“
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the tree the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like theyh ave a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone.
”
”
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901)
“
Hail the sun! the brightest of all that ever
Dawned on the City of Seven Gates, City of Thebes!
Hail the golden dawn over Dirce's river
Rising to speed the flight of the white invaders
Homeward in full retreat!" - Chorus
”
”
Sophocles (Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3))
“
I have often noticed that nationalism is at its strongest at the periphery. Hitler was Austrian, Bonaparte Corsican. In postwar Greece and Turkey the two most prominent ultra-right nationalists had both been born in Cyprus. The most extreme Irish Republicans are in Belfast and Derry (and Boston and New York). Sun Yat Sen, father of Chinese nationalism, was from Hong Kong. The Serbian extremists Milošević and Karadžić were from Montenegro and their most incendiary Croat counterparts in the Ustashe tended to hail from the frontier lands of Western Herzegovina.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
Even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lighting or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.
”
”
Suzy Kassem (Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem)
“
Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail.
”
”
Peter Wessel Zapffe (Essays)
“
There is, we are aware, a philosophy that denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, classified as pathologic, that denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness. To set up a theory that lacks a source of truth is an excellent example of blind assurance. And the odd part of it is the haughty air of superiority and compassion assumed toward the philosophy that sees God, by this philosophy that has to grope its way. It makes one think of a mole exclaiming, "How I pity them with their sun!" There are, we know, illustrious and powerful atheists; with them, the matter is nothing but a question of definitions, and at all events, even if they do not believe in God, they prove God, because they are great minds. We hail, in them, the philosophers, while, at the same time, inexorably disputing their philosophy.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
Commala-come-come
There’s a young man with a gun.
Young man lost his honey
When she took it on the run.
Commala-come-one!
She took it on the run!
Left her baby lonely
But he baby ain’t done.
Commala-come-coo
The wind’ll blow ya through.
Ya gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya
Cause there’s nothin else to do.
Commala-come-two!
Nothin else to do!
Gotta go where ka’s wind blows ya
Cause there’s nothin else to do.
Commala-come-key
Can you tell me what ya see?
Is it ghosts or just the mirror
That makes ya wanna flee?
Commala-come-three!
I beg ya, tell me!
Is it ghosts or just your darker self
That makes ya wanna flee?
Commala-come-ko
Whatcha doin at my do’?
If ya doan tell me now, my friend
I’ll lay ya on de flo’.
Commala-come-fo’!
I can lay ya low!
The things I’ve do to such as you
You never wanna know.
Commala-gin-jive
Ain’t it grand to be alive?
To look out on Discordia
When the Demon Moon arrives.
Commala-come-five!
Even when the shadows rise!
To see the world and walk the world
Makes ya glad to be alive.
Commala-mox-nix!
You’re in a nasty fix!
To take a hand in traitor’s glove
Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks!
Commala-come-six!
Nothing there but thorns and sticks!
When your find your hand in traitor’s glove
You’re in a nasty fix.
Commala-loaf-leaven!
They go to hell or up to heaven!
The the guns are shot and the fires hot,
You got to poke em in the oven.
Commala-come-seven!
Salt and yow’ for leaven!
Heat em up and knock em down
And poke em in the oven.
Commala-ka-kate
You’re in the hands of fate.
No matter if it’s real or not,
The hour groweth late.
Commala-come-eight!
The hour groweth late!
No matter what shade ya cast
You’re in the hands of fate.
Commala-me-mine
You have to walk the line.
When you finally get the thing you need
It makes you feel so fine.
Commala-come-nine!
It makes ya feel fine!
But if you’d have the thing you need
You have to walk the line.
Commala-come-ken
It’s the other one again.
You may know her name and face
But that don’t make her your friend.
Commala-come-ten!
She is not your friend!
If you let her get too close
She’ll cut you up again!
Commala-come-call
We hail the one who made us all,
Who made the men and made the maids,
Who made the great and small.
Commala-come-call!
He made us great and small!
And yet how great the hand of fate
That rules us one and all.
Commala-come-ki,
There’s a time to live and one to die.
With your back against the final wall
Ya gotta let the bullets fly.
Commala-come-ki!
Let the bullets fly!
Don’t ‘ee mourn for me, my lads
When it comes my day to die.
Commala-come-kass!
The child has come at last!
Sing your song, O sing it well,
The child has come to pass.
Commala-come-kass,
The worst has come to pass.
The Tower trembles on its ground;
The child has come at last.
Commala-come-come,
The battle’s now begun!
