Fearful Symmetry Quotes

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

It’s a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone whose desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips. If you should ever be lucky enough to find that magical, fearful symmetry, I hope you’re brave enough to grab it with both hands and not let go.

There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world.

Listen, sometimes when you finally find out, you realize that you were much better off not knowing.

You're the oddest person I've ever met, you couldn't get rid of me if you tried.

Why do you have a cigarette lighter in your glove compartment?" her husband, Jack, asked her. "I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare sieze the fire?

Sometimes a thing is—too much—and it has to be isolated and put away." Martin shrugged. "So what's in the boxes is—emotion. In the form of objects."-Her Fearful Symmetry

I'm bored with knitting. I've taken up arson.

Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you're dead?

He was not in the house. He did not come back that night. Days went by, and at last she understood that he would not return at all.

Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.

He thanked her and left the house in the mood of a shipwrecked man who has allowed the rescue ship to pass him by.

That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living.

He had never realized, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.

That’s the thing about living vicariously; it’s so much faster than actual living. In a few minutes we’ll be worrying about names for the children.

I think play must have been invented so we wouldn't go mad thinking about certain things.

I don't want to boss anyone and I don't want to be bossed.

I guess no matter what your family is like, you're not surprised.

He would say her name over and over until it devolved into meaningless sounds - mah REI kuh, mah REI kuh - it became an entry in a dictionary of loneliness.

That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand.

Not because they’re dead. Though unattainability is always attractive.

There was only the cemetery itself, spread out in the moonlight like a soft grey hallucination, a stony wilderness of Victorian melancholy.

Sometimes a thing is---too much---and it has to be isolated put away.

Martin said, "It feels as though part of my self has detached and gone to Amsterdam, where it—she—is waiting for me. Do you know about phantom-limb syndrome?" Julia nodded. "There's pain where she ought to be. It's feeding the other pain, the thing that makes me wash and count and all that. So her absence is stopping me from going to find her. Do you see?

Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her

We're squirrels in human form, she whispered. And so are you.

When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing.

I've been called many things in my time, but never a conduit of divinity- Cedric MacKinnon, My Fearful Symmetry

It wasn't quite raining, but it wasn't exactly not raining either. She heard the driver squelching along the path behind her.

A bad thing about dying is that I've started to feel as though I'm being erased. Another bad thing is that I won't get to find out what happens next.

animals are indeed more ancient, more complex and in many ways more sophisticated than us. They are more perfect because they remain within Nature's fearful symmetry just as Nature intended. They should be respected and revered, but perhaps none more so than the elephant, the world's most emotionally human land mammal.

Each of them warmed to the sound of the other's voice. They lay in the dark together, in distant cities, each of them thinking, We were lucky this time. And they pressed their phones closer to their ears, and both of them wondered how much longer this separation could go on.

Jessica put out her hand and braced herself against the door jamb. She experienced one of those rare moments when understanding of the world alters and a previously impossible thing is admitted, if not understood.

I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?

The kissed surprised him because it had been so long since he'd kissed anyone but Elspeth. It surprised Valentina because she had hardly ever kissed anyone that way - to her, kissing had always been more theoretical than physical. Afterwards she stood with her eyes closed, lips parted, face tilted. Robert thought, She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.

Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her.

He didn't take care of you; you had to take care of yourself.

You're my phantom limb, Mouse. I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid, Mouse. Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me.

Everything is still out there: the rooftops and chimneys, the graffiti, the office towers and the cyclists; soon there will be sheep and that immense sky the keep out in the countryside... Once I thought there were two realities, inner and outer, but perhaps that's a bit meagre; I'm not quite the same person I was last night...

For the first time in months I felt my body slacken. I had been carrying myself like a gun, cocked, alert, ready for trouble, fearing it.

Elspeth stood in the sun, letting it pour through her, watching the Kitten sleep. I want you. Elspeth felt depressed. She had never thought of herself as someone who would kill a beautiful white kitten while it napped. But apparently she was that sort of person. Don't you worry, Kitten. I'll put you right back.

