“
I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because 'romantic' doesn't mean 'sugary.' It's dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can't attain.
”
”
Catherine Breillat (Romance (Script in French Language))
“
Our lips were for each other and our eyes were full of dreams. We knew nothing of travel and we knew nothing of loss. Ours was a world of eternal spring, until the summer came.
”
”
Roman Payne (Hope and Despair)
“
Bianca, camp is cool! It's got a pegasus stable and a sword-fighting arena and… I mean, what do you get by joining the Hunters?"
To begin with," Zoe said, "immortality."
I stared at her, then at Artemis. "She's kidding, right?"
Zoe rarely kids about anything," Artemis said. "My Hunters follow me on my adventures. They are my maidservants, my companions, my sisters-in-arms. Once they swear loyalty to me, they are indeed immortal… unless they fall in battle, which is unlikely. Or break their oath."
What oath?" I said.
To foreswear romantic love forever," Artemis said.
To never grow up, never get married. To be a maiden eternally."
Like you?"
The goddess nodded.
I tried to imagine what she was saying. Being immortal. Hanging out with only middle-school girls forever. I couldn't get my mind around it.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
“
Sometimes I believe that love dies but hope springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that hope dies but love springs eternal. Sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals love, and sometimes I believe that sex plus guilt equals good sex. Sometimes I believe that love is as natural as the tides, and sometimes I believe that love is an act of will. Sometimes I believe that some people are better at love than others, and sometimes I believe that everyone is faking it. Sometimes I believe that love is essential, and sometimes I believe that only reason love is essential is that otherwise you spend all your time looking for it.
”
”
Nora Ephron (Heartburn)
“
I give you my name, my earthly possessions, and my eternal love. But of all the things I have, the thing I want most to give you are my eyes, these eyes that see how magnificently beautiful you are.
”
”
Michelle Marcos
“
To foreswear romantic love forever. To never grow up, never get married. To be maiden eternally.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3))
“
There’s a good kind of crazy, Kaylee,” he insisted softly, reaching out to wrap his warm hand around mine. “It’s the kind that makes you think
about things that make your head hurt, because not thinking about them is the coward’s way out. The kind that makes you touch people who bruise your
soul, just because they need to be touched. This is the kind of crazy that lets you stare out into the darkness and rage at eternity, while it stares back at
you, ready to swallow you whole.
”
”
Rachel Vincent (If I Die (Soul Screamers, #5))
“
If a tear fell from my eyes,
Each time I wished you were with me,
I would have an ocean shore outside my door.
”
”
Stacey Chillemi (Eternal Love: Romantic Poetry Straight From The Heart)
“
After you were bitten, I knew what would happen. I waited for you to change, every night, so I could bring you back and keep you from getting hurt." A chilly gust of wind lifter his hair and sent a shower of golden leaves glimmering down around him. He spred out his arms, letting them fall into his hands. He looked like a dark angel in an eternal autumn wood. "Did you know you get one happy day for everyone you catch?"
I didn't know what he meant, even after he opened his fist to show me the quivering leaves crumpled in his palm.
One happy day for every falling leaf you catch." Sam's voice was low.
I watched the egdes of the leaves slowly unfold, fluttering in the breeze."How long did you wait?"
It would have been romantic if hr'd had the courage to look into my face to say it, but instead, he dropped his eyes to the ground and scuffed his boots in the leaves- countless possibilities for happy days- on the ground. "I haven't stopped."
And I should've said something romantic too, but i didn't have the courage, either. So instead, I watched the shy way he was chewing his lip and studying the leaves, and said, "That must've been very borring.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater
“
Love, at its core, is love—unadorned, undeniable, unending.
”
”
Aura Biru
“
The "Holy-crap-that's-a-lot-of-pink" Zone would have been a more accurate description.
I don't know what I was expecting a vampire's room to look like. Maybe lots of black, a bunch of books by Camus...oh, and a sensitive portrait of the only human the vamp had ever loved, who had no doubt died of something beautiful and tragic, thus dooming the vamp to an eternity of moping and sighing romantically.
What can I say? I read a lot of books.
But this room looked like it had been decorated by the unholy lovechild of Barbie and Strawberry Shortcake.
”
”
Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall (Hex Hall, #1))
“
Again, there were maidens who cherished the firm belief that he had come from the sea. Because within his breast could be heard the roaring of the sea. Because in the pupils of his eyes there lingered the mysterious and eternal horizon that the sea leaves as a keepsake deep in the eyes of all who are born at the seaside and forced to depart from it. Because his signs were sultry like the tidal breezes of full summer, fragrant with the smell of seaweed cast upon the shore.
”
”
Yukio Mishima (Confessions of a Mask)
“
I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!
”
”
Marion Zimmer Bradley (The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1))
“
If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating friendship, - a boundless worship and belief in some hero of your soul, - if ever you have so loved, that all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations have gone down like drift-wood before a river flooded with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the feet of another, and all for nothing, - if you awoke bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has been made known to you; treasure it, as the highest honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, -that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul.
”
”
Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom’s Cabin)
“
And if you must sacrifice yourself, do that by marrying me. I’m not an easy man. You’ll earn your martyr’s crown before you’re done. Don’t condemn both of us to an eternity of unhappiness just because you’re too stiff-necked to face society’s censure.
”
”
Anna Campbell (Claiming the Courtesan)
“
True love doesn't have an expiry date; it is eternal.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Love is two people in love,
who bond as one,
destined for each other;
this is the meaning of love.
A piece of our spirit remains wherever we have been…
”
”
Stacey Chillemi (Eternal Love: Romantic Poetry Straight From The Heart)
“
Everything changes, but my love for you never will. I’ve fought myself on this too long and I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t feign that I don’t want to talk to you, to reach out and brush the hair out of your eyes, or wipe a tear off your cheek. I want to hold you, to tell you how much I love you, to kiss you without repercussions.” His voice grew softer, electricity sparking in the air. “I’ve loved you since I met you, Evangeline, and I will love you for all of eternity.
”
”
Angela Corbett
“
Cabal regarded her with mild amusement. “Smile when you whisper,” he advised her. “You’re supposed to be flirting with me, if you recall?”
She stared at him icily. Then suddenly her expression thawed and she smiled winsomely, her eyes dewy with romantic love. “Oh, sweetheart… somebody tried to kill you? Whosoever would do such a thing to my nimpty-bimpty snookums?”
Cabal could not have been more horrified if she’d pulled off her face to reveal a gaping chasm of eternal night from which glistening tentacles coiled and groped. That had already happened to him once in his life, and he wasn’t keen to repeat the experience.
“What?” he managed in a dry whisper.
“Smile when you whisper,” she said, her expression fixed and blood-curdlingly coquettish. You’re supposed to be flirting with me, remember?”
“Please don’t do that.
