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Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.
"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.
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Vladimir Nabokov
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I strongly believe that love is the answer and that it can mend even the deepest unseen wounds. Love can heal, love can console, love can strengthen, and yes, love can make change.
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Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
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How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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After a while, though, even the deepest sorrow faltered, even the most penetrating despair lost its scalpel edge.
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Richard Matheson (I Am Legend and Other Stories)
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As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.
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George MacDonald (Phantastes)
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The greatness comes not when things go always good for you. But the greatness comes when you're really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes. Because only if you've been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
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Richard M. Nixon
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He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
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Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
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When it’s quiet in my head like this, that’s when the voice doesn’t need to tell me how pathetic I am. I know it in the deepest part of me. When it’s quiet like this, that’s when I truly hate myself.
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Portia de Rossi (Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain)
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Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you mustn’t be frightened, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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I don't care about anything but you, and that's enough for the present. I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.
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Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
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It is the deepest of wrongs I am driven to write…. And losing you was one of them.
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Ranata Suzuki
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There’s something very freeing about losing the anchors that have always defined you. Frightening, sad, but exhilarating in a poignant way, as well. You’re free to float to the moon and evaporate or sink to the bottom of the deepest ocean. But you’re free to explore. Some people confuse that with drifting, I suppose. I like to think of it as growing.
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Deborah Smith (The Crossroads Cafe)
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Intensity-seeking is an enslavement of our own perpetuation. When we step out of the delirium of always seeking someone new, and meet the same old sad and lonely child within, our healing journey begins. Exhausting ourselves with novelty is a defense against our deepest pain, one that we cannot outrun. But once we stop and feel our losses, we can begin our healing journey and be the authentic, joyous person we were born to be.
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Alexandra Katehakis (Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence)
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to the glory of His name let me witness that in far away lands, in loneliness (deepest sometimes when it seems least so), in times of downheartedness and tiredness and sadness, always always He is near. He does comfort, if we let Him. Perhaps someone as weak and good-for-nothing as even I am may read this. Don't be afraid! Through all circumstances, outside, inside, He can keep me close.
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Amy Carmichael
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I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.
I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.
To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.
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Alexander Pushkin
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Your deepest scars tell the world of your greatest triumphs.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abysses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if we could only arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
”
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Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
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I remember a time when I was rejected for speaking my truth. The rejection hurt very much. I kept going over and over in my mind my motives for sharing my truth, and each time I realized that I had come from my heart. This person refuses to be my friend anymore. Over the years I have come to the feeling that Leo was able to access right away. This person is missing out on so much, for I am a loving person and a good devoted friend. I could have enriched this person's life. I no longer feel the personal pain of rejection, but the sadness for what my former friend is missing. I realized also from this experience that it is most important to speak one's deepest truth and to follow the calling of our heart. As we do so we are filled with an inner power and conviction to give the precious gift that we came to earth to give.
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Joyce Vissell
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Her voice is raw. She sings from the deepest cracks of her heart and her soul. When she closes her eyes, I know she has lost herself in the music. - Unrequited
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Alisa Mullen (Unrequited (Chosen, #3))
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Christ walked the path every mortal is called to walk so that he would know how to succor and strengthen us in our most difficult times. He knows the deepest and most personal burdens we carry. He knows the most public and poignant pains we bear. He descended below al such grief in order that he might lift us above it. There is no anguish or sorrow or sadness in life that he has not suffered in our behalf and borne away upon his own valiant and compassionate shoulders.
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Jeffrey R. Holland
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It is a strange thing how sometimes merely to talk honestly of God, even if it is only to articulate our feelings of separation and confusion, can bring peace to our spirits. You thought you were unhappy because this or that was off in your relationship, this or that was wrong in your job, but the reality is that your sadness stemmed from your aversion to, your stalwart avoidance of, God. The other problems may very well be true, and you will have to address them, but what you feel when releasing yourself to speak of the deepest needs of your spirit is the fact that no other needs could be spoken of outside of that context. You cannot work on the structure of your life if the ground of your being in unsure.
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Christian Wiman (My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer)
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As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love.
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George MacDonald (Phantastes)
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Hormones and neurotransmitters, the chemicals associated with human desire, fear, love, joy, and sadness, “are highly conserved across taxa,” Jennifer said. This means that whether you’re a person or a monkey, a bird or a turtle, an octopus or a clam, the physiological changes that accompany our deepest-felt emotions appear to be the same. Even a brainless scallop’s little heart beats faster when the mollusk is approached by a predator, just like yours or mine would do were we to be accosted by a mugger.
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Sy Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness)
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No one tape her deepest gifts through shame, guilt or anger. In fact, if you come from obligation, others smell the sadness in your blood and they will run the other way,
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Tama Kieves (Inspired and Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in your life's work)
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A moment of sadness is the best time for deepest reflection.
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Debasish Mridha
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I love you, little witch,” he says, his expression a touch sad. “More than all the world. That is my deepest truth, and it’s one I should have told you again and again as I once did.
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Laura Thalassa (Bewitched (Bewitched, #1))
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Sometimes I reach the highest heights of hope, at other times I reach the deepest of despair. Sometimes I am happy, at other times I am sad. At some point I am a believer, and at some other time an unbeliever. Sometimes I love, some other times I hate. That’s what it means to be human.
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Bangambiki Habyarimana (Pearls Of Eternity)
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Every time the women appear, Snowman is astonished all over again. They're every known colour from the deepest black to whitest white, they're various heights, but each one of them is admirably proportioned. Each is sound of tooth, smooth of skin. No ripples of fat around their waists, no bulges, no dimpled orange-skin cellulite on their thighs. No body hair, no bushiness. They look like retouched fashion photos, or ads for a high priced workout program.
Maybe this is the reason that these women arouse in Snowman not even the faintest stirrings of lust. It was the thumbprints of human imperfection that used to move him, the flaws in the design: the lopsided smile, the wart next to the navel, the mole, the bruise. These were the places he'd single out, putting his mouth on them. Was it consolation he'd had in mind, kissing the wound to make it better? There was always an element of melancholy involved in sex. After his indiscriminate adolescence he'd preferred sad women, delicate and breakable, women who'd been messed up and who needed him. He'd liked to comfort them, stroke them gently at first, reassure them. Make them happier, if only for a moment. Himself too, of course; that was the payoff. A grateful woman would go the extra mile. But these new women are neither lopsided nor sad: they're placid, like animated statues. They leave him chilled.
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Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam, #1))
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Is everything sad going to come untrue?' asks Sam[wise Gamgee]. Here we find, beyond all imagination, the deepest source of hope for the human story. For when the King is revealed, 'there will be no more night.' The Shadow will finally and forever be lifted from the earth. The Great War will be won.
This King, who brings strength and healing in His hands, will make everything sad come untrue.
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Joseph Loconte (A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18)
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To be severed and alienated within oneself also creates a sense of unreality. One may have an all-pervasive sense of never quite belonging, of being on the outside looking in. The condition of inner alienation and isolation is also pervaded by a low-grade chronic depression. This has to do with the sadness of losing one’s authentic self. Perhaps the deepest and most devastating aspect of neurotic shame is the rejection of the self by the self.