You didn’t answer my question. I asked you about being in love. You said what it was like when your wife went away.” Martin sat down again. How young she is. When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing. Julia stood with her hands clenched, as though she wanted to pound an answer out of him. “Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her. Now she’s gone, and my knowledge is incomplete. So all day I imagine what she is doing, what she says and who she talks to, how she looks. I try to supply the missing hours, and it gets harder as they pile up, all the time she’s been gone. I have to imagine. I don’t know, really. I don’t know any more.

She's going to break my heart and I'm going to let her.

He remembered a version of himself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by Ego. He had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed. And yet, he was helpless but to regard that unmistakable fear that gripped him in his dream as a sign that his unevenness lent him now to utter incongruity with this specter of past.

I fell asleep. But later that night I woke up. There was moonlight coming through the window, and shadows of tree branches fell onto the bed, waving gently in the breeze." "And then you saw the ghost?" James laughed. "Dear chap, the branches WERE the ghost. There weren't any trees within a hundred yards of that house. They'd all been cut down years before. I saw the ghost of a tree.

And so the twins had remained virgins. Julia and Valentina watched all of their high school and college friends disappear one by one into the adult world of sex, until they were the only people they knew who lingered in the world of the uninitiated. "What was it like?" they asked each friend. The answers were vague. Sex was a private joke: you had to be there.

He had never realised, while Elspeth was alive, the extent to which a thing had not completely happened until he told her about it.

Wisdom is the central form which gives meaning and position to all the facts which are acquired by knowledge, the digestion and assimilation of whatever in the material world the man comes in contact with.

How delicately language skirts the issue. How meaningless it is.

Everything hurt but she did not mind.

No.” Valentina closed her eyes. Of course not. “It’ll be great, Mouse. We’ll have our own apartment, we won’t have to work,

Is it sad to fancy David Tennant when you’re dead?" Elspeth

I'm going to fall apart...I cant--I don't know what to feel.

Her life had a fearful symmetry at times. Fierce was its construction, and within its color and contour lay all the calamity of madness. Violence crept in with stillness or exploded with the ferocity of youth.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?

Ahem," she said. "What are you doing?" Jessica had a voice that rose and fell like a swooping kite. The children instantly stopped what they were doing and looked self-conscious, like cats that have fallen off something ungracefully and now sit licking themselves, pretending nothing has happened.

Why do I feel like I'm at the edge of a hole?

Sometimes a thing is--too much--and it has to be put away.

It's as though I'm a cloud, and he's expecting rain.

and

he said it quietly but with such intensity that Valentina fell in love with him, though she had no name for the feeling and nothing to compare it to.

It would be a bad joke if I fell and broke myself now.

Tell us what it’s like … How is it? … How are you?’ Robert wanted

Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup.

She was used to the profound intimacy of her life with Julia, and she did not know that a cloud of hope and wild illusion is required to begin a relationship.

Valentina

She watched a red double-decker bus swaying along beside them. Everyone inside looked tired and bored. "How can you be bored? You live in London! You're breathing the same air as the Queen and Vivienne Westwood!

Tyger, tyger, burning bright In the forest of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could Frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder and what art Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And, when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? - The Tyger

Robert happened to look at Jessica while James was speaking. She was gazing at her husband with an expression that combined patience, admiration, and something very private that seemed to Robert like the distillation of a lifetime of marriage.

Stonewall Jackson was master of all he surveyed. Two Union forces were withdrawing from his front. There was a certain beautiful symmetry to it. The campaign, which started with a single enemy army pursuing Jackson southward through the valley, would end with two beaten Union armies withdrawing from him in a northerly direction. A week later, Jackson advised his mapmaker, Hotchkiss, to 'never take counsel of your fears.' A person who followed such advice would be doomed to a short life.

I want to be haunted...Haunt me...Come and put your arms around me...Or, if you can't do that, just look at me. That's all I need. Where are you? Not here. But I can't feel you gone either...I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid...Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me. I'm afraid.