And all the foes of men and rose
Rise with the setting sun.
”
”
Stephen King (Song of Susannah (The Dark Tower, #6))
“
On Monday, when the sun is hot I wonder to myself a lot: “Now is it true, or is it not, “That what is which and which is what?” On Tuesday, when it hails and snows, The feeling on me grows and grows That hardly anybody knows If those are these or these are those. On Wednesday, when the sky is blue, And I have nothing else to do, I sometimes wonder if it’s true That who is what and what is who. On Thursday, when it starts to freeze And hoar-frost twinkles on the trees, How very readily one sees That these are whose—but whose are these? On
”
”
A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh (Winnie-the-Pooh, #1))
“
May had now set in, but up here among the hills, she was May by curtesy only; or if she was May, she would never be might. She was, indeed, only April with her showers and sunshine, her tearful, childish laughter, and again the frown, and the dispair irremediable. Nay, as if she still kept up a secret correspondence with her cousin March, banished for his rudeness, she would not very seldom shake from her skirts a snow storm, and oftener the dancing hail. Then out would come the sun behind her, and laugh, and say-- "I could not help THAT; but here I am all the same, coming to you as fast as I can!
”
”
George MacDonald (Sir Gibbie (Sir Gibbie, #1))
“
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.
We are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
”
”
Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Music And Moonlight: Poems And Songs)
“
There’s one in each arm, one in each leg, one in my “gentlemen’s equipment,” and two that disappear under my thigh. I’m guessing one of them is up where the sun doesn’t shine.
”
”
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
“
I don't want your apology, least of all for being afraid," he said. "Without fear, what would we be? Mad dogs with foam on our muzzles and shit drying on our hocks." "What do you want, then?" Eddie cried. "You've taken everything else- everything I have to give! No, not even that, because in the end, I gave it to you! So what else do you want from me?" Roland held the key which was their half of Jake Chamber's salvation locked in his fist and said nothing. His eyes held Eddie's, and the sun shone on the green expanse of plain and the blue-gray reach of the Send River, and somewhere in the distance the crow hailed again across the golden leagues of this fading summer afternoon. After awhile, understanding began to dawn in Eddie Dean's eyes. Roland nodded. "I have forgotten the face. . ." Eddie paused. Dipped his head. Swallowed. Looked up at the Gunslinger once more. The thing which had been dying among them had moved on now- Roland knew it. That thing was gone. Just like that. Here, on this sunny wind-swept ridge at the edge of everything, it had gone forever. "I have forgotten the face of my father, gunslinger. . . and I cry your pardon." Roland opened his hand and returned the small burden of the key to him who ka had decreed must carry it. "Speak not so, gunslinger," he said in the High Speech. "Your father sees you very well. . . loves you very well . . . and so do I." Eddie closed his own hand over the key and turned away with his tears still drying on his face. "Let's go," he said, and they began to move down the long hill toward the plain which streched beyond.
”
”
Stephen King
“
Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if there is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders! There's a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist--hark! By Jove, I have it! Look, you Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round chapter; and now I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram--lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull--he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins--that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path--he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or Scales--happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and, to wind up, with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)
“
Man beholds the earth, and it is breathing like a great lung; whenever it exhales, delightful life swarms from all its pores and reaches out toward the sun, but when it inhales, a moan of rupture passes through the multitude, and corpses whip the ground like bouts of hail. Not merely his own day could he see, the graveyards wrung themselves before his gaze, the laments of sunken millennia wailed against him from the ghastly decaying shapes, the earth-turned dreams of mothers. Future’s curtain unravelled itself to reveal a nightmare of endless repetition, a senseless squander of organic material. The suffering of human billions makes its entrance into him through the gateway of compassion, from all that happen arises a laughter to mock the demand for justice, his profoundest ordering principle.
”
”
Peter Wessel Zapffe (The Last Messiah)
“
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone.
”
”
Nancy E. Turner (These Is My Words)
“
But the world is sleeping in ignorance and error, sir, and we must be crowing cocks, and singing larks, and a rising sun to awake her; or else we'll pull society up to the roots, and plant it in a different place. We'll build Alms-houses, and transcendental State prisons, and scaffolds -- we will blow out the sun, and the moon, and encourage invention. Alpha shall kiss Omega--we will ride up the hill of glory -- Hallelujah, all hail!
”
”
Emily Dickinson (Selected Letters)
“
A day that's free, a man that's free,
A spring like this invites a spree!
Seek out the shade of a plane tree
To spread a rug that's rainbow-spun-
And hail the country of the Sun!