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John Bradshaw (Healing the Shame that Binds You)
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Not all bad things
Are big bad things
Not all sad things
Are big sad things
Sometimes they just come and go
Just visitors
And we don’t need to be
Afraid of them
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Meg Grehan (The Deepest Breath)
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There is always something peaceful and calming about the beach. The way it allows you to take in its beauty. It's like the ocean knows all your deepest, darkest secrets and thoughts. It doesn't judge you; instead, at that very moment all the pain and sadness you feel just drifts away along with the waves.
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E.L. Montes (Disastrous (Disastrous, #1))
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I want to thank everyone and everything,
every sunrise and every sunset,
every abundance and every beauty,
every tragedy and every triumph,
every sadness and every happiness,
every moment and every experience
that we call life deserves my deepest gratitude.
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Debasish Mridha
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I cannot be certain what I would have said. I knew that there was something sad and faintly distasteful about love's ending, particularly love that has never been fully realised. I might have hinted at that, but I doubt it. In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things." short story "Sister Imelda
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Edna O'Brien (Returning: Tales)
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I shall stay here as long as I may, I don't want to think — I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and that's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I've been for a long time. And I want you to be happy — not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.
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Henry James (The Portrait of a Lady)
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I am a shadow. I walk the wet roads under the dim light of the pale lamps, in the darkest hour of the cold dull nights.
I walk past the silent graveyard of the dead memories, towards the city of chaos plagued with gloom.
I do not exist, but in the eyes of the shattered souls. In the chapter of an old book. In the poem. In the smile of a wrecked and in the tear of a broken spirit.
Listen me in the songs told in the times long forgotten.
Search for me in the churchs and temples, bars and brothels,pitch black nights and the colorless days.
Dive down in your deepest part of your soul. And you will find my home.
I have many faces but I have no face of my own. I am a shadow.
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Foaad Ahmad
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No one taps her deepest gifts through shame, guilt or anger. In fact, if you come from obligation, others smell the sadness in your blood and they will run the other way,
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Tama Kieves (Inspired and Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in your life's work)
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There are various wounds to describe our hurts;the deepest one is the most painful.
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Munia Khan
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Deep, deepest inside his wounded heart. he felt the new pain, the pain which would now travel with him always.
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Iris Murdoch (The Green Knight)
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Nightmares do not interest her. She seeks only beauty, though sadness charms her, for often the deepest beauty can be found residing in sadness.
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Jackie Morris (The Unwinding)
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Unconditional Love is the strength to let the person you felt the deepest connection with walk away - the sadness is they had to
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Alan B. Jones
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Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
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Naomi Shihab Nye
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Love, the deepest red
with one fiery blow did behead
the slithering Satanic entities as it said
it would, even if instead, some particles remain
undead.
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Lavinia Valeriana (Adrift in Acheron)
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Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.
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Wilhelm von Humboldt (Humanist Without Portfolio: An Anthology of the writings of Wilhelm von Humboldt)
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My Dearest, Can you forgive me? In a world that I seldom understand, there are winds of destiny that blow when we least expect them. Sometimes they gust with the fury of a hurricane, sometimes they barely fan one’s cheek. But the winds cannot be denied, bringing as they often do a future that is impossible to ignore. You, my darling, are the wind that I did not anticipate, the wind that has gusted more strongly than I ever imagined possible. You are my destiny. I was wrong, so wrong, to ignore what was obvious, and I beg your forgiveness. Like a cautious traveler, I tried to protect myself from the wind and lost my soul instead. I was a fool to ignore my destiny, but even fools have feelings, and I’ve come to realize that you are the most important thing that I have in this world. I know I am not perfect. I’ve made more mistakes in the past few months than some make in a lifetime. I was wrong to deny what was obvious in my heart: that I can’t go on without you. You were right about everything. I tried to deny the things you were saying, even though I knew they were true. Like one who gazes only backward on a trip across the country, I ignored what lay ahead. I missed the beauty of a coming sunrise, the wonder of anticipation that makes life worthwhile. It was wrong of me to do that, a product of my confusion, and I wish I had come to understand that sooner. Now, though, with my gaze fixed toward the future, I see your face and hear your voice, certain that this is the path I must follow. It is my deepest wish that you give me one more chance. For the first few days after you left, I wanted to believe that I could go on as I always had. But I couldn’t. I knew in my heart that my life would never be the same again. I wanted you back, more than I imagined possible, yet whenever I conjured you up, I kept hearing your words in our last conversation. No matter how much I loved you, I knew it wasn’t going to be possible unless we—both of us—were sure I would devote myself fully to the path that lay ahead. I continued to be troubled by these thoughts until late last night when the answer finally came to me. Oh, I am sorry, so very sorry, that I ever hurt you. Maybe I’m too late now. I don’t know. I love you and always will. I am tired of being alone. I see children crying and laughing as they play in the sand, and I realize I want to have children with you. I am sick and sad without you. As I sit here in the kitchen, I am praying that you will let me come back to you, this time forever.
”
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Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
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I hope you have the courage to do the hard work. I hope you have the courage to sit down with your demons, to befriend them; to look them in the face and to not feel fear. I hope you have the courage to stop picking or numbing or avoiding the wounds within, and I hope you choose to heal them instead. I hope you have the courage to understand yourself, fundamentally — to open up the deepest, darkest parts of your mind, to unhinge your rib cage revealing the gritty parts of your soul, the parts no one else claps for, and I hope you have the courage to clean them out. To forgive yourself for what you had to do to kill your sadness. To forgive yourself for the ways in which you didn’t fight for
”
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Bianca Sparacino (A Gentle Reminder)
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I learned from that experience that sometimes we hurt people in our pursuit of happiness,’ he continued, now crossing over the boundary of the question. ‘And I do believe that sometimes that’s unavoidable. I don’t think anyone should be held back from pursuing a life that makes them happy. But I also believe that good communication can spare feelings. It’s in being vulnerable and sharing our deepest fears, our regrets, our desires and sadness, that we can leave less destruction in our wake.
”
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Amy Taylor (Search History)
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Nothing to fear. When there was no sun, You came as the light. When there was no moon, You came as the twinkle. Wishing to be with you Sadness I feel, all day long. Missing you is my deepest sorrow. For my mind is full of you. When you are here, I have nothing to fear.
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Jyoti Patel (The Mystic Soul)
“
The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states. Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger, depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences. How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments.
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Pete Walker (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)
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This mingling of life and death, rising and falling is so strange that we cannot even know where we truly are, for our perceptions are so sundered from each other that we can’t tell what is real. On the one hand, we live in a holy agreement with God; when we feel the Divine Presence in our lives, we set our wills, our intellects, our souls, and our strength to following God. Then we hate the arrogant stirrings in our minds, all that causes us to fall away from God, physically and spiritually. But then again, we lose sight of the Divine sweetness, and we fall once more into such darkness that we stumble into all manner of sorrows and troubles. We can only comfort ourselves that we never give our deepest permission for the trouble and sorrow to enter our lives; the strength of Christ our Protector guards our inmost beings. We revolt against the darkness, our minds filled with groaning, enduring the pain and sadness, praying for the time when the Divine Presence will once again be revealed to us. This is the medley of human life: faith and sorrow, insight and darkness, joy and agony, singing in counterpart through our days. But God wants us to know that through it all the Divine Presence is the melody that never changes.
