Byron Love Quotes

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more

In secret we met - In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? - With silence and tears

There are four questions of value in life... What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living "for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is same. Only love.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.

You gave me the key to your heart, my love, then why did you make me knock?

Friendship is love without wings.

I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.

As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

I love not man the less, but nature more

The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole — And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!

Our parents, our children, our spouses, and our friends will continue to press every button we have, until we realize what it is that we don't want to know about ourselves, yet. They will point us to our freedom every time.

Absence - that common cure of love.

When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

Like the measles, love is most dangerous when it comes late in life.

In her first passion, a woman loves her lover, in all the others all she loves is love.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it.

The miracle of love comes to you in the presence of the uninterpreted moment. If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life.

You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer".

If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.

Hate is by far the greatest pleasure; men love in haste, but detest in leisure.

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest, and heals but to wear That which disfigures it.

I have great hopes that we shall love each other all our lives as much as if we had never married at all.

She was like me in lineaments-- her eyes Her hair, her features, all, to the very tone Even of her voice, they said were like to mine; But soften'd all, and temper'd into beauty; She had the same lone thoughts and wanderings, The quest of hidden knowledge, and a mind To comprehend the universe: nor these Alone, but with them gentler powers than mine, Pity, and smiles, and tears-- which I had not; And tenderness-- but that I had for her; Humility-- and that I never had. Her faults were mine-- her virtues were her own-- I loved her, and destroy'd her!

We'll Go No More A-roving So, we'll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart still be as loving, And the moon still be as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.

You are your only hope, because we're not changing until you do. Our job is to keep coming at you, as hard as we can, with everything that angers, upsets, or repulses you, until you understand. We love you that much, whether we're aware of it or not. The whole world is about you.

Here’s a sigh to those who love me, And a smile to those who hate; And whatever sky’s above me, Here’s a heart for every fate.

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow’d to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, Had half impaired the nameless grace Which waves in every raven tress, Or softly lightens o’er her face; Where thoughts serenely sweet express How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. And on that cheek, and o’er that brow, So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, A mind at peace with all A heart whose love is innocent!

We don't attach to people or to things; we attach to uninvestigated concepts that we believe to tbe true in the moment.

How do you react when you think you need people's love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon? In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because they're loving a facade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have.

I have not loved the world, nor the world me, but let us part fair foes; I do believe, though I have found them not, that there may be words which are things, hopes which will not deceive, and virtues which are merciful, or weave snares for the failing: I would also deem o'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; that two, or one, are almost what they seem, that goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.

They say that Hope is happiness But genuine Love must prize the past; And Mem'ry wakes the thoughts that bless: They rose first -- they set the last. And all that mem'ry loves the most Was once our only hope to be: And all that hope adored and lost Hath melted into memory. Alas! It is delusion all-- The future cheats us from afar: Nor can we be what we recall, Nor dare we think on what we are.

When We Two Parted When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame. They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well: Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell. In secret we met— In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears.

In my experience, we don't make thoughts appear, they just appear. One day, I noticed that their appearance just wasn't personal. Noticing that really makes it simpler to inquire.

Isn’t it marvelous to discover that you’re the one you’ve been waiting for? That you are your own freedom?

I love what I think, and I'm never tempted to believe it.

Whatever it takes for you to find your freedom, that's what you've lived.

whom the god loves dies young

Yet I did love thee to the last, As ferverently as thou, Who didst not change through all the past, And canst not alter now.

We’re all looking for love, in our confusion, until we find our way back to the realization that love is what we already are.

There are two Souls, whose equal flow In gentle stream so calmly run, That when they part—they part?—ah no! They cannot part—those Souls are One.

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.

We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood.” “That’s romantic?” I had to smile. “Romantic with a capital ‘R.’ You know, like Byron and Coleridge.” He gave a mock shudder. “Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit.” I snorted. “I didn’t have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover.” “Get out.” “Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous.” “That girl is . . .” “My best friend,” I filled in sternly. “I was only going to say she’s unique.

So odd a pair, she and he. A duet in code and electron. Age and youth and cynicism and hope. He is quicker than her - more learned by far. But she. She is unafraid. Too young to know failure and the fear it brings. She takes him places he would not have explored by himself. She is catalyst. She is chaos. I can see why he loves her.