”
”
Səməd Vurğun
“
When a man does not realize his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets the eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to be fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to things around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as the manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its embrace.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Sadhana)
“
May had now set in, but up here among the hills, she was May by curtesy only; or if she was May, she would never be might. She was, indeed, only April with her showers and sunshine, her tearful, childish laughter, and again the frown, and the despair irremediable. Nay, as if she still kept up a secret correspondence with her cousin March, banished for his rudeness, she would not very seldom shake from her skirts a snow storm, and oftener the dancing hail. Then out would come the sun behind her, and laugh, and say-- "I could not help THAT; but here I am all the same, coming to you as fast as I can!
”
”
George MacDonald (Sir Gibbie (Sir Gibbie, #1))
“
The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the pattering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.
”
”
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
“
And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.
”
”
Émile Zola (The Earth)
“
Well-being of body is like a mountain. A lot happens on a mountain. It hails, and the winds come up, and it rains and snows. The sun gets very hot, clouds cross over, animals shit and piss on the mountain, and so do people. People leave their trash, and other people clean it up. Many things come and go on this mountain, but it just sits there. When we’ve seen ourselves completely, there’s a stillness of body that is like a mountain. We no longer get jumpy and have to scratch our noses, pull our ears, punch somebody, go running from the room, or drink ourselves into oblivion.
”
”
Pema Chödrön (When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times (Shambhala Classics))
“
Einstein’s prediction of light deflection could not be tested immediately in 1915, because the First World War was in progress, and it was not until 1919 that a British expedition, observing an eclipse from West Africa, showed that light was indeed deflected by the sun, just as predicted by the theory. This proof of a German theory by British scientists was hailed as a great act of reconciliation between the two countries after the war.
”
”
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
“
Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
“
And as the wind died away I was plunged into the ghoul-pooled darkness of earth’s bowels; for behind the last of the creatures the great brazen door clanged shut with a deafening peal of metallic music whose reverberations swelled out to the distant world to hail the rising sun as Memnon hails it from the banks of the Nile.
”
”
H.P. Lovecraft (Complete Collection of H.P. Lovecraft - 150 eBooks with 100+ Audio Books Included (Complete Collection of Lovecraft's Fiction, Juvenilia, Poems, Essays and Collaborations))
“
Hail Mary, full of grace,” Papaw
said, “please tell Billy to shut his
face.”
“I intend to speak my mind,” Bill
said.
“Oh, Christians,” Papaw said
with a heavy sigh. “Always got to
speak their fucking minds like we
haven’t heard it all a million times
already. They think the sun rises just to
hear them crow. What a bunch of
Christless bastards.
”
”
Nick Wilgus (Shaking the Sugar Tree (Sugar Tree, #1))
“
Spring is when the weather in the Pacific Northwest gets confused, bouncing between hail and sun and rain all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour.
”
”
Rachel Griffin (Wild Is the Witch)
“
This star I’m looking at…it’s not the sun. I’m in a different solar system.
”
”
Andy Weir (Project Hail Mary)
“
Sunrise Chant Hail sun, light and arc, fight again against the dark!
”
”
Diana Rajchel (Mabon: Rituals, Recipes & Lore for the Autumn Equinox (Llewellyn's Sabbat Essentials Book 5))
“
I guess it's better to have a chalk smile, than an ink smile. Where chalk changes with the direction of wind, ink stays as a deep stain. Like rain, sun and hail against a fake plant.
”
”
Anthony Liccione
“
When we have traversed it, and look back from Albano, its dark, undulating surface lies below us like a stagnant lake, or like a broad, dull Lethe flowing round the walls of Rome, and separating it from all the world! How often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering across that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now! How often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, upon the distant city, and beheld its population pouring out, to hail the return of their conqueror! What riot, sensuality and murder, have run mad in the vast palaces now heaps of brick and shattered marble! What glare of fires, and roar of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is now heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol unmolested in the sun!
”
”
Charles Dickens (Pictures from Italy)
“
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
Sudden and magnificent, the sun's broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.
As they stared blankly, in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realized all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses, and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces, and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demigod is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and light-hearted as before.
”
”
Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows)
“
On Ponkawtasset, since, we took our way,
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way,
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twilight day.
Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high,
Shining more brightly as the day goes by,
Most travellers cannot at first descry,
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky,
And know celestial lights, do plainly see,
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three;
For lore that's deep must deeply studied be,
As from deep wells men read star-poetry.