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Julian of Norwich (All Shall Be Well: A Modern-Language Version of the Revelation of Julian of Norwich)
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Dear Alien,
Thank you for asking. Here on my earth, unlove is among the deepest loves to give a person. It touches us in a way no other pain could reach. For as long as breath comes, the possibility of heart correspondence may come too. For the rest of our lives, we are left with the unknown, sailing in a sea of doubt contaminated with hope - scattered and shattered over nothing that mattered. In the world of unlove, fire thrives from the cold.
After they've left, our brains speculate how that person is doing. Departure never really exists. It's almost like leaving a person ensures you'll always be with them. Hope I answered your question.
Mine for you: how is she?
Curiously,
KKF
”
”
Kristian Ventura (Cardiac Ablation)
“
The experiences we endure as trials are what cultivate compassion in our hearts. We feel for others because we have suffered similarly. We know and empathize, having tasted the bitterness for ourselves. Sadly but truly, it is the harshest trials that tend to cultivate the deepest compassion. Trials are every person’s lot in life. You are not alone.
”
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Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
“
To the deepest, most cellular level of my being, I resent people who believe that depression is the same as weakness, that "sad" people must be coddled like helpless toddlers.
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Emery Lord (When We Collided)
“
It's not fair to them. They didn't do anything to deserve this. This isn't the way things are supposed to be.'
Something tingled at the very edge of her consciousness: small but sharp, like a pinprick.
'Oh, but maybe it is,' said a voice, so soft that it seemed to be echoing from the deepest recesses of her mind. It was achingly familiar, like something out of a dream she'd forgotten long ago. 'The question is, what are you going to do about it?'
'Nothing. I can't do anything, I'm no one. I'm nothing. Just a sad old witch who's had everything taken from her. Betrayed by her husband. Deprived of her children. Forsaken by all.'
'Not all,' the voice replied. 'You know this. Even now, she calls you back. Do you hear her?
”
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Genevieve Gornichec (The Witch's Heart)
“
Rasa has two primary meanings: 'feeling' and 'meaning'. As 'feeling' it is one of the traditional Javanese five senses - seeing, hearing, talking, smelling and feeling, and it includes within itself three aspects of "feeling" that our view of the 5 senses separates: taste of tongue, touch on the body, and emotional 'feeling' within the 'heart' like sadness and happiness. The taste of a banana is its rasa; a hunch is a rasa; a pain is a rasa; and so is the passion. As 'meaning', rasa is applied to words in a letter, in a poem, or even in common speech to indicate the between-the-lines type of indirection and allusive suggestion that is so important in Javanese communication and social intercourse. And it is given the same application to behavioral acts generally: to indicate the implicit import, the connotative 'feeling' of dance movements, polite gestures, and so forth. But int his second, semantic sense, it also means 'ultimate significance' - the deepest meaning at which one arrives by dint of mystical effort and whose clarification resolves all the ambiguities of mundane existence(...)
(The interpretation of cultures)
”
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Clifford Geertz
“
It's scary, and downing, that I make my best music when I'm going through my depression... At that moment, all i can see is black, darkness and shadows, but in the bigger picture.. it's a blessing. When I look through all my work, my art, I wouldn't change or take away my depression and anxiety for ANYTHING.. because when i get those days of rainbows, and colors.. i know deep down, i'm only honest when i'm at the deepest of the oceans.. so it's like listening to a different side of my mind, that i never realize exists, until i get that little peek through the blinds, and finally see the sunlight.. THEN on those simple moments, even if they only last a few minutes, i know deep down... maybe i do have a talent. Maybe I have got something, a "gift", that some people call... So really, if it wasn't for my depression, i would never, truly believe I have anything worth giving. So I will NOT sit back and wish i wasn't clinically depressed, I will learn to embrace it, live with it, and talk my brain into believing, and fully knowing, I HAVE A GIFT. I AM WORTHY. I DO HAVE SOMETHING TO GIVE THE WORLD. I will not let my depression or anxiety control me. They can live here(in my mind), but they best know, I AM STILL, AND WILL ALWAYS BE IN CONTROL. .. BUT This is my home, and you're just living under it.
”
”
scott mcgoldrick
“
The story always starts in the same way when people ask me the simple, yet most difficult question to answer: “where are you from?” I often wonder why of all questions people start with this one that has become the hardest for me and countless other exiled people to answer. The question is especially hard when asked in crowded and fast-paced places, or during quick encounters which make a short answer inadequate and a long one potentially uncalled for…I thought to myself: why is it that the first thing people want to know about me is where I am from? If they only knew where I am from, they would perhaps know that where I am from—Iraq—happens to also be the deepest wound on the geography of my body and soul, and so they would tread gently on my wound by not asking that question in the first place. Is there something in my eyes, something written on my forehead, something in my looks, or some marks inscribed on my other body parts that immediately tell people that I am from a place that lost itself and lost me to exile on a cold, dark, and sad winter night? Why don’t these strangers just start with the more common and safer usual remarks about the weather being nice, dreadful, or whatever? Of all questions, “where are you from,” is the most delicate and complicated for people who have lost their home and all the things they loved.
”
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Louis Yako
“
And if sorrow clouds your soul, don't fight it; allow the tears to flow. We are not meant to be invincible, we bruise easily, and the heart is soft; prone to bleed at the slightest touch. It is in those moments of sadness that we must be brave enough to allow Christ in, to let him be present in our pain; our sorrow is seen by Christ.
One day He will wipe away every tear, He will hold us tight, but for now we must pray through the pain. Just know that Christ shares our pain, He understands the sorrow that is within you, for He was a man of many sorrows. He wept alone, He was tormented and forsaken. Believe me, a man who has been forsaken such as Christ will never forsake you. Jesus is the only person who knows all that you have been through, He is the only one who knows the deepest, darkest spots of your soul, and still---He remains.
Jesus has the scars to prove that He is trustworthy, He has the only heart that bled for you; and He will never stop loving you.
”
”
T.B. LaBerge
“
I'm jealous, and i am because you give yourself to people who don't know your worth, to people who don't appreciate you or your time. and it makes me wonder, you know? why? why in the world would such a beautiful person put themselves through so much pain? I don't get it. you have everything in front of you. everyone you need, people who adore you and love you. people who you've over looked. open your eyes, sweet pea, the people you spend most of your time thinking of, stressing over, don't want you. hell, they barely even notice when you're not around and still, you want to believe that it's the kind of love you deserve, the kind of attention you should chase because it's all you've ever known but it's wrong, all of it is. you don't deserve to believe that you need to have people that shatter you to feel alive. you don't deserve that kind of broken love. you deserve sad songs with happy endings. you deserve the deepest love, someone who'll look at you and echo your name forever.