LUCIFER: I pity thee who lovest what must perish. CAIN: And I thee who lov'st nothing

It is easy to be swept away by some overwhelming feeling, so it’s helpful to remember that any stressful feeling is like a compassionate alarm clock that says, “You’re caught in the dream.” Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, “Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking right now. You’re living in a story that isn’t true for you.

I often say that if I had a prayer, it would be this: God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen. I

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you.

Am I in love? Absolutely. I’m in love with ancient philosophers, foreign painters, classic authors, and musicians who have died long ago. I’m a passionate lover. I fawn over these people. I have given them my heart and my soul. The trouble is, I’m unable to love anyone tangible. I have sacrificed a physical bond, for a metaphysical relationship. I am the ultimate idealistic lover.

Let us have wine and woman, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda water the day after. Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion: But to return--Get very drunk; and when You wake with head-ache, you shall see what then.

Even innocence itself has many a wile, And will not dare to trust itself with truth, And love is taught hypocrisy from youth.

There’s only one thing harder than accepting this, and that is not accepting it.

Thinking that people are supposed to do or be anything other than what they are is like saying that the tree over there should be the sky. I investigated that and found freedom.

Above or Love, Hope, Hate or Fear, It lives all passionless and pure: An age shall fleet like earthly year; Its years in moments shall endure. Away, away, without a wing, O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly; A nameless and eternal thing, Forgetting what it was to die.

Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be caused by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That's not a possibility. It's only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I'm the one who's hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don't have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I'm the one who can stop hurting me. It's within my power. What we are doing with inquiry is meeting our thoughts with some simple understanding, finally. Pain, anger, and frustration will let us know when it's time to inquire. We either believe what we think or we question it: there's no other choice. Questioning our thoughts is the kinder way. Inquiry always leaves us as more loving human beings.

So we'll go no more a-roving so late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, and the moon be still as bright.

I am a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don’t feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

If you think he's supposed to be different from what he is, you don't love him. In that moment you love who he's going to be when you're through manipulating him. He is a throwaway until he matches your image of him.

Love in full life and length, not love ideal, No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name, But something better still, so very real...

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart, 'Tis woman's whole existence.

I've always been just me, but I was the last to know that it was all right.

But who, alas! can love, and then be wise?

Woman! experience might have told me, That all must love thee who behold thee: Surely experience might have taught Thy firmest promises are nought: But, placed in all thy charms before me, All I forget, but to adore thee.

A lovely young Italian girl passed by. Byron tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion. Dr Greysteel could only suppose that he was treating the young woman to the Byronic profile and the Byronic expression.

A woman who gives any advantage to a man may expect a lover -- but will sooner or later find a tyrant.

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we’re living with now.

Fine,' Aria conceded. 'But *I'll* carry her.' She grabbed the baby seeat from the back. A smell of baby powder wafted up to greet her, bringing a lump in her throat. Her father Byron, and his girlfriend, Meredith, had just had a baby, and she loved Lola with all her heart. If she looked too long at this baby, she might love her just as much.

Alas! They were so young, so beautiful, so lonely, loving, helpless, and the hour was that in which the heart is always full, annd, having o'er itself no further power, prompts deeds eternity can not annul.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires,-'tis to be forgiven, That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.

I don’t know what’s best for me or you or the world. I don’t try to impose my will on you or on anyone else. I don’t want to change you or improve you or convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That’s true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.

When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too; In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, / But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.

I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love?

Because in the end, the measure of a well-lived life is not titles or riches. It’s not even measured by the people we please, especially at the cost of our own souls. No, the true measure of a well-lived life is how well we love…and how well we are loved in return.

Oh! Many a time and oft had Harold loved, or dream'd he'd loved since Rapture is a dream.

After many trials the God and his love end happily—tho' not all remember this conclusion—which is less memorable than the moment when everything was lost. Happy endings are all alike; disasters may be unique.