”
”
Jonathan L. Howard (Johannes Cabal the Detective (Johannes Cabal, #2))
“
...And although thus short, we shorten many ways,
Living so little while we are alive;
In eating, drinking, sleeping, vain delight
So unawares comes on perpetual night,
And puts all pleasures vain unto eternal flight.
”
”
Anne Bradstreet (Anthology of American Literature, Volume 1: Colonial through Romantic)
“
We have been led to believe that if we are really in love, it will last forever. We will always have the wonderful feelings that we have at this moment. Nothing could ever come between us. Nothing will ever overcome our love for each other. [..] Unfortunately, the eternality of the in-love experience is fiction, not fact. The late psychologist Dr. Dorothy Tennov conducted long range studies on the in-love phenomenon. After studying scores of couples, she concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The Five Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts)
“
A world anemic in love needs a day to celebrate love. I am a lover eternal, for me every day is valentine's day.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables)
“
I need you like a blossom needs rain, like the winter ground needs spring-to soothe my parched soul.
”
”
Solange nicole
“
Civilized beings regard the act of intercourse as the highest expression of romantic love. One need only observe the behavior of animals, however, to realize that the act is often a form of violence.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1))
“
The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon. Yet in the same way competing weather fronts produce a climate that’s right for a tornado, brevity versus eternity (the push-pull that contains everything) is the condition for romantic love, sorrow, betrayal, joy. Countless meaningless profound transactions.
”
”
Marie-Helene Bertino (Beautyland)
“
This life has no meaning to me now. Do not grieve for me, my dear. Up until the moment I lost her, I had a wonderful life. These moments now are the ones that are hard. I’m eager to depart this world and rejoin her in the next. Then, and only then, will I finally be at peace.
”
”
Rose Wynters (My Wolf Protector (Wolf Town Guardians, #2))
“
Let love's eternal flame of hope hold back the shadows of the night.
”
”
Grace Willows
“
It was a romantic tale saying we were more than our bodies our soul lives on after death. We shed the outer body but the important bits the soul and heart lives on for eternity
”
”
Annette J. Dunlea
“
I could tell you a thousand times,
How much I love you,
It still would not do justice on how much I love you.
”
”
Stacey Chillemi (Eternal Love: Romantic Poetry Straight From The Heart)
“
Yes. Perhaps I have lived with love, not against it. Love is not just a bourgeois romantic notion of finding the one true match who will fill one's soul so full that it brims over and splashes out uninterruptedly as if from some eternal pump. Love is also in this life that I've lived here in the countryside. And when I chose this life and pursued it and didn't regret it, I learned that one should stick to one's decision, nurture it and not deviate—that this is an expression of love.
”
”
Bergsveinn Birgisson (Svar við bréfi Helgu)
“
[Donald] Keene observed [in a book entitled The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, 1988] that the Japanese sense of beauty has long sharply differed from its Western counterpart: it has been dominated by a love of irregularity rather than symmetry, the impermanent rather than the eternal and the simple rather than the ornate. The reason owes nothing to climate or genetics, added Keene, but is the result of the actions of writers, painters and theorists, who had actively shaped the sense of beauty of their nation.
Contrary to the Romantic belief that we each settle naturally on a fitting idea of beauty, it seems that our visual and emotional faculties in fact need constant external guidance to help them decide what they should take note of and appreciate. 'Culture' is the word we have assigned to the force that assists us in identifying which of our many sensations we should focus on and apportion value to.
”
”
Alain de Botton (The Architecture of Happiness)
“
Usually, the murmur that rises up from Paris by day is the city talking; in the night it is the city breathing; but here it is the city singing. Listen, then, to this chorus of bell-towers - diffuse over the whole the murmur of half a million people - the eternal lament of the river - the endless sighing of the wind - the grave and distant quartet of the four forests placed upon the hills, in the distance, like immense organpipes - extinguish to a half light all in the central chime that would otherwise be too harsh or too shrill; and then say whetehr you know of anything in the world more rich, more joyous, more golden, more dazzling, than this tumult of bells and chimes - this furnace of music - these thousands of brazen voices, all singing together in flutes of stone three hundred feet high, than this city which is but one orchestra - this symphony which roars like a tempest.
”
”
Victor Hugo
“
It is in the twenties that the actual momentum of life begins to slacken, and it is a simple soul indeed to whom as many things are significant and meaningful at thirty as at ten years before. At thirty an organ-grinder is a more or less moth-eaten man who grinds an organ — and once he was an organ-grinder! The unmistakable stigma of humanity touches all those impersonal and beautiful things that only youth ever grasps in their impersonal glory. A brilliant ball, gay with light romantic laughter, wears through its own silks and satins to show the bare framework of a man-made thing — oh, that eternal hand!— a play, most tragic and most divine, becomes merely a succession of speeches, sweated over by the eternal plagiarist in the clammy hours and acted by men subject to cramps, cowardice, and manly sentiment.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
So, where are you from?" Agent Carson asked Reyes. "Originally?"
I whirled around to face him again, this time pinning him with a warning glare. Carson was an FBI agent, but I was all about stealth. Surely she wouldn't pick up on my silent threat.
He studied my mouth, not the least bit worried about my warning glare, then said at last, "Here and there."
I relaxed against the seatback. He didn't say hell. Thank God he didn't say hell. It was always hard to explain to friends how, exactly, one's fiance was born and raised in the eternal flames of damnation. How his father was, in fact, public enemy number one. And how he escaped from hell and was born on earth as a human to be with his true love. As romantic as it all sounded, it was difficult to articulate without garnering a visit from men with butterfly nets.
”
”
Darynda Jones (Seventh Grave and No Body (Charley Davidson, #7))
“
Only in marriage do love and time,
eternal enemies, join forces.
”
”
Adam Zagajewski (Eternal Enemies: Poems)
“
Hers were gloriously improbable tales, stuffed with happy coincidences, eternal devotion, and the unwavering recognition of inner beauty.
”
”
Helen Oyeyemi (Mr. Fox)
“
God will not be tolerated. He instructs us to worship and fear Him.
In our world, where hundreds of things distract us from God, we have to intentionally and consistently remind ourselves of Him.
Because we don’t often think about the reality of who God is, we quickly forget that He is worthy to be worshiped and loved. We are to fear Him.
The answer to each of these questions is simply this: because He’s God. He has more of a right to ask us why so many people are starving. As much as we want God to explain himself to us, His creation, we are in no place to demand that He give an account to us.
Can you worship a God who isn’t obligated to explain His actions to you? Could it be your arrogance that makes you think God owes you an explanation?
If God is truly the greatest good on this earth, would He be loving us if He didn’t draw us toward what is best for us (even if that happens to be Himself)? Doesn’t His courting, luring, pushing, calling, and even “threatening” demonstrate His love? If He didn’t do all of that, wouldn’t we accuse Him of being unloving in the end, when all things are revealed?