”
”
Himanshu Kohli
“
Happiness depends upon the quality of our thoughts and the purposefulness of our deeds. Unhappy people are the prisoners of their own thoughts, memories, and accumulated experiences. Only by finding joyfulness that rest within our deepest fissures are we truly free from earthy demons of sadness, anger, and hatred. We attain bliss by amicably immersing ourselves in all facets of life. Living joyfully is living life effortlessly by appreciating the enchanting beauty in each moment of our existence.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
Samantha, my mother says now, sadly, shaking and shaking her head. Looking up, up, up at where I’m tangoing in the blue hour with a woman I conjured from a swan. Like I’m a cat that has scrambled up yet another tall tree from which I now refuse to come down. But this time it’s different. Her face says, this is different. This is the tallest one I’ve ever climbed. This is the farthest I’ve ever traveled from the ground. This is the deepest I’ve ever retreated into the golden-green leaves she knows I love so.
”
”
Mona Awad (Bunny)
“
Still, I was thinking that this was all wrong, despite feeling so nice, for once again one of my most sacred and deepest erotic fantasies was brutally being shattered, and once more it was all because of Ami. After all, it had been one of my fondest dreams, as a teenager, to lie in bed cuddling with a cute girl, or even with Yumi. Of course, in those many imaginations, we were both naked and we were having wild passionate sex as well as cuddling, but there before me at that very moment was the sad pathetic reality.
”
”
Andrew James Pritchard (Sukiyaki)
“
The long ghosts are walking the halls. When my mother died I felt expanded, slowly, durably, over time. I felt suffused with her truth, spread through, as with water, color or light. I thought she'd entered the deepest place I could provide, the animating entity, the thing, if anything, that will survive my own last breath, and she makes me larger, she amplifies my sense of what it is to be human. She is part of
me now, total and consoling. And it is not a sadness to acknowledge that she had to die before I could know her fully. It is only a statement of the power of what comes after.
”
”
Don DeLillo
“
It's autumn," he said, "and everybody feels like a disembodied spirit then."
There was still another silence. This peculiar sadness between them thrilled her soul. He seemed so beautiful, with his eyes gone dark, and looking as if they were deep as the deepest well.
"You make me so spiritual!" he lamented. "And I don't want to be spiritual."
She took her finger from her mouth with a little pop, and looked up at him almost challenging. But still her soul was naked in her great dark eyes, and there was the same yearning appeal upon her. If he could have kissed her in abstract purity he would have done so. But he could not kiss her thus - and she seemed to leave no other way. And she yearned to him.
He gave a brief laugh.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers)
“
If you could step inside my world, here is what you would see......
A lifeless soul who is in constant search of not only someone to love but for someone to please show me how to love myself. Someone whose deepest wish is to feel what it is like to truly be loved for who I am.
You would see a desperate being in a constant battle with her emotions. Praying no person could see the obvious envy that consumes her soul as she longingly observes the happiness and the joy that accompanies family and true friendships. A gathering of those who most certainly care about each other, to create cherished memories that will be forever etched in their hearts. Memories they have created to fondly look back on in the years to come.
You would see the forced insincere smile that must be worn when in the public eye because being pleasant is a requirement amongst your peers, even though you are completely dying inside.
You would see how i wake up every morning alone in the barely inhabitable box i reside in that hides me from having to share my pain and sadness with the world. And when the night skies appear, you would see me grateful that it is once again time for me to be reunited with the lonely, yet welcoming call of my bed in that same inhabitable box.
You would see me, most eager to surrender to the sleep that would soon follow, for that is when my pain ceases to exist.
My world....when most of you fantasize and anxiously anticipate what adventures lie before you when the sun comes up, i struggle hour by hour, wishing I could fast forward time, so the pain will cease to exist when the sun goes down.
”
”
Robin Romero
“
Necessities
1
A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas,
but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.
With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.
The green smear of the woods we first made love in.
The yellow city we thought was our future.
The red highways not traveled, the green ones
with their missed exits, the black side roads
which took us where we had not meant to go.
The high peaks, recorded by relatives,
though we prefer certain unmarked elevations,
the private alps no one knows we have climbed.
The careful boundaries we draw and erase.
And always, around the edges,
the opaque wash of blue, concealing
the drop-off they have stepped into before us,
singly, mapless, not looking back.
2
The illusion of progress. Imagine our lives without it:
tape measures rolled back, yardsticks chopped off.
Wheels turning but going nowhere.
Paintings flat, with no vanishing point.
The plots of all novels circular;
page numbers reversing themselves past the middle.
The mountaintop no longer a goal,
merely the point between ascent and descent.
All streets looping back on themselves;
life as a beckoning road an absurd idea.
Our children refusing to grow out of their childhoods;
the years refusing to drag themselves
toward the new century.
And hope, the puppy that bounds ahead,
no longer a household animal.
3
Answers to questions, an endless supply.
New ones that startle, old ones that reassure us.
All of them wrong perhaps, but for the moment
solutions, like kisses or surgery.
Rising inflections countered by level voices,
words beginning with w hushed
by declarative sentences. The small, bold sphere
of the period chasing after the hook,
the doubter that walks on water
and treads air and refuses to go away.
4
Evidence that we matter. The crash of the plane
which, at the last moment, we did not take.
The involuntary turn of the head,
which caused the bullet to miss us.
The obscene caller who wakes us at midnight
to the smell of gas. The moon's
full blessing when we fell in love,
its black mood when it was all over.
Confirm us, we say to the world,
with your weather, your gifts, your warnings,
your ringing telephones, your long, bleak silences.
5
Even now, the old things first things,
which taught us language. Things of day and of night.
Irrational lightning, fickle clouds, the incorruptible moon.
Fire as revolution, grass as the heir
to all revolutions. Snow
as the alphabet of the dead, subtle, undeciphered.
The river as what we wish it to be.
Trees in their humanness, animals in their otherness.
Summits. Chasms. Clearings.
And stars, which gave us the word distance,
so we could name our deepest sadness.
”
”
Lisel Mueller (Alive Together)
“
I don't like feeling
Anything but
Love
About my mum
It doesn't feel right
But right now
I feel
So many
Things
About my
Mum
I feel love
Always love
But underneath
I feel sad
And a little
Disappointed
I feel worried
And anxious
And mostly
I feel
Distant
Like someone grabbed us
Each of us
And pulled and pulled
Until there was a gap
Where there's never been a gap
Until there was
Distance
Where usually
We were
Together
Side by side
Like someone
Pulled us apart
And I'm afraid
I'm afraid
That that person
Was me
”
”
Meg Grehan (The Deepest Breath)
“
We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don’t know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break out, for that is how it mends itself. There is so much, my dear Mr Kappus, going on in you now. You must be patient as an invalid and trusting as a convalescent, for you are perhaps both. And more than that: you are also the doctor responsible for looking after himself. But with all illnesses there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And inasfar as you are your own doctor, this above all is what you must do now.