I love not rushing the process. Mind doesn’t shift until it does, and when it does shift, it’s right on time, not one second too late or too soon. People are just like seeds waiting to sprout. We can’t be pushed ahead of our own understanding. To

76. David Hume – Treatise on Human Nature; Essays Moral and Political; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 77. Jean-Jacques Rousseau – On the Origin of Inequality; On the Political Economy; Emile – or, On Education, The Social Contract 78. Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy; A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy 79. Adam Smith – The Theory of Moral Sentiments; The Wealth of Nations 80. Immanuel Kant – Critique of Pure Reason; Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals; Critique of Practical Reason; The Science of Right; Critique of Judgment; Perpetual Peace 81. Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; Autobiography 82. James Boswell – Journal; Life of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D. 83. Antoine Laurent Lavoisier – Traité Élémentaire de Chimie (Elements of Chemistry) 84. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison – Federalist Papers 85. Jeremy Bentham – Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation; Theory of Fictions 86. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – Faust; Poetry and Truth 87. Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier – Analytical Theory of Heat 88. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Phenomenology of Spirit; Philosophy of Right; Lectures on the Philosophy of History 89. William Wordsworth – Poems 90. Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Poems; Biographia Literaria 91. Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice; Emma 92. Carl von Clausewitz – On War 93. Stendhal – The Red and the Black; The Charterhouse of Parma; On Love 94. Lord Byron – Don Juan 95. Arthur Schopenhauer – Studies in Pessimism 96. Michael Faraday – Chemical History of a Candle; Experimental Researches in Electricity 97. Charles Lyell – Principles of Geology 98. Auguste Comte – The Positive Philosophy 99. Honoré de Balzac – Père Goriot; Eugenie Grandet 100. Ralph Waldo Emerson – Representative Men; Essays; Journal 101. Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Scarlet Letter 102. Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America 103. John Stuart Mill – A System of Logic; On Liberty; Representative Government; Utilitarianism; The Subjection of Women; Autobiography 104. Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species; The Descent of Man; Autobiography 105. Charles Dickens – Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Hard Times 106. Claude Bernard – Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine 107. Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience; Walden 108. Karl Marx – Capital; Communist Manifesto 109. George Eliot – Adam Bede; Middlemarch 110. Herman Melville – Moby-Dick; Billy Budd 111. Fyodor Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment; The Idiot; The Brothers Karamazov 112. Gustave Flaubert – Madame Bovary; Three Stories 113. Henrik Ibsen – Plays 114. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace; Anna Karenina; What is Art?; Twenty-Three Tales 115. Mark Twain – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Mysterious Stranger 116. William James – The Principles of Psychology; The Varieties of Religious Experience; Pragmatism; Essays in Radical Empiricism 117. Henry James – The American; The Ambassadors 118. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morals;The Will to Power 119. Jules Henri Poincaré – Science and Hypothesis; Science and Method 120. Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis; Civilization and Its Discontents; New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis 121. George Bernard Shaw – Plays and Prefaces

Sadness is always a sign that you’re believing a stressful thought that isn’t true for you. It’s a constriction, and it feels bad. Conventional wisdom says differently, but the truth is that sadness isn’t rational, it isn’t a natural response, and it can’t ever help you. It just indicates the loss of reality, the loss of the awareness of love. Sadness is the war with what is. It’s a tantrum. You can experience it only when you’re arguing with God. When the mind is clear, there isn’t any sadness. There can’t be.

Thoughts are like the breeze or the leaves on the trees or the raindrops falling. They appear like that, and through inquiry we can make friends with them. Would you argue with a raindrop? Raindrops aren’t personal, and neither are thoughts. Once a painful concept is met with understanding, the next time it appears you may find it interesting. What used to be the nightmare is now just interesting. The next time it appears, you may find it funny. The next time, you may not even notice it. This is the power of loving what is.

...then he looked at my T-shirt and saw Byron's picture on it and he quoted "She Walks in Beauty," which is like my favorite poem next to the one by Baudelaire about his girlfriend being nothing but worm food, except that Lily called that one first because Baudelaire is her fave poet and so she got the shirt with him on it, even though Byron is way more scrumptious and I would do him on sharp gravel if I had the chance. --from The Chronicles of Abby Normal

He thought about himself, and the whole Earth, Of Man the wonderful, and of the Stars, And how the deuce they ever could have birth; And then he thought of Earthquakes, and of Wars, How many miles the Moon might have in girth, Of Air-balloons, and of the many bars To perfect Knowledge of the boundless Skies; And then he thought of Donna Julia's eyes.