Has your relationship with God actually changed the way you live? Do you see evidence of God’s kingdom in your life? Or are you choking it out slowly by spending too much time, energy, money, and thought on the things of this world?
Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next.
Jesus’ call to commitment is clear: He wants all or nothing.
Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream.
How could we think for even a second that something on this puny little earth compares to the Creator and Sustainer and Savior of it all?
True faith means holding nothing back; it bets everything on the hope of eternity.
When you are truly in love, you go to great lengths to be with the one you love. You’ll drive for hours to be together, even if it’s only for a short while. You don’t mind staying up late to talk. Walking in the rain is romantic, not annoying. You’ll willingly spend a small fortune on the one you’re crazy about. When you are apart from each other, it’s painful, even miserable. He or she is all you think about; you jump at any chance to be together.
There is nothing better than giving up everything and stepping into a passionate love relationship with God, the God of the universe who made galaxies, leaves, laughter, and me and you.
Do you recognize the foolishness of seeking fulfillment outside of Him?
Are you ready and willing to make yourself nothing? To take the very nature of a servant? To be obedient unto death?
True love requires sacrifice.
What are you doing right now that requires faith?
God doesn’t call us to be comfortable.
If one person “wastes” away his day by spending hours connecting with God, and the other person believes he is too busy or has better things to do than worship the Creator and Sustainer, who is the crazy one?
Am I loving my neighbor and my God by living where I live, by driving what I drive, by talking how I talk?”
If I stop pursuing Christ, I am letting our relationship deteriorate.
The way we live out our days is the way we will live our lives.
What will people say about your life in heaven? Will people speak of God’s work and glory through you? And even more important, how will you answer the King when He says, “What did you do with what I gave you?
”
”
Francis Chan (Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God)
“
I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain.
”
”
Catherine Breillat
“
Sure, love happens," he said finally. "But it's better to be realistic so shit is not constantly blowing up in your face. And love is way more likely to blow up in your face than to bring eternal happiness. And if it doesn't hurt you, then you're the one hurting someone else.
"Entering a relationship is borderline sadomasochistic. Especially when you can get everything you would from a romantic relationship from a friendship, without destroying anyone's life when it inevitably ends.
”
”
Emily Henry (Beach Read)
“
Did I ever tell you that my mother and father started out as pen pals? They wrote these long, unabashedly affectionate love letters to one another, peppered with clichés and pie-in-the-sky proclamations of eternal devotion. Despite my father’s eventual dishonesty and unfaithfulness, I have to believe he meant every word he wrote at that time, and it was admittedly romantic, uncovering my parents’ yellowed letters, all soft, crumbling corners and black ink stains, one rainy afternoon. Because how can anyone scrawl lies, really, in their own handwriting, the evidence of your own betrayal right in front of you? I sat cross-legged on the floor, holding my breath as I unfolded each letter, fragile and expectant, like a little girl opening her presents on Christmas morning. I sat there and soaked up my parents’ love for each other, and then I wondered where all those feelings had escaped to. I wondered where love went when it was lost—did it travel far, across miles and oceans and forests and deserts, or did it linger somewhere nearby, just waiting for a chance to be summoned again? Wherever it was, I could only hope it had ended up settling somewhere quieter, safer.
”
”
Marla Miniano (From This Day Forward)
“
Rider was of the romantic mind that in this world there was only one perfect woman for him. He'd been lucky enough to find her and smart enough to marry her. He'd be damned if he'd give her up! Even if it took an eternity, he'd find her and make her love him again.
”
”
Charlotte McPherren (Song of the Willow)
“
In real life women often complain about the reluctance of their male partners to engage in meaningful dialogue, but in the world of romantic fantasy heroes willingly participate in verbal discussions. They fence, they flirt, they express their anger, they talk out the confounding details of their relationships with the heroine. No hero of romance will ever respond to the eternal feminine query, "What's wrong?" with the word, "Nothing." He will tell her what's wrong; they will argue about it, perhaps, but they will be communicating, and eventually, as they resolve their various conflicts, the war of words will end. One of the most significant victories the heroine achieves at the close of the novel is that the hero is able to express his love for her not only physically but also verbally.
”
”
Linda Barlow and Jayne Ann Krentz
“
I believe that love can do anything—it can change how one sees things, how one sees this world. It can turn a monster into a man or turn a man into a monster. And it has the ability to blind you. If you did love a monster, you wouldn't even know it. Love is a powerful thing. Love can conquer death—nothing is as romantic as the thought of being eternal simply because another soul owns your heart entirely.
”
”
Rae Hachton (Pretty in Black (Pretty in Black #1))
“
i've loved you since the sun first rose," he read. "Ive loved you through God send Catastrophe and manmade Disaster. I've loved you though my heart stopped beating and my eyes ran dry, through time and in spite of it, for our love has its roots in eternity and cannot fall victim to time or death. My love has no shame, no pride. it is only what it is, always has been and always will be. It is Yours. all Yours. Only Yours
Gregory went cold with fear-
”
”
Trevor Meldal-Johnsen (Always: A Love Story)
“
She closed her eyes briefly, feeling sick. Olivia had experienced strangulation before. Having to look directly into the face of the person who was killing you made the experience beyond awful. But there were worse things than that. Staring into the void of unresolved memory, living an eternal mystery, waking up night after night seeing the face of someone you desperately wanted to save but having not the slightest clue how to do it—all that was worse. If going through with this experience gave her the answers she needed, if it gave her peace, it would be well worth one-hundred-and-thirty seconds of fear and pain.
”
”
Leslie Parrish (Cold Touch (Extrasensory Agents, #2))
“
Idiot!" he cried, "that from you! Here I sit, young Anthony, as I'll sit for a generation or more and watch such gay souls as you and Dick and Gloria Gilbery go past me, dancing and singing and loving and hating one another and being moved, being eternally moved. And I am moved only by my lack of emotion. I shall sit and the snow will come--oh, for a Caramel to take notes--and another winter and I shall be thirty and you and Dick and Gloria will go on being eternally moved and dancing by me and singing. But after you've all gone I'll be saying things for new Dicks to write down, and listening to the disillusions and cynicisms and emotions of new Anthonys--yes, and talking to new Glorias about the tans of summers yet to come."
The firelight flurried up on the hearth. Maury left the window, stirred the blaze with a poker, and dropped a log upon the andirons. Then he sat back in his chair and the remnants of his voice faded in the new fire that spit red and yellow along the bark.
"After all, Anthony, it's you who are very romantic and young. It's you who are infinitely more susceptible and afraid of your calm being broken. It's me who tries again and again to be moved--let myself go a thousand times and I'm always me. Nothing--quite--stirs me.
"Yet," he murmured after another long pause, "there was something about that little girl with her absurd tan that was eternally old--like me.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
“
They say you never forget your first glimpse of Gehenna. Over the tall buildings the sky swirls with orange and red, true titian, a feature of the unique atmosphere. Of course that same air would kill human beings; hence they built the entire city inside a dome. Eternal sunset, that’s why the place is so wild. You know the feeling you get, just before full dark? Sundown makes you feel like the world burgeons with possibility, and that’s Gehenna for you.