”
”
Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
“
I am not Seamus, who tacks emotions to the outside of his skin and whose words charge from his mouth on horseback. No one sees through me, except Xavier, and he does so not because I choose to give him access but because he knows himself. I will have to offer myself to Seamus, if I want something 'more' with him. Part of me can't believe I'd contemplate it, even for a moment. What do I have in common with an oversized, yarn-spinning, bread-mauling, divorced deliveryman attached to a seven-year-old? The rest of me doesn't know if I remember how to be close to another person. I practice mimicry, a Viceroy butterfly masquerading as a Monarch, a Superb Lyrebird echoing the calls of everything from chickadees to chain saws. I practice stories of my past, telling this sad memory or that scary one, and people feel I'm confiding in them because the words touch their deepest wounds, not because the tales hold any emotional resonance for me. My intimacies, the ones that have become my Sisyphus stones, long-term romantic relationships, the college one, ended with the nice young man shocked when I said I didn't love him and we had nothing in common. "We've spent two years talking about everything," he said.
Yes, mimicry.
”
”
Christa Parrish (Stones For Bread)
“
Most people, who choose or are coerced into only identifying with “positive” feelings, usually wind up in an emotionally lifeless middle ground – bland, deadened, and dissociated in
an unemotional “no-man’s-land.”
Moreover, when a person tries to hold onto a preferred feeling for longer than its actual
tenure, she often appears as unnatural and phony as ersatz grass or plastic flowers. If instead, she learns to surrender willingly to the normal human experience that good feelings always ebb and flow, she will eventually be graced with a growing ability to renew herself in the vital waters of emotional flexibility.
The repression of the so-called negative polarities of emotion causes much unnecessary
pain, as well as the loss of many essential aspects of the feeling nature. In fact, much of the plethora of loneliness, alienation, and addictive distraction that plagues modern industrial societies is a result of people being taught and forced to reject, pathologize or punish so many of their own and others’ normal feeling states.
Nowhere, not in the deepest recesses of the self, or in the presence of his closest friends, is
the average person allowed to have and explore any number of normal emotional states. Anger,
depression, envy, sadness, fear, distrust, etc., are all as normal a part of life as bread and flowers and streets. Yet, they have become ubiquitously avoided and shameful human experiences.
How tragic this is, for all of these emotions have enormously important and healthy
functions in a wholly integrated psyche. One dimension where this is most true is in the arena of healthy self-protection. For without access to our uncomfortable or painful feelings, we are deprived of the most fundamental part of our ability to notice when something is unfair, abusive, or neglectful in our environments.
Those who cannot feel their sadness often do not know when they are being unfairly excluded, and those who cannot feel their normal angry or fearful responses to abuse, are often in danger of putting up with it without protest.
Perhaps never before has humankind been so alienated from so many of its normal feeling
states, as it is in the twenty-first century. Never before have so many human beings been so
emotionally deadened and impoverished.
The disease of emotional emaciation is epidemic. Its effects on health are often
euphemistically labeled as stress, and like the emotions, stress is often treated like some
unwanted waste that must be removed.
”
”
Pete Walker (Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving)
“
We can cry tears for our abandoning of God, tears for our betrayals of love, tears for our children, parents, friends and animals, tears for our denials of love, tears for our judgments of love, tears for the loss of our cherished yet naïve ideals about love, tears for our separations from love, tears for things we know not what we are crying for, and there is no need to know. We can cry tears of compassion for others’ pain as our own, we cry tears for our own heartbreak. We can cry and laugh at the same time, feeling both sadness and joy, heartbreak and hilarity. In this, we are not attached to the negative emotion (from the soul’s perspective) and can feel both sides of release and expansion at the same time. Tears of sweet madness, tears of pain, tears of sorrow, tears like honey that drip like nectar, remaking anew all that they touch. There are the tears of sweet sorrow, being the vessel for the woes of the world to be felt on behalf of all; someone has to cry if no one else does. The tears of grief as you feel your deepest pains with the aid of your greatest love of all loves, God; the tears of the sheer joy of the soul, the tears of loving orgasm as you make love with your Beloved whilst in prayer with God; the intimate tears of adoration for a Soul Mate in the act of making love, as the soul is touched on every level of love, human and Divine. Tears of gratitude, being touched by God in new and virgin places that have always been pure; tears of being touched in the ecstatic yearning, desire, shaking prayer and inflowing of God’s Love; tears borne from your desire to receive that love so keenly, so heartfully; tears of expansion and release. The intimacy of tears of adoration, of wondrous awe and loving gratitude for Beloved God, and more, and more, and more … Some tears can never be described, for they encompass all emotions at the same time. I wish you these tears of all tears.
”
”
Padma Aon Prakasha (Dimensions of Love: 7 Steps to God)
“
But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I’m with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we’re taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it’s too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn’t these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane?
All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he’s loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon’s so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes.
There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on.
I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living’s so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love’s deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.
”
”
Mark Doty (Heaven's Coast: A Memoir)
“
In My Prayer.
My silent niche. You incarnate in my prayer. Dawn is all dancing like a rainbow in your smile. Anxious to uncover dreams after morning. The desire to arrange sparkly beads in your hair. Reduce heartbeat, please at the tips of your fingers. I will pray together with
night just to keep remembering you. A never ending memory to always say your name. Silence that leads to longing for the rising of light. Horizon knocked on all the gates, which grabbed a reprehensible body, who hesitated to stop at the tip of the tongue. Lips murmuring, stringing questions hung at the end of time. The self that is always broken and dishonest, who is kufr and who is infidel. All beings submit to the most holy feet. Let silence accept everything that is magical.
Although the reflection of the moon's face is filled with wounds with lies in our mouths, betrayed by lust and unstoppable desires. May you soon incarnate so that a million flowers bloom in the heart of the most cursory. The eyes are altered, betraying a million flashes of light from the darkest night. The most beautiful gems are buried in mud puddles.
Even though the sky is still dark. Heavy rain that is redder than all blood. Which surpassed the fangs of the old snake. The endless cycle of the sun throws puzzles about the mysteries of the universe that are never answered. The beginning of all this sorrow in myself. If only you please, transform into a butterfly in my prayer tonight. A pair of wings that burned like a fire of longing in my heart. Who suddenly fidgeted and flew into your eyes. Then descend on the branch of the Khuldi tree, before breaking into my tears.
Suppose tonight, in my prayer, you incarnate like a thunderous storm. Like the sound of noisy thunder. The footsteps stepped hurriedly on the foggy road. Infiltrate the gaps of our thoughts and feelings. Shackle our arms, knees and breath.
If only, in my prayer tonight you will be transformed into murky tears. Who trembled, even though it would patiently take care of my sadness. The pain that somehow healed my soul. Beliefs that keep mysteries for my deepest secrets, which you endlessly hum, in order to be a comfort for my sad life.
My dear. Lady of my heart. My love. My soul. Bless me with all your generosity. With your mercy, with your endless love. With your infinite anger.
”
”
Titon Rahmawan
“
And the ladies dressed in red for my pain and with my pain latched onto my breath, clinging like the fetuses of scorpions in the deepest crook of my neck, the mothers in red who sucked out the last bit of heat that my barely beating heart could give me — I always had to learn on my own the steps you take to drink and eat and breathe, I was never taught to cry and now will never learn to do this, least of all from the great ladies latched onto the lining of my breath with reddish spit and floating veils of blood, my blood, mine alone, which I drew myself and which they drink from now after murdering the king whose body is listing in the river and who moves his eyes and smiles, though he’s dead and when you’re dead, you’re dead, for all the smiling you do, and the great ladies, the tragic ladies in red have murdered the one who is floating down the river and I stay behind like a hostage in their eternal custody.