Remember thee! remember thee! Till Lethe quench life's burning stream Remorse and shame shall cling to thee, And haunt thee like a feverish dream! Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not. Thy husband too shall think of thee: By neither shalt thou be forgot, Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

The reason I love rules and plans and religions is that people feel safe in them for a while. And, personally, I don't have any rules. I don't need them. There's a sense of order that goes on all the time as things move and change, and I am that harmony, and so are you. Not knowing is the only way to understand... Meanings, rules, the whole world of right and wrong, are secondary at best. I understand how some people think they need to live by rules...It's very frightening for them to watch the world unfolding in apparent chaos and not realize that the chaos itself is God in his infinite intelligence.

The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has left Shall never part from mine, Till happier hours restore the gift Untainted back to thine. Thy parting glance, which fondly beams, An equal love may see: The tear that from thine eyelid streams Can weep no change in me. I ask no pledge to make me blest In gazing when alone; Nor one memorial for a breast, Whose thoughts are all thine own. Nor need I write --- to tell the tale My pen were doubly weak: Oh ! what can idle words avail, Unless the heart could speak ? By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart, no longer free, Must bear the love it cannot show, And silent ache for thee.

He loved her in a subtle kind of way. It wasn’t the kind of love you see in movies, with swelling music and giant gestures and running through the streets to catch a departing train. It wasn’t the kind of love that Byron or Shakespeare wrote about, with flowery language and hyperbole and iambic pentameter. It was still and deep, like water that you might mistake for shallow if you just watched the surface. It was entirely his, not dependent on her own feelings for him, and it would still be there whether she, or him, or everyone else on the world disappeared. It was a subtle kind of love, but it was true.

My Dearest Theresa, I have read this book in your garden, my love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them, which is the reason I have not scrawled them in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book that was yours, he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most so in yours, Amor mio, is comprised my existence here and thereafter. I feel I exist here, and I feel that I shall exist hereafter – to what purpose you will decide; my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, eighteen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state. But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me, at least, you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation in all events. But I more than love you, and cannot cease to love you. Think of me, sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it.

I loved - but those I loved are gone; Had friends - my early friends are fled: How cheerless feels the heart alone When all its former hopes are dead! Though gay companions o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill; Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, The heart - the heart - is lonely still.

Like most guys, I had bought into the stereotype that all feminists were white, lesbian, unattractive male bashers who hated all men. But after reading the work of these black feminists, I realized that this was far from the truth. After digging into their work, I came to really respect the intelligence, courage and honesty of these women. Feminists did not hate men. In fact, they loved men. But just as my father had silenced my mother during their arguments to avoid hearing her gripes, men silenced feminists by belittling them in order to dodge hearing the truth about who we are.

Tis long since I beheld that eye Which gave me bliss or misery; And I have striven, but in vain, Never to think of it again: For though I fly from Albion, I still can only love but one. As some lone bird, without a mate, My weary heart is desolate; I look around, and cannot trace One friendly smile or welcome face, And ev'n in crowds am still alone, Because I cannot love but one. And I will cross the whitening foam, And I will seek a foreign home; Till I forget a false fair face, I ne'er shall find a resting-place; My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, But ever love, and love but one.

There is an order Of mortals on the earth, who do become Old in their youth, and die ere middle age, Without the violence of warlike death; Some perishing of pleasure, some of study, Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness, Some of disease, and some insanity, And some of wither’d or of broken hearts; For this last is a malady which slays More than are number’d in the lists of Fate, Taking all shapes and bearing many names.

I have not written for their pleasure... I have never flattered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither will I make "Ladies' books" al dilettar le femine e la plebe. I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many sweet motives, but not for their "sweet voices." I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I neither love ye, nor fear ye; and though I buy with ye and sell with ye, I will neither eat with ye, drink with ye, nor pray with ye.

T is sweet to win, no matter how, one's laurels, By blood or ink; 't is sweet to put an end To strife; 't is sometimes sweet to have our quarrels, Particularly with a tiresome friend: Sweet is old wine in bottles, ale in barrels; Dear is the helpless creature we defend Against the world; and dear the schoolboy spot We ne'er forget, though there we are forgot. But sweeter still than this, than these, than all, Is first and passionate Love—it stands alone, Like Adam's recollection of his fall; The Tree of Knowledge has been plucked—all 's known— And Life yields nothing further to recall Worthy of this ambrosial sin, so shown, No doubt in fable, as the unforgiven Fire which Prometheus filched for us from Heaven.