Art is neither good nor bad, but a clairvoyant vision of the nature of both, and any attempt to align it with morality, otherwise known as bowdlerizing,is intolerably vulgar...Unimaginative realism evokes only the smug pleasure of recognition.the painter becomes popular because he assures everyone else that he sees no more than they see...Art is suggestive rather than explicit: it makes no attempt to persuade into general agreement or provide mediocre levels of explanation...the bold imagination produces great art; the timid one small art. But the healthy eye does not see more broadly and vaguely than the weak eye; it sees more clearly...a real miracle is an imaginative effort which meets with an imaginative response.

How did Epicurus attempt to alleviate death anxiety? He formulated a series of well-constructed arguments, which his students memorized like a catechism. Many of these arguments have been debated over the past twenty-three hundred years and are still germane to overcoming the fear of death. In this chapter, I will discuss three of his best-known arguments, which I've found valuable in my work with many patients and to me personally in relieving my own death anxiety. 1. The mortality of the soul 2. The ultimate nothingness of death 3. The argument of symmetry

You are beautiful because your eyes are different sizes and your lisp gets in between your tongue and teeth every time you try to say "something". You are beautiful because the scar under your chin looks like a spider and because you have a massive fear of heights. You are beautiful because there never has been, nor will there every be anyone else on this Earth like you. Because your flaws are like fingerprints and should be embraced just like the free will that resides inside. You are not beautiful because of the symmetry in the little squares on your telephone, you are beautiful because "you" are the only "you" this place will ever know.

Now Melkor began the delving and building of a vast fortress, deep under Earth, beneath dark mountains where the beams of Illuin were cold and dim. That stronghold was named Utumno. And though the Valar knew naught of it as yet, nonetheless the evil of Melkor and the blight of his hatred flowed out thence, and the Spring of Arda was marred. Green things fell sick and rotted, and rivers were choked with weeds and slime, and fens were made, rank and poisonous, the breeding place of flies; and forests grew dark and perilous, the haunts of fear; and beasts became monsters of horn and ivory and dyed the earth with blood. Then the Valar knew indeed that Melkor was at work again, and they sought for his hiding place. But Melkor, trusting in the strength of Utumno and the might of his servants, came forth suddenly to war, and struck the first blow, ere the Valar were prepared; and he assailed the lights of Illuin and Ormal, and cast down their pillars and broke their lamps. In the overthrow of the mighty pillars lands were broken and seas arose in tumult; and when the lamps were spilled destroying flame was poured out over the Earth. And the shape of Arda and the symmetry of its waters and its lands was marred in that time, so that the first designs of the Valar were never after restored.

Elspeth wasn’t keen. She’d lived with someone once and hated it. I think she felt differently towards the end, when I was taking care of her all the time. I think she realised that it could have worked, us living together. I’m fairly self-sufficient and so was she. She liked to be alone, knowing I was nearby if she wanted me.” “Our mom is like that.” “Is she?” “I think Dad is always kind of confused, you know, sometimes Mom seems like she’s just visiting, she’s super detached, and then she’ll be, like, really fun and sort of more present, you know?” Valentina peered up at him. “Was Elspeth like that?” Robert paused to sort out her syntax. “Yes,” he said. “Sometimes she was far away, even when she was right there.

We are all gastropods, soft, sticky creatures pulling ourselves along the earth from which we came and leaving a trail of silvery drool behind. But the snail, a worm that eternally slides along the horizon, lifts into the air, from its soft bivalve back, the geometrical wonder of its spiral shell, seemingly unrelated to the body that produced it in fear and loneliness. We secrete our shell in the sweat and mucous of our skin, in the transparent, scaly flesh of the foot we use to drag ourselves along. Through an alchemical transmutation, our drool turns to ivory and the spasms of our flesh into an undisturbed stillness. We curl around our central pilaster of rose-colored kaolin, we add, in our desperate drive to persist, spiral after spiral, each one wider, asymptotic, and translucid, until the miracle comes to pass: the revolting worm—existing in the life it lives, fermenting in its sins, irrigated by hormones and blood and sperm and lymph—rots and dies, leaving behind the ceramic filigree of its shell, a triumph of symmetry, the deathless icon in the platonic world of the mind. We all secrete, as we live, poems and pictures, ideas and hope, glistening palaces of music and faith, shells which begin by protecting our soft abdomen but after our disappearance live in the golden air of pure forms. Geometry always appears out of the amorphous, serenity out of pain and torture, just as dry tears leave behind the most wondrous crystals of salt.