Like any other romantic notion, it’s based on bullshit, of course. Gehenna isn’t the land of eternal sunset and infinite potential. The gas in the atmosphere just makes it impossible to see the sun.
”
”
Ann Aguirre (Grimspace (Sirantha Jax, #1))
“
Call it eternal optimism or romantic rebellion, but one of these days karma would stop flipping her the bird and pay it forward.
”
”
Marina Adair (Need You for Keeps (Heroes of St. Helena, #1))
“
Eternity is a long time, but only a day when you are in love.
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
LOVE IS A SUNSET
Love is a feeling
Best expressed through fleeting dust
Across the night sky
”
”
Trisha North (From Here To Eternity)
“
She couldn’t substitute Falco for Luca. She couldn’t substitute a series of reckless romantic moments for a life with someone honest and true.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Starling (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #3))
“
Marriage is the commitment to make a lifetime of a love, as one will most probably be creating new life forms merged of the parents. Love is what happens when one finds someone else one respects enough to wish literally union in the form of one's irreplaceable time and possibly spawn. If you look at the process of breeding, it's quite romantic: We work, so let Another be made of Us.
”
”
Brett Stevens (Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity)
“
He searched her eyes, and there it was. A sense of time slowing down. A world melting away with only two souls remaining. An eternity of longing. Bittersweet and desperate.
Couldn’t she feel it, too?
”
”
Kerrelyn Sparks
“
And no matter how romantic and beautiful Greece was, I wasn't going to break my vows to Henry, even if they technically didn't apply for the next six months. I loved him no matter which season it was.
”
”
Aimee Carter (The Goddess Hunt (Goddess Test, #1.5))
“
For almost five centuries, Holmberg’s Mistake—the supposition that Native Americans lived in an eternal, unhistoried state—held sway in scholarly work, and from there fanned out to high school textbooks, Hollywood movies, newspaper articles, environmental campaigns, romantic adventure books, and silk-screened T-shirts. It existed in many forms and was embraced both by those who hated Indians and those who admired them. Holmberg’s Mistake explained the colonists’ view of most Indians as incurably vicious barbarians; its mirror image was the dreamy stereotype of the Indian as a Noble Savage. Positive or negative, in both images Indians lacked what social scientists call agency—they were not actors in their own right, but passive recipients of whatever windfalls or disasters happenstance put in their way.
”
”
Charles C. Mann (1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus)
“
Be at peace, darling, be at peace, be at peace. Do you remember me? Do you remember? You are, indeed, my only and my last love. Be at peace, I am with you. Think of me, I will be with you, because you and I did not love each other only for one moment, but forever. Do you remember me? Do you remember? Do you remember? And now I feel your tears. Be at peace. It is sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet for me to sleep.
”
”
Aleksandr Kuprin
“
What’s it like to live forever?
Nicholas almost dropped the glass he had been holding. “What?”
“What’s it like to know you will never die?”
He should have known, he thought. She was a smart woman.
“Lonely.” He said answering truthfully.
He sighed. “It’s not romantic, or fun, or even exciting., It’s just lonely. I have watched
everyone that I have ever loved, die. My family, my friends, my lovers and neighbors. It
is not a fate I would ever wish on my worst enemy.
”
”
Grace Willows (The Midnight Hour)
“
As Ian popped the lock and opened the car door, he turned to Phoebe. “Can you do me a favour?”
She immediately stepped toward him, fully embracing their new mature relationship. “Of course.”
Ian looked pointedly over his own shoulder and said, “Tell me the truth. Does this car make my glowing ass look fat?”
She’d naturally followed the direction of his gaze, but now she looked up, hard, into his eyes. And she smiled back at him despite herself. She even laughed. “You’re an idiot.”
“When things get too serious, I get a rash.”
She pointedly looked back down at his nether regions, despite the fact doing so made her blush. Still, she spoke coolly, dryly. “Not on your ass.”
If Ian believed in love, that would’ve been it for him. Instantly. Enthrallingly. Eternally. Instead, he just laughed. “Thank God for that. See if there’s anything remotely clothinglike in the backseat or the trunk.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Do or Die (Reluctant Heroes #1))
“
That’s the same idea that comes to us through the German Romantics, as well as out of India. To Goethe’s “Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis” (“Everything transitory is but a reference”),5 Nietzsche adds another point: “Alles Unvergängliche—das ist nur ein Gleichnis” (“All things eternal are only references as well”).
”
”
Joseph Campbell (Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell))
“
The power of a volcano is no match for the power of a soul mate. The love of soul mates is not always romantic. It is eternal and unconditional, it transcends time and space, yet it can be the love of parent and child, of best friends, of siblings, of grandparents or cousins, or many other platonic forms. Perhaps your soul mate is a college professor with whom you take a course, whose passion and knowledge for the subject he is teaching influences your own professional trajectory. Once you finish the course, you move on and so does he; your work together in this lifetime has been completed. We have families of souls, rather than just one soul mate, and we are being connected all the time. Sometimes it is only for mere moments, yet even this brief amount of time can change one’s life completely. Whether you are together for ten minutes, ten months, or ten years is not as important as the lessons that are learned, the directions, and the reminders that occur when these encounters happen.
”
”
Brian L. Weiss (Miracles Happen: The Transformational Healing Power of Past-Life Memories)
“
I craved a connection to the eternal, an undeniable encounter with the ineffable. Something was calling me, but I couldn't name what it was. I thought perhaps I was looking for someone or something to love with my whole heart. Whether that meant religion or romantic love, surely God or men would take me out of myself; either one would do.
”
”
Ada Calhoun (Crush)
“
The Reich Youth Leader was Baldur von Schirach, a romantically minded young man and an energetic organizer, whose mother was an American and whose great-grandfather, a Union officer, had lost a leg at Bull Run; he told his American jailers at Nuremberg that he had become an anti-Semite at the age of seventeen after reading a book called Eternal Jew, by Henry Ford.
”
”
William L. Shirer (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany)
“
No matter what the whiny poets say, love isn’t as all encompassing, eternal, and fervent as the Romantics have led us to believe. It can be compartmentalized, momentary, and considered. I can fall in love twelve times walking down the block. Once with a smile, another time with the sway of a ponytail as it bounces left to right with every step, and again with the way a girl places a hand on her boyfriend’s shoulder absentmindedly. But when we express love, when we voice a term that we all define together, we get lost. You say one thing, she hears another. Each of us tells himself a story about what this other person means. But words aren’t fixed. Words are merely containers that we pour meaning into and try to give it shape. If people could just accept that, they’d be a whole lot happier.