I want to die to the letter of the law of the commonplace, where we are assured that dying is the same as dreaming. The light, the forbidden wine, the vertigo. Who is it you write for? The ruins of an abandoned temple. If only celebration were possible. A mournful vision, splintered, of a garden of broken statues.
Numb time, time like a glove upon a drum. The three who compete in me remain on a shifting point and we neither are nor is. My eyes used to find rest in humiliated, forsaken things. Nowadays I see with them; I’ve seen and approved of nothing.
Seated at the bottom of a lake. She has lost her shadow, but not the desire to be, to lose. She is alone with her images. Dressed in red, and unseeing. Who has reached this place that no one ever reaches? The lord of those dead who are dressed in red. The man who is masked in a faceless face. The one who came for her takes her without him. Dressed in black, and seeing. The one who didn’t know how to die of love and so couldn’t learn a thing. She is sad because she is not there.
There are words with hands; barely written, they search my heart. There are words condemned like the lilac in a tempest. There are words resembling some among the dead, and from these I prefer the ones that evoke the doll of some unhappy girl.
Ward 18
when I think of occupational therapy I think of poking out my eyes in a house in ruin then eating them while thinking of all my years of continuous writing,
15 or 20 hours writing without a break, whetted by the demon of analogies, trying to configure my terrible wandering verbal matter, because — oh dear old Sigmund Freud — psychoanalytic science forgot its key somewhere:
to open it opens but how to close the wound?
for other imponderables lovelier than the smile of the Virgin of the Rocks
the shadows strike blows
the black shadows
of the dead
nothing but blows
and there were cries
nothing but blows
”
”
Alejandra Pizarnik
“
The slaves selected to go to the Great House Farm, for the monthly allowance for themselves and their fellow-slaves, were peculiarly enthusiastic. While on their way, they would make the dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with their wild songs, revealing at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness. They would compose and sing as they went along, consulting neither time nor tune. The thought that came up, came out—if not in the word, in the sound;—and as frequently in the one as in the other. They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone. Into all of their songs they would manage to weave something of the Great House Farm. Especially would they do this, when leaving home. They would then sing most exultingly the following words:— "I am going away to the Great House Farm!
O, yea! O, yea! O!"
This they would sing, as a chorus, to words which to many would seem unmeaning jargon, but which, nevertheless, were full of meaning to themselves. I have sometimes thought that the mere hearing of those songs would do more to impress some minds with the horrible character of slavery, than the reading of whole volumes of philosophy on the subject could do. I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of those wild notes always depressed my spirit, and filled me with ineffable sadness. I have frequently found myself in tears while hearing them. The mere recurrence to those songs, even now, afflicts me; and while I am writing these lines, an expression of feeling has already found its way down my cheek. To those songs I trace my first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sympathies for my brethren in bonds. If any one wishes to be impressed with the soul-killing effects of slavery, let him go to Colonel Lloyd's plantation, and, on allowance-day, place himself in the deep pine woods, and there let him, in silence, analyze the sounds that shall pass through the chambers of his soul,—and if he is not thus impressed, it will only be because "there is no flesh in his obdurate heart." I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
”
”
Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
“
I cannot be certain what I would have said. I knew that there was something sad and faintly distasteful about love's ending, particularly love that has never been fully realised. I might have hinted at that, but I doubt it. In our deepest moments we say the most inadequate things." Edna O'Brien, short story "Sister Imelda", in "Returning".
”
”
Edna O'Brien (Country Girl)
“
Remember to write continuously the entire twenty minutes. And never forget that this writing is for you and you alone. At the conclusion of your twenty minutes of writing, read the section “Post-writing thoughts” and complete the post-writing questionnaire. Post-Writing Thoughts Following the Day One Writing Session Congratulations! You have completed the first day of writing. After each writing exercise, it can be helpful to make objective assessments about how the writing felt. In this way, you can go back and determine which writing methods are most effective for you. For this and for all future writing exercises, respond to each of the five following questions either at the end of your writing or in a separate place. Put a number between 0 and 10 by each question. 0 — Not at all 1 2 3 4 5— Somewhat 6 7 8 9 10— A great deal ____ A. To what degree did you express your deepest thoughts and feelings? ____ B. To what degree do you currently feel sad or upset? ____ C. To what degree do you currently feel happy? ____ D. To what degree was today’s writing valuable and meaningful for you? E. Briefly describe how your writing went today so you may refer to this later. For many people, the first day of writing is the most difficult. This kind of writing can bring up emotions and thoughts that you may not have known that you had. It may also have flowed much more easily than you expected — especially if you wrote about something that you have been keeping to yourself for a long time. If you don’t want anyone to see your writing, keep the pages in a secure place or destroy them. If keeping them is not a problem, you can go back and analyze the pages at the end of the four days of writing. Now, take some time for yourself. Until tomorrow.
”
”
James W. Pennebaker (Expressive Writing: Words That Heal)
“
Demons and their Hell are quite different from the Dungeon Dimensions, those endless parallel wastelands outside space and time. The sad, mad Things in the Dungeon Dimensions have no understanding of the world but simply crave light and shape and try to warm themselves by the fires of reality, clustering around it with about the same effect—if they ever broke through—as an ocean trying to warm itself around a candle. Whereas demons belong to the same space-time wossname, more or less, as humans, and have a deep and abiding interest in humanity’s day-to-day affairs. Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Eric (Discworld, #9))
“
Dita is silent as she weighs how many matches have been lit and gone out in her life--and there have been lots. Many brief moments in which a flame has shone, even in the midst of the deepest darkness. Some of those moments have occurred when, in the middle of some huge disaster, she has opened a book and buried herself in it. Her small library is a box of matches. As she thinks this, she smiles with a hint of sadness.
”
”
Anthony Iturbe
“
I’m floating
on an ocean of an illusion
of a lost love
and a broken heart
was it yours or mine?
waiting for the Sun of your being
to appear and shine
on my solitude
On my despair
and my messy moments
of abandoned hopes
and yet my eyes
can’t stop watering
the endless
prairies of loneliness
where have you been
all this time
when I was facing the
deepest moments of despair
welcoming the angel of death
in the gloomiest , rainiest days of my life
staring at a mountain
we climbed up together
far far away
in the days of ignorance
and pure happiness
where have you been my love
all this time
Without me
away from me
and can my eyes ever
stop shedding tears of sadness
desiring your presence
to lighten up
the unknown future of my
nothingness
”
”
GJ
“
i’m floating
on an ocean of an illusion
of a lost love
and a broken heart
was it yours or mine?
waiting for the Sun of your being
to appear and shine
on my solitude
on my despair
and my messy moments
of abandoned hopes
and yet my eyes
can’t stop watering
the endless
prairies of loneliness
where have you been
all this time
when I was facing the
deepest moments of despair
welcoming the angel of death
in the gloomiest , rainiest days of my life
staring at a mountain
we climbed up together
far far away
in the days of ignorance
and pure happiness
where have you been my love
all this time
without me
away from me
and can my eyes ever
stop shedding tears of sadness
desiring your presence
to lighten up
the unknown future of my
nothingness
”
”
G.