After the Grand Perhaps” After vespers, after the first snow has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave, after the anorexics have curled into their geometric forms, after the man with the apparition in his one bad eye has done red things behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps, after the fallout shelter in the elementary school has been packed with tins & other tangibles, after the barn boys have woken, startled by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part of them blithe & smooth & touchable, after the little vandals have tilted toward the impossible seduction to smash glass in the dark, getting away with the most lethal pieces, leaving the shards which travel most easily through flesh as message on the bathroom floor, the parking lots, the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard where he’s been constructing all winter long. After the pain has become an old known friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it. The power of fright, I think, is as much as magnetic heat or gravity. After what is boundless: wind chimes, fertile patches of the land, the ochre symmetry of fields in fall, the end of breath, the beginning of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves the way the night heads west, I take this road to arrive at its end where the toll taker passes the night, reading. I feel the cupped heat of his left hand as he inherits change; on the road that is not his road anymore I belong to whatever it is which will happen to me. When I left this city I gave back the metallic waking in the night, the signals of barges moving coal up a slow river north, the movement of trains, each whistle like a woodwind song of another age passing, each ambulance would split a night in two, lying in bed as a little girl, a fear of being taken with the sirens as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick as the fire as it takes fire & our house goes up in night. After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing something too sharp or fine, the word spoken out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold, the melting of the parts to want, the design of the moon to cast unfriendly light, the dazed shadow of the self as it follows the self, the toll taker’s sorrow that we couldn’t have been more intimate. Which leads me back to the land, the old wolves which used to roam on it, the one light left on the small far hill where someone must be living still. After life there must be life.

The Tiger Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? And what shoulder, and what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? and what dread feet? What the hammer? what the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp? Dare its deadly terrors clasp? When the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the Lamb, make thee? Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? William Blake

Her life had a fearful symmetry at times. Fierce was its construction, and within its color and contour lay all the calamity of madness. Violence crept in with stillness or exploded with all the ferocity of youth. But in the calm silence that stretched between one kill and the next, her mind turned anew. No matter how disciplined she was, another daring plot was never far behind.

Do not make circumstances fit your plan. Make your plan fit the circumstances. Good tactics can save the worst strategy. Bad tactics can doom the best strategy.

It is an unfortunate reality that disastrous decisions made by rulers have consequences for the common people, even if they had no part in those decisions.

Blinding, joyous, fearful symmetry surrounds me. So much is incorporated within patterns now that the entire universe verges on resolving itself into a picture. I’m closing in on the ultimate gestalt: the context in which all knowledge fits and is illuminated, a mandala, the music of the spheres, kosmos.

an affirmation that the Qur’an is guidance for those who fear God.1 In stating that the Qur’an is guidance, Chapter 2 is thus linked with The Opening, which concludes with a request for guidance (vv. 5-6). The body of the Qur’an opens with a response (note al-Zarkashi: “It is as if, when people asked to be shown the way, the answer came: ‘here is the guidance you sought: it is the Qur’an

The Tiger by William Blake Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Later—no, sooner than later—I’ll regret not having continued on my way. Sooner than later, I’ll regret having stopped at the black gates, before I stop at the gates. Can the present affect the past, and can the future affect the present? Retrocausality. The impossible only seems impossible until it happens.

