cannot state this "what." We cannot make a flat assertion about our faith like a simple assertion that we have blue eyes or are six feet tall. More than this, the affirmation of our faith can never be made in the simple indicative mood at all. The statement "I believe" can only be uttered as a prayer.

This is another basis for my frequent claim, “You are an architect of your experience.” You are indeed partly responsible for your actions, even so-called emotional reactions that you experience as out of your control. It is your responsibility to learn concepts that, through prediction, steer you away from harmful actions. You also bear some responsibility for others, because your actions shape other people’s concepts and behaviors, creating the environment that turns genes on and off to wire their brains, including the brains of the next generation. Social reality implies that we are all partly responsible for one another’s behavior, not in a fluffy, let’s-all-blame-society sort of way, but a very real brain-wiring way.

I think I was enchanted When first a sombre Girl — I read that Foreign Lady** — The Dark — felt beautiful — And whether it was noon at night — Or only Heaven — at Noon — For very Lunacy of Light I had not power to tell — The Bees — became as Butterflies — The Butterflies — as Swans — Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass — And just the meanest Tunes That Nature murmured to herself To keep herself in Cheer — I took for Giants — practising Titanic Opera — The Days — to Mighty Metres stept — The Homeliest — adorned As if unto a Jubilee 'Twere suddenly confirmed — I could not have defined the change — Conversion of the Mind Like Sanctifying in the Soul — Is witnessed — not explained — 'Twas a Divine Insanity — The Danger to be Sane Should I again experience — 'Tis Antidote to turn — To Tomes of solid Witchcraft — Magicians be asleep — But Magic — hath an Element Like Deity — to keep —

Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically "meaningful," while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day and have their dealings with other men is consigned to the outer darkness of the "meaningless." Positivism has simply accepted the fractured being of modern man and erected a philosophy to intensify it. Existentialism, whether successfully or not, has attempted instead to gather all the elements of human reality into a total picture of man. Positivist man and Existentialist man are no doubt offspring of the same parent epoch, but, somewhat as Cain and Abel were, the brothers are divided unalterably by temperament and the initial choice they make of their own being.

It seemed as if nothing were to break that tie — as if the years were merely to compact and cement it; and as if those years were to be all the years of their natural lives. Eighteen-forty-two turned into eighteen-forty-three; eighteen-forty-three into eighteen- forty-four; eighteen-forty-four into eighteen-forty-five. Flush was no longer a puppy; he was a dog of four or five; he was a dog in the full prime of life — and still Miss Barrett lay on her sofa in Wimpole Street and still Flush lay on the sofa at her feet. Miss Barrett’s life was the life of “a bird in its cage.” She sometimes kept the house for weeks at a time, and when she left it, it was only for an hour or two, to drive to a shop in a carriage, or to be wheeled to Regent’s Park in a bath-chair. The Barretts never left London. Mr. Barrett, the seven brothers, the two sisters, the butler, Wilson and the maids, Catiline, Folly, Miss Barrett and Flush all went on living at 50 Wimpole Street, eating in the dining-room, sleeping in the bedrooms, smoking in the study, cooking in the kitchen, carrying hot-water cans and emptying the slops from January to December. The chair-covers became slightly soiled; the carpets slightly worn; coal dust, mud, soot, fog, vapours of cigar smoke and wine and meat accumulated in crevices, in cracks, in fabrics, on the tops of picture-frames, in the scrolls of carvings. And the ivy that hung over Miss Barrett’s bedroom window flourished; its green curtain became thicker and thicker, and in summer the nasturtiums and the scarlet runners rioted together in the window-box. But one night early in January 1845 the postman knocked. Letters fell into the box as usual. Wilson went downstairs to fetch the letters as usual. Everything was as usual — every night the postman knocked, every night Wilson fetched the letters, every night there was a letter for Miss Barrett. But tonight the letter was not the same letter; it was a different letter. Flush saw that, even before the envelope was broken. He knew it from the way that Miss Barrett took it; turned it; looked at the vigorous, jagged writing of her name.

Today, many of us feel like we live in a highly polarized world, where people with opposing opinions cannot even be civil to each other. If you want things to be different, I offer you a challenge. Pick a controversial political issue that you feel strongly about. […] Spend five minutes per day deliberately considering the issue from the perspective of those you disagree with, not to have an argument with them in your head, but to understand how someone who’s just as smart as you can believe the opposite of what you do. I’m not asking you to change your mind. I’m also not saying this challenge is easy. It requires a withdrawal from your body budget, and it might feel pretty unpleasant or even pointless. But when you try, really try, to embody someone else’s point of view, you can change your future predictions about the people who hold those different views. If you can honestly say, “I absolutely disagree with those people, but I can understand why they believe what they do”, you’re one step closer to a less polarized world. That is not magical liberal academic rubbish. It’s a strategy that comes from basic science about your predicting brain.