“
I, David Russell, join my life with yours. Wherever you go, I will go; whatever you face, I will face. For good or ill, in happiness or sadness, come riches or poverty. With deepest joy I receive you into my life that together we may be one. I promise you my love, my fullest devotion, my most tender care. I pledge to you my life as a loving and faithful husband.' 'You certainly know the oath, Captain Russell. And now it's your turn, Miss Clarke.' Rose began without waiting for the preacher. 'I, Rose Clarke, join my life with yours. Wherever you go, I will go; whatever you face, I will face. For good or ill, in happiness or sadness, come riches or poverty. With deepest joy I receive you into my life that together we may be one. I promise you my love, my fullest devotion, my most tender care. I pledge to you my life as a loving and faithful wife.' 'It seems you no longer need me as you are both man and wife. You may kiss the bride.' David took Rose in his arms and kissed her lightly on her lips, conscious the old woman and his brother were watching him. Then, he looked into her eyes, saw the light of happiness in them, and kissed her again, deeply now, pouring his heart and soul into the kiss. The preacher coughed. 'When you've finished, you'll need to sign
”
”
M.J. Lee (The Somme Legacy (Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery, #2))
“
Jasmine licked her finger and flipped through her notes: Smoked Chicken with Pureed Spiced Lentils, Hot Ham and Bacon Biscuits, Cassoulet Salad with Garlic Sausages. After three cookbooks, she was finally finding her voice. She had discovered her future lay in rustic, not structure. Oh, she had tried the nouvelle rage. Who could forget her Breast of Chicken on a Bed of Pureed Grapes, her Diced Brie and Kumquat Salsa, her Orange and Chocolate Salad with Grand Marnier Vinaigrette? But her instincts had rightly moved her closer to large portions. She hated the increasing fad of so much visible white plate. She preferred mounds of gorgeous food and puddles of sauces. Jasmine kneaded her heavy flesh and smiled. She had finally found her term. She was going to be a gastrofeminist. She would be Queen of Abundance, Empress of Excess. No apologies of appetite for her, no 'No thank you, I'm full,' no pushing away her plate with a sad but weary smile. Her dishes would fulfill the deepest, most primal urge. Beef stews enriched with chocolate and a hint of cinnamon, apple cakes dripping with Calvados and butter, pork sautéed with shallots, lots of cream, and mustard.
”
”
Nina Killham (How to Cook a Tart)
“
The Game
Today i want to play a game,
you'll win if you can guess my name,
I am the one who hide behind shadows,
Behind my smile i hide my deepest sorrows,
I am the one who wants to be loved,
But can't overcome the memories of once beloved,
I am the one who hear voices and see faces,
find a friend who love and actually cares,
I am the one who spent his life in illusion,
Believing that everything happens for a reason,
I am the one who is scared of happiness,
Because of that i never lived in fullness,
I am the one who lost the meaning of life,
There is no motivation which can thrive,
I am the one who failed a lot,
All the lessons i remember is what life taught,
I am the one people love his silence,
Ignoring the pain adoring his patience,
Look at me one more time and guess my name,
you'll win if you can guess my name
”
”
Ratish Edwards
“
Show me all your sides, dive with me to your deepest points and guide me to your Everest. I'll always adore the way you are yourself, so don't tell me being sad makes me unhappy or love you less.
”
”
Wouter Van Gastel
“
Love is like a drug that can either kill you, weaken you or make you stronger. Like a poison that finds it way through you body with each kiss, each touch and each look.
It makes you feel euphoric. Makes you feel like you can take on anything that comes on your path. Whether it walks behind, in front or beside you. No mountain is high enough, no ocean deep enough and the sky had no limit.
It can make you feel weak. Make you question everything around except the person who the love is for.
But it can also destroy you in a way you never would have imagined was even possible. It hurts like a thousand knives twisting against your spine, paralyzing you. It can make you feel like the world just caved in around you, beneath you.
You ask yourself if this is all worth it. Worth the euphoric feeling of someone loving you. Worth everything.
I can tell you that in the end, it is. Because now you may feel destroyed, but keep in mind that a feeling is something that can be changed. There is someone who will build you up. Who will climb the highest mountain or cross the deepest oceans. Who makes you feel alive all for the right reasons.
Someone who will not sugar coat his intentions. Who will not say he's someone he actually is not. Someone who wants you in his life. Who shows you off like a show pony to show everyone how proud he/she is to have you in his/her life.
The feeling of destruction will fade when you meet someone who is willing to build you up. Who doesn't care how deep your roots have rooted itself into the earth to keep yourself grounded. Who will find every last stone to make sure your as strong as ever when everything else came crumbling down.
”
”
Kim Pape
“
The Swan
Oh, a swan!
Blooming in grace and power.
Were you thrown out of the forest of reeds by Pan
To flourish as a white rose-flower?
Do not doubt:
Over the tired waves
An unearthly light shines out;
He hides his bright plumage.
The face of the flood-tide
Grows clearer and clearer to see.
Poppy-milk ripples, runs wide,
Where the wings rested momentarily.
Image of woman,
He sings the deepest of deaths;
Out of the glass-cold dew
The sweet silence drips from his breath.
Cup of down,
Defenceless, utterly abandoning,
He has forgotten the sound
And the dreams by evening.
Floating, drifting,
Changed into golden grey,
The swan is singing
A song whose end is sadness and decay.
”
”
Gertrud Kolmar
“
I also like to call this category "hypersuck," because women tend to get "sucked" into believing that our bodies are wild, scary, shameful places that need to be managed by an outside source, medicated, controlled, and sterilized. (We have the media and other social influences to thank for that.) We are rewarded for acting/speaking/looking like young girls versus confident women. We have too few powerful, healthy role models, but plenty of exhausted moms and emaciated models front and center on our cultural stage. We have a hard time appreciating our grown-up female bodies. We're made to feel that feminine intuition is fickle. We suspect that our energy is unstable. We're conditioned to think that our periods are shameful and disgusting. We look for ways to fix what's broken. We discipline the highs and lows of our female essence. We disconnect from our own bodies and, often, our deepest sense of knowing. Ultimately, our mind-body conversation tips the scales in a negative direction, and this too affects hormone balance. And since hypersuck (that old cultural conditioning) tricks us into thinking our bodies are supposed to be acting this way, we allow serious hormonal issues - and all the symptoms that tag along - to linger for years before seeking out any kind of sustainable action to help heal ourselves. Sadly, many women lose faith long before reaching the point of action.
”
”
Alisa Vitti (WomanCode: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source)
“
In the deepest corners of her mind,
she hides her favorite memories of you.
Tucked away, never to be found.
For when you are found,
is when you are missed.
And when you are missed,
she cannot be found.