The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action. To love someone whom one will never see again is to give a cry of exultation as one perishes in the flames of passion. One lives only in and for the moment, in order to achieve "the brief and vivid union of a tempestuous heart united to the tempest" (lermontov). The threat of mortality which hangs over us makes everything abortive. Only the cry of anguish can bring us to life; exaltation takes the place of truth. To this extent the apocalypse becomes an absolute value in which everything is confounded—love and death, conscience and culpability. In a chaotic universe no other life exists but that of the abyss where, according to Alfred Le Poittevin, human beings come "trembling with rage and exulting in their crimes" to curse the Creator.

I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war.

I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did. On the other hand, novels which are works of the imagination, though not of a very high order, have been for years a wonderful relief and pleasure to me, and I often bless all novelists. A surprising number have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily–against which a law ought to be passed. A novel, according to my taste, does not come into the first class unless it contains some person whom one can thoroughly love, and if a pretty woman all the better. This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.

Hanna started to laugh uncontrollably. "Now," Bobby told her, "say, 'I'm a dying cockroach.'" Again Hanna stopped and rolled over. "Do what?" she asked. "You were doing good, Girl. Don't stop. Please don't stop. Quick, get back on your back." It was his patience with her that finally convinced her to go on with the foolishness. "That's it. Wiggle. Wiggle. Now, say, 'I'm a dying Cockroach.'" "I cant." "Yes you can. Say it. Say it." Hanna started laughing so hard she could not stop. "I'm a dying cockroach." she managed to say. "I'm a dying cockroach, " Bobby repeated. "Say it again. Say it over and over. I'm a dying cockroach, I'm a dying cockroach. Say it." "I'm a dying cockroach," Hanna began. "Keep wiggling. Wiggle. Wiggle. I'm a dying cockroach." "I'm a dying cockroach. I'm a dying fucking cockroach!" Bobby spent nearly half an hour putting Hanna through the exercise he had experienced in the Marine Corps. He was satisfied when finally she began to scream uncontrollably as she flailed about the floor hysterically in absolute absurdity. Tears were pouring over her face. It was then that Bobby fell over her and began to hug and hold her and kiss her cheeks. "You did it!" Girl, you did it. See?" After she came back to her senses and calmed down, Bobby explained why he put her through the ordeal. "How do you feel?" he asked her. Hanna smiled and said. "Weird. I made a fucking fool of myself." "Great," said Bobby. "That was the point. See, you got outside yourself. You lost your ego." Hanna was starting to understand. "I did, didn't I? I let go. I honestly let go of everything. I didn't care. I didn't give a shit for nothing. It felt great. Shiiiitttt!" she screamed into her hands. "I'm a fucking dying cockroach. And I don't give a shit about nothing." "Anything," Byron said from the kitchen.

Love is what you are already. Love doesn’t seek anything. It’s already complete. It doesn’t want, doesn’t need, has no shoulds. It already has everything it wants, it already is everything it wants, just the way it wants it. So when I hear people say that they love someone and want to be loved in return, I know they’re not talking about love. They’re talking about something else. Sometimes you may seem to trade love for the stressful thought appearing in the moment. It’s a little trip out into illusion. Seeking love is how you lose the awareness of love. But you can only lose the awareness of it, not the state. That’s not an option, because love is what we all are. That’s immovable. When you investigate your stressful thinking and your mind becomes clear, love pours into your life, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Love joins everything, without condition. It doesn’t avoid the nightmare; it looks forward to it and then inquires. There is no way to join except to get free of your belief that you want something from your partner. That’s true joining. It’s like “Bingo! You just won the lottery!” If I want something from my partner, I simply ask. If he says no and I have a problem with that, I need to take a look at my thinking. Because I already have everything. We all do. That’s how I can sit here so comfortably: I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give. I don’t even want your freedom if you don’t. I don’t even want your peace. The truth that you experience is how I’m able to join with you. That’s how you touch me, and you touch me so intimately that it brings tears to my eyes. I’ve joined you, and you don’t have a choice. And I do this over and over and over, endlessly, effortlessly. It’s called making love. Love wouldn’t deny a breath. It wouldn’t deny a grain of sand or a speck of dust. It is totally in love with itself, and it delights in acknowledging itself through its own presence, in every way, without limit. It embraces it all, everything from the murderer and the rapist to the saint to the dog and cat. Love is so vast within itself that it will burn you up. It’s so vast that there’s nothing you can do with it. All you can do is be it.