”
”
Joshua V. Scher (Here & There)
“
Most of our failures in love involve self-deception. The other was not all that excited about the relationship, but we projected our enthusiasm onto the other and charged ahead. Or the other was hopeful, but we were cynical and attributed that same motivation to the other. We can ignore the needs of an other because they are not impulses we feel; we can ignore warning signs because they do not fit into our vision of what should be.
”
”
Brett Stevens (Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity)
“
Ye. Perhaps I have lived with love, not against it. Love is not just a bourgeois romantic notion of finding the one true match who will fill one's soul so full that it brims over and splashes uninterruptedly as if from some eternal pump. Love is also in this life that I've lived here in the countryside. And when I chose this life and pursued it an didn't regret it, I learned that one should stick to one's decision, nurture it and not deviate--that this is an expression of love.
”
”
Bergsveinn Birgisson (Svar við bréfi Helgu)
“
I Am Here (The Sonnet)
Look into my eyes,
I wanna listen to your silence.
Tell me of the storms unpassed,
I wanna be your expression express.
Tell me what you have been through,
Tell me of the heartaches unhealed.
Speak the pain you could never utter,
I am here, I am near, you are my priority!
I cannot promise you all the happiness,
Nor can I promise you eternal peace.
But if and when the sky crashes,
I shall be your human shield.
It's okay if you come late to me.
I am here, I am near, I have come early.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission)
“
There is little chance my two heads could have known each other in real life, but I wanted to imagine they were two lovers separated by war. The Crusades, perhaps. The Crusades seemed like a romantic, violence-soaked backdrop for this sort of thing. Maybe they were victims of a single guillotine blade during the French Revolution. Or perhaps the early American frontier—had they been scalped? I pulled back the gel ice packs to peek in. No, no, these heads had their scalps intact. Regardless, here they were, together, on their way to the eternal pyre.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
“
Victor Hugo's mighty settings where dream figures immeasurably larger than life stalked through an everlasting battle of antitheses, had carried them away by their epic sweep and sent them gesticulating to watch the sun go down behind ruins or to watch life go by in the false but superb lighting of a Romantic fifth act. Then Musset had come and overwhelmed them with his passion and his tears...a new, more human world had opened before them, conquering them through pity and the eternal cry of anguish they were to associate henceforth with every mortal thing. (31)
”
”
Émile Zola
“
The emphasis on shifting essences, uncertainty, and fiercely contrasting opposite states was, of course, neither new nor unique to Byron. He and the other Romantic poets, however, took the ideas and emotions to a particularly intense extreme. Shelley's belief that poetry "marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change," and that it "subdues to union, under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things," was in sympathy not only with the views of Byron but those of Keats as well. "Negative capability," wrote Keats, exists "when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching out after fact & reason." The "poetical Character," he said:
has no self-it is every thing and nothing-It has no character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation.
”
”
Kay Redfield Jamison (Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament)
“
Unfortunately, the eternality of the “in-love” experience is fiction, not fact. The late psychologist Dr. Dorothy Tennov conducted long-range studies on the in-love phenomenon. After studying scores of couples, she concluded that the average life span of a romantic obsession is two years. If it is a secretive love affair, it may last a little longer. Eventually, however, we all descend from the clouds and plant our feet on earth again. Our eyes are opened, and we see the warts of the other person. Her endearing “quirks” are now merely annoying. His sharp sense of humor now wounds. Those little bumps we overlooked when we were in love now become huge mountains.
”
”
Gary Chapman (The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts)
“
the testimony to that faithfulness which made him in his own eyes the equal of the impeccable men who never fall out of the ranks. Stein’s words, “Romantic! — Romantic!” seem to ring over those distances that will never give him up now to a world indifferent to his failings and his virtues, and to that ardent and clinging affection that refuses him the dole of tears in the bewilderment of a great grief and of eternal separation. From the moment the sheer truthfulness of his last three years of life carries the day against the ignorance, the fear, and the anger of men, he appears no longer to me as I saw him last — a white speck catching all the dim light left upon a sombre coast and the darkened sea — but greater and more pitiful in the loneliness of his soul, that remains even for her who loved him best a cruel and insoluble mystery.
”
”
Joseph Conrad (Delphi Complete Works of Joseph Conrad)
“
STARLIGHT and THUNDER
The Limits of Art is an anthological collection for the ages...for a lifetime. A veritable ark containing excerpts from the sound and fury representative of the finest literary scriveners the world has yet produced.
Unequivocally, intellectual nourishment breeds a fire in the mind...a conflagration of ideas and incendiary thoughts that furnish the spirit with conviction and courage to confront the ballet and ballistics of life with passion, wit, tenderness, reason, resolve, humor, imagination and unconditional curiosity.
Amidst the clamor brought forth by the alarums and excursions of modern day pontifications, nevertheless, conform and commit your mind to the abolition of ignorance!
Accede your sensibilities to the rapture of beauty and her ineffable grace. For beauty is enchantment, a romantic allegiance to the rhapsodic seduction celebratory of the ephemeral, the eternal and the esoteric nature and narratives of fictive splendor, which valorously emanate from this voluptuous volume.
This magisterial tome is a figurative brocade of both starlight and thunder transcribed into an insatiable verbal delirium groping toward an unbridled exposition on life’s wonders and mysteries.
Drink mightily from its gilded chalice.
”
”
Albert Thomas Bifarelli
“
All these appeals to art to set herself more in harmony with modern progress and civilisation, and to make herself the mouthpiece for the voice of humanity, these appeals to art 'to have a mission,' are appeals which should be made to the public. The art which has fulfilled the conditions of beauty has fulfilled all conditions: it is for the critic to teach the people how to find in the calm of such art the highest expression of their own most stormy passions. 'I have no reverence,' said Keats, 'for the public, nor for anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the memory of great men and the principle of Beauty.'
Such then is the principle which I believe to be guiding and underlying our English Renaissance, a Renaissance many-sided and wonderful, productive of strong ambitions and lofty personalities, yet for all its splendid achievements in poetry and in the decorative arts and in painting, for all the increased comeliness and grace of dress, and the furniture of houses and the like, not complete. For there can be no great sculpture without a beautiful national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that; no great drama without a noble national life, and the commercial spirit of England has killed that too.
It is not that the flawless serenity of marble cannot bear the burden of the modern intellectual spirit, or become instinct with the fire of romantic passion - the tomb of Duke Lorenzo and the chapel of the Medici show us that - but it is that, as Theophile Gautier used to say, the visible world is dead, LE MONDE VISIBLE A DISPARU.