”
”
Jesse Warner (where i am)
“
I had wanted my pain to disappear. I didn’t want to feel the constriction of fear in my throat, the sadness of a child all alone in the world. But the transformation I was seeking wasn’t to be found in what happened to the pain; it would be found in what happened within me in relationship to it.
”
”
Sharon Salzberg (Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience)
“
If you’ve ever found yourself snapping at someone you dearly love, or sitting down to complete a work project only to spend five hours shopping for home tattoo kits online, it’s probably because you’re internally divided. You’re trying to act in ways that don’t feel right to you at the deepest level. Whenever we do this, our lives begin to go pear-shaped. Emotionally, we feel grumpy, sad, or numb. Physically, our immune systems and muscles weaken; we might get sick, and even if we don’t, our energy flattens. Mentally, we lose focus and clarity. That’s how it feels to be out of integrity.
”
”
Martha Beck (The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self)
“
The horrible mismanagement of the AIDS crisis makes me want to grab [disease minimizers] by the shoulders and shake them and say, “Why haven’t you read about what worked or did not work every time a plague cropped up before this one? Why aren’t you paying attention? Do not do the same stupid stuff people did before! We know what works and what doesn’t! Be smarter, please, please, be smarter, be kinder, be kinder and smarter, I am begging you.”
I find the forgetfulness of people, especially in true matters of life and death, so frustrating. Sometimes I look at these histories and think, People are just going to keep making the same dumb mistakes every single time. And one day those mistakes will doom us all.
And I feel sad and furious and frightened for what will happen next.
But then I think about how polio is almost eradicated. Or that penicillin exists. And I remember that we are progressing, always, even if that progress is sometimes slower and more uneven than we might wish. I remind myself, too, of all the ways people have persevered and survived in conditions that are surely as bad as anything that is to come.
Whenever I am most disillusioned, I look to one of my favorite quotes from The World of Yesterday (1942) by Stefan Zweig. When Zweig was fleeing from the Nazis and living in exile he wrote: “Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to find our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again to the ancient constellations of my childhood, comforting myself that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.” I have to believe that the missteps are only intermittent relapses as we grow stronger and smarter and better. We do get better. At everything. Combatting diseases fits somewhere among “everything.”
I believe there will be a day when we will see diseases as what they are—an enemy of all of humanity. Not of perceived sinners, not of people who are poor or have a different sexual orientation, not of those who we somehow decided “have it coming” because they’re “not like us.” Diseases are at war with all of us. Diseases don’t care about any of the labels, so it makes no sense for us to.
I believe we will become more compassionate. I believe we will fight smarter. I believe that in the deepest place of our souls, we are not cowardly or hateful or cruel to our neighbors. I believe we are kind and smart and brave. I believe that as long as we follow those instincts and do not give in to terror and blame, we can triumph over diseases and the stigmas attached to them. When we fight plagues, not each other, we will not only defeat diseases but preserve our humanity in the process.
Onward and upward.
”
”
Jennifer Wright (Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them)
“
We are guilty because of the sins we commit. We are wounded because of the sins committed against us. And sadly, we commit our greatest sins out of our deepest wounds.
”
”
Jesse Eubanks (How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram)
“
Note that the Bible talks a lot about money.
And a lot of those verses are warnings against the temptations of wealth—how the love of money can corrupt our hearts and destroy our lives. Those warnings are very serious, and we must listen and obey.
Money, like anything good in this world, can pulls us away from God and His way.
The other day, I was reading a sad report on giving. According to the study, when people's income increases, their giving decreases. Sadly, the poor outgive the rich.
Because money can become an idol that we worship.
And I'll be the first one to tell you to prioritize peace over prosperity any time of the day. God must be the center of every area of our life, especially our financial life. At the end of the day, only God can satisfy the deepest longings of your life.
Very Important Point: As much as there are Success Principles in the Bible, its core message is not how to succeed in your work or finances but in following Jesus and building His Kingdom in this world.
”
”
Bo Sánchez (Nothing Much Has Changed (7 Success Principles from the Ancient Book of Proverbs for Your Money, Work, and Life)
“
The human condition is unspeakably sad. Think of it: their bodies are fragile; their lives are brief, each like the sputtering decline of a short candle; measured against the age of the earth itself, their deepest relationships with friends and family are of the most transitory nature, mere incandescent flashes of love and kindness that do nothing to light the great, endless, dark, flowing river of time. Yet they seldom surrender to the cruelty of their condition, seldom lose faith in themselves. Their hopes are rarely fulfilled, but they go on anyway, struggling against the darkness. Their determined striving in the face of their mortality is the very definition of courage, the essence of nobility.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Strange Highways and Other Stories)
“
The tragic sense of life has its origin in our determination to carry off two incompatible, but equally serious, ambitions: to search for meaning and to face reality. An intense, unceasing demand for meaning - the longing for life to make benevolent, beautiful sense - is coupled with the dawning, appalling fact that it does not, in the end, make sense in that way. Tragedy is the name for horror seen against the backdrop of love.
This is an area in which civilization does not reduce our suffering - does not make life more pleasing or comfortable. What is the achievement of tragedy? It is to present the deepest sorrows of the human condition: what we love is terribly vulnerable; each life is a brief, scarring moment in the wastes of eternity; our transient existence will be marked by depression, confusion, and fear ... The ambition of tragedy is to hold such intelligent fears in a ceremonial act endowed with splendour and grace.
The ceremony does not overcome our fears. But, unlike horror, it does not seek to stoke anxiety. The tragic view is, really, a determination to hold on to nobility, love and beauty - even while knowing the worst about ourselves.
”
”
John Armstrong (In Search of Civilization)
“
You’re thinking too hard.” He taps his chest. “Magick can be created from a song, but it isn’t required. In truth, the most powerful magick is conjured from the deepest parts of our souls, not with voices or hands or anything else. But, no matter how a conjurer builds their magickal constructs, it must come from the heart. You know this, yes? Born of emotion, love, hope, sadness, desperation, all tied to ancient commandments of the old gods. The words are easy. Reaching for the emotion is what’s hard.
”
”
Charissa Weaks (The Witch Collector (Witch Walker #1))
“
To the extent that power is the result of idol making and idol playing, it will almost always distort our deepest relationships. That distortion does not necessarily have to take the form of divorce; for every family visibly broken by a powerful member’s incapacity to keep his promises, there is another where spouse and children know the equally cruel reality of unavailability and unreliability. As the funny but also sadly cynical T-shirt puts it, “Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.
”
”
Andy Crouch (Playing God: Redeeming the Gift of Power)
“
Stella agreed, “just—nobody thinks these books are very literary. It’s the vampires, you know? Most people think they’re kind of silly.” She pushed a few strands of hair out of her face. When she looked at Sebastian again, she was struck by the seriousness of his expression. It wasn’t that he was intense, per se, just … a little sad, maybe. Almost lonely. “I don’t think it’s silly,” he told her. “It takes a lot of strength to pursue the things that interest you, especially when others don’t understand. It’s … admirable.
”
”
Elisa Catrina (The First Bite Is the Deepest)
“
The deepest wretchedness often results from a perpetual continuation of petty trials.
”
”
L.G. Abell (A Mother's Book of Traditional Household Skills)