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Arians, as S. Augustine tells us,901 corrupted this sentence of S. John i. 1: In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum, by simply changing a point. For they read it thus: Et verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat. Verbum hoc, &c., instead of Deus erat verbum. Hoc erat in principio apud Deum. They placed the full stop after the erat, instead of after the verbum. They so acted for fear of having to grant that the Word was God; so little is required to change the sense of God’s Word. When one is handling glass beads, if two or three are lost, it is a small matter, but if they were oriental pearls the loss would be great. The better the wine the more it suffers from the mixture of a foreign flavor and the exquisite symmetry of a great picture will not bear the admixture of new colors. Such is the conscientiousness with which we ought to regard and handle the sacred deposit of the Scriptures.

You’ve never heard it?” he asked. “What do they teach you in school these days? That’s William Blake!” I shrugged, and after a moment he spoke again. “I memorized it once.” He drifted into reverie again. “ ‘Tiger, Tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

I need to tell you a story.' What about? Zachariah, Zachariah, my foundling boy. 'A boy. A boxer, a fighting man. A brother. No. About brothers, sisters. Foundlings, laid-in-the-streets. Fights, fighting. A boy, it all begins with the boy. My love. A wolf. Peter and the Wolf! Oh dear! I am very crazy! Let me—I must tell you this story.' Why? 'I'm frightened.' Of? 'Fractals. Patterns.' Ah, says the fish, looking at Rachel with his wise eyes. Chaos! 'Yes,' thinks Rachel. 'Chaos. Fearful symmetry.' Go home, says the fish, flipping over, flashing in light, and diving down into the great blue sea.

Tiger! Tiger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? –Blake

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Pets enrich our lives and those of our children. We admire the tiger not only for its fearful symmetry but as a symbol of freedom itself, so we offer it rather more freedom than we would think fit for the chicken. It is impossible, however, to avoid the issue that both the chicken and the tiger are living on our terms.

The door bell rang. Rilla turned reluctantly stairwards. She must answer it—there was no one else in the house; but she hated the idea of callers just then. She went downstairs very slowly, and opened the front door. A man in khaki was standing on the steps—a tall fellow, with dark eyes and hair, and a narrow white scar running across his brown cheek. Rilla stared at him foolishly for a moment. Who was it? She ought to know him—there was certainly something very familiar about him,— “Rilla-my-Rilla,” he said. “Ken,” gasped Rilla. Of course, it was Ken—but he looked so much older—he was so much changed—that scar—the lines about his eyes and lips—her thoughts went whirling helplessly. Ken took the uncertain hand she held out, and looked at her. The slim Rilla of four years ago had rounded out into symmetry. He had left a schoolgirl, and he found a woman—a woman with wonderful eyes and a dented lip, and rose-bloom cheek,—a woman altogether beautiful and desirable—the woman of his dreams. “Is it Rilla-my-Rilla?” he asked, meaningly. Emotion shook Rilla from head to foot. Joy—happiness—sorrow—fear—every passion that had wrung her heart in those four long years seemed to surge up in her soul for a moment as the deeps of being were stirred. She tried to speak; at first voice would not come. Then— “Yeth,” said Rilla.

When Olivia tugs at her glossy curls, I think about her hair in my mouth. Paper-dry, tasting of smoke and strawberry shampoo. The strands would break between my teeth. The sound they'd make—a tiny crunch, like a foot falling through snow—that sound would fill me.

The Sufi is a person of rare courage. He or she looks into the naked face of Reality and does not flinch. While it may be difficult to face the facts of physical existence so honestly, half the battle is won once you acknowledge your place in the natural world. There is a 'fearful symmetry' to the face of nature. All of creation contains infinity within it. A harmonious relation can be achieved with the facts of existence, but this can only be discovered through an honest appraisal of your physical existence on the Earth.

a profoundly strange feeling, to stumble across someone whose desires are shaped so closely to your own, like reaching toward your reflection in a mirror and finding warm flesh under your fingertips. If you should ever be lucky enough to find that magical, fearful symmetry, I hope you’re brave enough to grab it with both hands and not let go.