”
”
Oscar Wilde (The English Renaissance of Art)
“
Many of my friends around the world express surprise at the Palestinian attachment to place of origin and concerns for family ties. Some even scoff at it and contrast it with their own open-armed acceptance of adventure, discovery, a nomadic lifestyle and residence in places that they choose and change according to their fancy, without the slightest regret at leaving family or even homeland behind. They remind me that the world is wider and more beautiful than 'our villages' and 'our families'. I understand this beautiful sense of the vastness of the world. Like them, I love movement, journeys, and living in new places. What these friends forget is that it is they who choose to distance themselves. They are the ones who take the decision and make the plans and then present their passports (recognized everywhere) and get on planes and trains and cars and motorcycles and go to places where three conditions that the Palestinian cannot meet are fulfilled: first, that it is their preference and choice to go to specifically these places; second, that these places always welcome them; and third and most important, that it is in their power to return to their home country whenever they desire and decide. The Palestinian forced to become a refugee, to migrate, and to go into exile from his homeland in the sixty years since the Nakba of 1948, or the forty since the June 1967 War, suffers miseries trying to obtain a document by which he will be recognized at borders. He suffers miseries trying to obtain a passport from another state because he is stateless and has to go through Kafkaesque interrogations before being granted entry visa to any place in the world, even the Arab states. The Palestinian is forbidden to enter his own country by land, sea, or air, even in a coffin. It is not a matter of romantic attachment to a place but of eternal exclusion from it. The Palestinian stripped of an original identity is a palm tree broken in the middle. My foreign friends have control over the details of their lives but a single Israeli solder can control the details of the life of any Palestinian. This is the difference. This is the story.
”
”
Mourid Barghouti (ولدت هناك .. ولدت هنا)
“
A film, The Lost Continent, throws a clear light on the current myth of exoticism. It is a big documentary on 'the East', the pretext of which is some undefined ethnographic expedition, evidently false, incidentally, led by three or four Italians into the Malay archipelago. The film is euphoric, everything in it is easy, innocent. Our explorers are good fellows, who fill up their leisure time with child-like amusements: they play with their mascot, a little bear (a mascot is indispensable in all expeditions: no film about the polar region is without its tame seal, no documentary on the tropics is without its monkey), or they comically upset a dish of spaghetti on the deck. Which means that these good people, anthropologists though they are, don't bother much with historical or sociological problems. Penetrating the Orient never means more for them than a little trip in a boat, on an azure sea, in an essentially sunny country. And this same Orient which has today become the political centre of the world we see here all flattened, made smooth and gaudily coloured like an old-fashioned postcard.
The device which produces irresponsibility is clear: colouring the world is always a means of denying it (and perhaps one should at this point begin an inquiry into the use of colour in the cinema). Deprived of all substance, driven back into colour, disembodied through the very glamour of the 'images', the Orient is ready for the spiriting away which the film has in store for it. What with the bear as a mascot and the droll spaghetti, our studio anthropologists will have no trouble in postulating an Orient which is exotic in form, while being in reality profoundly similar to the Occident, at least the Occident of spiritualist thought. Orientals have religions of their own? Never mind, these variations matter very little compared to the basic unity of idealism. Every rite is thus made at once specific and eternal, promoted at one stroke into a piquant spectacle and a quasi-Christian symbol.
...If we are concerned with fisherman, it is not the type of fishing which is whown; but rather, drowned in a garish sunset and eternalized, a romantic essense of the fisherman, presented not as a workman dependent by his technique and his gains on a definite society, but rather as the theme of an eternal condition, in which man is far away and exposed to the perils of the sea, and woman weeping and praying at home. The same applies to refugees, a long procession of which is shown at the beginning, coming down a mountain: to identify them is of course unnecessary: they are eternal essences of refugees, which it is in the nature of the East to produce.
”
”
Roland Barthes (Mythologies)
“
Love’s space
In the distance, not too far but far enough,
I had once seen her walking with someone,
And that single, casual visual encounter was enough,
To think of her always and that mysterious someone,
They walked for a while and then sat under a tree,
There they spoke of past while they were still discovering the present,
And I wondered of my own future under the tree,
Long after they had left, when I was dealing with my own present,
I had somehow anchored my likings on her,
My thoughts always felt her presence,
She was there under the tree and I was with her,
Although in reality she was exploring her own present in that someone’s presence,
Yet I loved to return to the tree and be there for hours,
Thinking of her and the future that could be,
Her and mine, just ours, and then it would create for us unending hours,
I so deeply wished if it could be, only if it could be,
The tree is there, the stream too,
I am always there between the stream and the tree,
They both know it too,
But what I wish for the girl and myself, the stream wishes for the tree,
So whenever I am under the tree thinking of her,
The stream flows by looking at the motionless and stationary tree,
And then both remind me of her,
Both the stream and the tree,
Now it is winter and the stream has frozen,
Just like the tree, motionless and anchored in eternity of nowhere,
And in me, just like the stream, her thoughts and feelings are frozen,
Because she now is the everywhere and everything in my emotional state called nowhere,
Like the stream that to express her feelings of love towards the never moving tree,
Froze itself completely and turned still,
To feel the feelings of her darling and ever still tree,
That even in her frozen state she loves still, in ways silent and still,
So I share the stream’s irony or maybe I share the trees stillness,
Its silence, where it quietly discloses that it never moves anywhere because it loves the stream,
That always flows through its roots of love, and when the tree feels this romantic stillness,
It decides to lie anchored on the banks of the stream, to enjoy his love’s accessible stream,
And I feel the same for her whenever I am under the tree,
Or with the stream that flows beside it,
For she still exists there, frozen for my sake by the always still tree,
And her reflection too is frozen in the running water of the stream, and I love feeling the wonder of it,
All of it, the stream, the tree, she; and her frozen reflection in the stream’s water,
And whenever I am here, the tree bends a bit, the stream slows her pace,
And I see her beautiful face in the flowing water, the stream’s clear water,
And then I too slow down my life’s pace, in this love’s own space, where time always loses its pace!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
...here, just as everywhere else, many men are far from skilled Latin lovers that legend would have them. ... In some ways, of course, Italian men are different and in my opinion got - and deserve - their reputation because of their extreme warmth, actively affectionate nature and sentimental romanticism, not necessarily because of their sexual bravura. ... They also appear to be less “generous” than men from some other countries. ... Italian men love being on the receiving end of oral sex but generally shy away from giving it. “Oh, there are a few older guys who like it,” says one male friend, “but most men think it’s kind of icky.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
could it be that they [Italian men] care more about romance than sex, especially when they are on the receiving end? ... ...I was on the lookout for some good sex, an attitude that led colleagues with whom I then shared an office, Federico and Gerardo, to say that I was “the only maschio in the room”. Both claimed that they only care about sex and want it when they are in love.
”
”
Sari Gilbert (My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City)
“
For a moment with you, I wait an eternity.
”
”
Caroline George (Dearest Josephine)
“
The Promethean = the Faustian = the eternal seeker = the eternal wanderer = the eternal quester. The Promethean is a romantic, a striving figure, an outsider, a non-conformist. He’s often alone. Conventional society has rejected him and, more importantly, he has rejected conventional society. The HyperHuman plays the Great Game – the God Game. His objective it to transform himself into God ... to undergo the ultimate metamorphosis. The HyperHuman is a new kind of knight, a knight of the mind. He seeks to merit the title of “knight” and lives courageously by a noble code. His life has total focus and purpose. His mind is always focused on the Holy Grail. The search for the Grail is the symbol of the HyperHuman’s search for heaven, for God, to become God.
”
”
Mike Hockney (HyperHumanity (The God Series Book 11))
“
The night,” he repeats, his thumb stroking the skin of my stomach through the fabric of my dress. “That is precisely why people take my kingdom for granted. No one sees the darkness, and yet it’s everywhere. We are surrounded by an entire universe of it. It came before us, it will live on long after us. Even the stars might form and then die, but the darkness will always be there.
“That also happens to be why the Night Kingdom is considered the most romantic of realms. Not only do lovers meet under the cloak of darkness, darkness is the most eternal of all things. To declare your love until the end of night is the most sacred and undying of vows.” More quietly he adds, “It’s the oath I will take when I bind myself to my queen.
”
”
Laura Thalassa (Rhapsodic (The Bargainer, #1))
“
Our universe of love!
Let us wander like these carefree clouds,
All across the sky,
Let us create love’s heart beats and its sounds,
And then let the two hearts freely fly,
Like these clouds in the sky,
Where love abounds,
And we float like these clouds by and by,
To create a feeling that knows no bounds,
Where there is only one destiny,
The eternity of you and me,
And as time every creation confounds in its final act of tyranny,
And nothing exists now between you and me,
Neither the space, nor time or light,
For now there shall only be,
You and me, no space, no time and no light,
An endless you floating through the infinite me,
In this state of nothingness and eternal silence,
Then as your heart beats for me Irma, and mine for thee,
We shall rescue the universe from this sentence,
And create a universe for you and me,
By lending it our heart beats,
Then as the romantic sound waves travel through the darkness,
And the darkness finally retreats,
Then the universe gets created in its loveliness,
And in it Irma, lie our heart beats,
In every atom, every corner, every ray of light,
And as my passion your passions meets,
We become our own and the universe’s infinite delight,
Where now we are what universe is,
And the universe is our creation,
For whatever there is,
It is only our heart beats, our feelings and our single sensation,
That lies in this universe of everything,
But for you and me, it is our abode of love,
And whenever you whisper and I hear something,
It is the whisper of endless love, your and just our love,
Where the stars are formed every moment,
And the universe expands at its happy pace,
It develops few feelings benevolent,
And creates for you and me, our secret space,
That lies beyond the limits of time,
Where even light sees nothing,
For lovers love to reside in infinite moments of time,
Where even a small thing has the potential to be the God of everything,
Just like our love that for now is the creator of the universe,
Where our love thrives and travels everywhere,
You within me while I flow within you, and together we traverse,
To finally lie in our secret somewhere, that for everyone else is nowhere, only for you and me always there somewhere!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Loving her again and again
It was romantic,
Everything seemed idyllic,
There she was everywhere,
And I too was there somewhere,
Life was breathing,
With our hearts still beating,
Like a stream always flowing,
In my memories and around me she was glowing,
Like a midsummer fair,
Where joys with merriments have an eternal affair,
Where moments end to begin again,
In this world my love Irma, I shall love you again and again!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
In love then and in love now
In love then and in love now,
The mind never protested,
And I fell in love,
Because the heart too never resisted,
Time grew on us together,
Both of us, she and I as well,
Almost like two different people bearing the same feather,
And thus, in love we fell,
She became the sun that only shone for me,
While I always believed I was something similar for her,
And we became eternal lovers, and that is how it was meant to be,
She loving me and I loving her,
Her skin, her lips, her eyes were the only beauty’s icons I wanted to feel and see,
And in moments of love I spilled over her like a wave of joy,
And I loved her with every part of me,
Like a child, like a man and at times like a youthful innocent boy,
So, I continue to love her everyday and today,
With the clarity of my mind,
Because my heart beats for her everyday,
And wherever I may see, it is her eyes, her lips and her, that I find,
And it shall be so today and tomorrow too, because it is a feeling pleasuresome,
To love her now as I loved her then,
And when I think of you Irma, time does not become burdensome,
Because somehow it feels now, as it felt then!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating. Simone Weil
”
”
Randy Alcorn (Heaven: A Comprehensive Guide to Everything the Bible Says About Our Eternal Home)
“
Our earthly romantic relationships are supposed to be a reflection of, or a peek into, our eternal relationship with our Savior.
”
”
Jonathan "JP" Pokluda (Outdated: Find Love That Lasts When Dating Has Changed)
“
I want to promise eternity, but you're the paragraph I'm living now.
”
”
Ara Salka (Ends And Edits: Unedited Love)
“
An inferno of need and a longing so intense, so potent that the rest of the world ceased to exist, engulfed her. Jace kissed her as he did everything else -- with everything that he had and was. He knew just how to hold her, how to move his hands over her back. When to deepen the kiss in a way that sent her already hungry body into overdrive.
His kiss was like a drug, and she was experiencing her first taste after what felt like an eternity.
”
”
Donna Grant (A Cowboy Kind of Love (Heart of Texas #6))
“
He cupped her cheeks in his hands and pressed his forehead against hers, reminding her of a truth she had long forgotten—that this suspended moment in time had always been, and was never lost, an eternity perched upon an instant of knowing. In such a way he held her, until time ceased to exist.
”
”
Leigh G. Wynn (The Eye of Elektron (The Sumrectian Series Book 1))
“
Praise for Meet You in the Middle “Sharp, clever repartee propels this irresistible, very modern, wonderfully warm and optimistic romance that asks the eternal question, Do opposites really attract?” —New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz “Daniels has written one of those romantic
”
”
Devon Daniels (Meet You in the Middle)
“
I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain. Catherine Breillat
”
”
Kat Blackthorne (Devil (The Halloween Boys, #4))
“
Her
Her thoughts fall like rain drops from somewhere above,
And they remind me of her and our moments of love,
Her memories rain as kisses covering my every thought,
And they remind me of the battles of love by us together fought,
Her smiles spread like the sunshine that lights up everything,
And among this array of things, my heart too is one thing,
Her eyes steal every view floating in my vision,
And it feels like the most welcome treason,
Her voice sounds like a conversation between the rose and a butterfly,
And I wish she were a butterfly and this rose were I,
Her presence feels like the most beautiful wonder of reality,
And when I look at her, she appears to be bathed in superlative sublimity,
Her tenderly moving lips remind me of Eden,
And I wonder if she is the one, originally created by God as the most beautiful maiden,
Her movements feel like romantic shaking of flowers by the slow breeze,
To watch her in this graceful act puts my heart and mind at an eternal ease,
Her expressions that adorn her face,
Make me believe, that it is in her, Eden somehow hid its every grace,
Her everything, her every act, her every movement,
Wants me to steal her from time’s every moment,
Her wonder invades me subtly and then completely,
And I claim, “Irma I love you totally!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
She has been all I’ve craved for what seems like an eternity. A long-awaited burst of life in a heart that’s been dead for so long.
The fire to my wick.
A throbbing pulse inside my veins.
She’s beauty, in and out. Her name, Lucille, translates to light, and there has never been a name more suitable for anyone. She’s a beam of brightness in an otherwise dark and depressing world.
Darkness and light. Dubh and Lucille.
She pulls me with her into her light and I show her that there is beauty in darkness.
”
”
Dolores Lane (Bloody Fingers & Red Lipstick)
“
Heart’s deviation
Let us travel from now to then, from today to tomorrow,
Let us fulfill our desires and wishes in a row,
Because they lie sequenced in the order only you and I know,
And you can see them all over my face while I see them appearing on your beautiful brow,
Let me take you into the clouds and get wet,
Let me take you there where I first saw you and then our hearts met,
Because in that place everything is still wet,
Although there are no clouds and the sky is clear, I wonder from where it could such a cover of wetness get,
Let me take you there and together discover its secret,
Let us know what no one else knows about it,
Because the place is mysteriously always wet and it is beyond my wit,
Or it could be it is just my false impression of it,
Let me then make a confession, that since you left nothing has returned,
Let me reveal to you the world that appears deceptively wet as it is actually the world that has endlessly burned,
Because when from the distance you see fields of burned desires and wishes turned to ash, they look like wet surfaces where everything is frozen in stillness and unturned,
And it is from ash covered places like these life has all its ploys learned,
Let me take you away from here too, somewhere far, very far, where burning is not required,
Let us travel there where heart’s find whatever they have wished for and desired,
Because they say utopia is somewhere where human feelings are never by desperate moments mired,
And in this outlandish possibility let us seek each other and never feel tired,
Let me love you behind the clouds and beyond the blue sky,
Let us go there where everything burns: the sun, the stars, the universe, and everything that flies by,
Because there, maybe when you see them burning in the fire of eternity and cry,
You might realise why few places appear to be always wet long after their fires die,
Let me look at your face, your eyes; and understand you a bit more,
Let me see you in reality’s dress and then let me your every sentiment explore,
Because when we realise what burning feels like it is then your true soul peeps from your skin’s every pore,
Then let me kiss you and see if you too ever felt wet, and feel the corner of your heart where all your feelings you store,
Let me let you explore me in the same ways,
Let me let you experience the wetness of my soul, that has burned endlessly for nights and days,
Because only then you might be able to see what you could never feel because you knew not how to deal with heart’s ways,
As it is with all of us, in the beginning we let our minds dictate the darkness of our nights and the brightness of our days,
Let me cover you with my desires and their fires and everything that you wish to feel,
Let me show you how human lives turn and spin on the fate’s wheel,
Because sometimes what appears to be the reality is actually not real,
Maybe it will be the misadventure of our hearts but then if you look at the world and the universe even real sometimes seems unreal,
Let me introduce you to the world where everything is real because there is no fake dimension,
Let us then live in this romantic moment this romantic sensation,
Because in the miscellany of my feelings, desires, and endless wishes, your feelings appear to be my heart’s only native creation,
So let me, my love Irma, make you feel what true impenitence feels like when you do not obey your mind but you follow your heart’s every selfless deviation!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain.
”
”
Kat Blackthorne (Devil (The Halloween Boys, #4))
“
falling in love, gives us a momentarily restored vision of one other human being—a sort of insight into his or her eternal identity. For a brief time our romantic attraction transfigures this person, allowing us to see the very best in him or her, to ignore or forgive the person’s flaws, and to be endlessly fascinated by him or her. One day, we will see every resurrected person in this way, as God sees each of us now.
”
”
Jonathan Grant (Divine Sex: A Compelling Vision for Christian Relationships in a Hypersexualized Age)
“
That also happens to be why the Night Kingdom is considered the most romantic of realms. Not only do lovers meet under the cloak of darkness, darkness is the most eternal of all things. To declare your love until the end of night is the most sacred and undying of vows.
”
”
Laura Thalassa (Rhapsodic (The Bargainer, #1))
“
She wanted to be alive and mortal and eternally temporary with him, and that was why she cried. [i love that this isn't in any sort of romantic context]
”
”
R. F. Kuang
“
Illusions of a lover!
Illusions have neither a past nor any present,
They always seem to hang in the moments of the future,
For when experienced one never knows what they mean or represent,
But they always arise from the person’s conscience and the stature,
As for those who are in love everything is an illusion,
When with her even real appears more real,
When not with her even real seems unreal, a sort of hallucination,
A dawn of new reality where everything is surreal,
Only her smiles, her charms, her kisses, and her deep eyes exist,
And the heart seeks its indulgences in them,
And ah how much like a wanton kid it does persist,
To only chase her, and seek her as if she were the most precious gem,
The sun peeps in from the still and motionless curtains,
And the weary eyes open hoping its rays will bring her along,
But then everything drowns in the loud calls of martins,
Until every sound resembles her voice and her beautiful song,
Then nothing exists, neither the Sun, nor the curtains, and not even martins,
Only your song and your endless memories,
And the heart dutifully warbles to mind these emotional bulletins,
So, I rest my head on a pile of your feelings and bid farewell to all my worries!
And now it is me and your feelings spread all over,
The heart stops beating, the mind stops to think,
For now Irma, begins the journey called forever,
Where moments do not pass as eyes blink,
Because the heart does not beat and the mind does not think,
Making time irrelevant and unnecessary,
And as in this moment called forever we sink,
We now only seek what is necessary,
You, your memories, your charms and your smiles,
As this restful state extends into eternity,
It marks an end of life’s tribulations and trials,
Because now your feelings envelope me to create a new feeling of serenity!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
“
Desert rose!
Like the traveler who wants to go everywhere,
Like the sunshine that falls on everything,
I want to travel too, but in one direction, that can be anywhere,
As long as it leads to you, because without you, the world means nothing,
Like the desert I want to spread endlessly,
Like the wind I desire to be free,
And chase your mirages over sand dunes tirelessly,
And then wherever you are, there I shall be,
Like the desert let your love be clear and unobstructed,
Like the calm of the desert let us spread everywhere,
Then in this desert let everything else be restricted,
Because I want it to be your representation everywhere,
Like an oasis oozing from the bosom of the desert,
Like the mirage of water to a thirsty desert wanderer on a hot day,
Let your love just one feeling assert,
That like an oasis you will flow through me everyday,
Like the beautiful desert rose,
Like the endless desert,
Let your feelings of love within me repose,
As I slowly, but surely into your devout disciple convert,
Like it first my love, before you begin to love it,
Like the desert rose then let me love you,
And finally as I, my soul to you shall submit,
Let me see the desert, the oasis and the desert rose, and eternity in you!
”
”
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)