These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight,
But like the sun they shine forever bright;
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight
Put out its eyes that it may see their light.
Who would neglect the least celestial sound,
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground,
If he could know it one day would be found
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound,
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round?
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau))
“
The oaks and firs stood up as they reached the interstate and pushed on through the South West Pacific Highway to the Salmon River Highway, past places with names like Falling Creek, Tualatin, Joe Dancer Park, and Erratic Rock. Places you could walk out into and die and never be found. He could imagine them seared by sun in summer and shrouded in snow in winter. Hammered by hail the size of coins in spring and autumn, pounding flesh and smashing bone, processed to be carried off chunk by speck in the guts of birds.
”
”
Warren Ellis (Normal: Book 1 (Normal, #1))
“
Spring is when the weather in the Pacific Northwest gets confused, bouncing between hail and sun and rain all in the same day. Sometimes all in the same hour. There’s something playful about it, as if the weather is enjoying every facet of its personality, appreciating all the ways in which it covers the earth.
”
”
Rachel Griffin (Wild Is the Witch)
“
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (The Complete Poems)
“
as the earth orbits around the sun, different stars appear to pass behind the sun and have their light deflected. They therefore change their apparent position relative to other stars. FIGURE 2.8 It is normally very difficult to see this effect, because the light from the sun makes it impossible to observe stars that appear near to the sun in the sky. However, it is possible to do so during an eclipse of the sun, when the sun’s light is blocked out by the moon. Einstein’s prediction of light deflection could not be tested immediately in 1915, because the First World War was in progress, and it was not until 1919 that a British expedition, observing an eclipse from West Africa, showed that light was indeed deflected by the sun, just as predicted by the theory. This proof of a German theory by British scientists was hailed as a great act of reconciliation between the two countries after the war.
”
”
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
“
astonishment, it made the girls themselves gleam. Katherine, like many before her, was entranced by it. It wasn’t just the glow—it was radium’s all-powerful reputation. Almost from the start, the new element had been championed as “the greatest find of history.”7 When scientists had discovered, at the turn of the century, that radium could destroy human tissue, it was quickly put to use to battle cancerous tumors, with remarkable results. Consequently—as a life-saving and thus, it was assumed, health-giving element—other uses had sprung up around it. All of Katherine’s life, radium had been a magnificent cure-all, treating not just cancer, but hay fever, gout, constipation…anything you could think of. Pharmacists sold radioactive dressings and pills; there were also radium clinics and spas for those who could afford them. People hailed its coming as predicted in the Bible: “The sun of righteousness [shall] arise with healing in his wings, and ye shall go forth and gambol as calves of the stall.”8
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded
thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;
thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the
wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor
has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round
again, without a lesson to me.
Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed
jet!--that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh
whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that
only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker
half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable
imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living
things, exhaled as air, but water now.
Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild
fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though
hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!
”
”
Herman Melville
“
Slung on a stage over the gunwale of an old felucca, the Peri. A storm had just passed, rushing away toward the land in a great slope of clouds; already turning yellowish from the desert. The sea there is the color of Damascus plums; and how quiet. Sun was going down; not a beautiful sunset, more a gradual darkening of the air and that storm’s mountainside. The Peri had been damaged, we hove to alongside and hailed her master. No reply. Only the sailor—I never saw his face—one of your fellahin who abandon the land like a restless husband and then grumble for the rest of their term afloat. It’s the strongest marriage in the world. This one wore a kind of loincloth and a rag round his head for the sun which was almost gone. After we’d shouted in every dialect we had among us, he replied in Tuareg: ‘The master is gone, the crew is gone, I am here and I am painting the ship.’ It was true: he was painting the ship. She’d been damaged, not a load line in sight, and a bad list. ‘Come aboard,’ we told him, ‘night is nearly on us and you cannot swim to land.’ He never answered, merely continued dipping the brush in his earthen jar and slapping it smoothly on the Peri’s creaking sides. What color? It looked gray but the air was dark. This felucca would never again see the sun. Finally I told the helmsman to swing our ship round and continue on course. I watched the fellah until it was too dark: becoming smaller, inching closer to the sea with every swell but never slackening his pace. A peasant with all his uptorn roots showing, alone on the sea at nightfall, painting the side of a sinking ship.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (V.)
“
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at the place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I love are down the side a ways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone." - Nancy E. Turner "These is my Words
”
”
Nancy E. Turner
“
At that tasted Fruit The Sun, as from THYESTEAN Banquet, turn'd His course intended; else how had the World Inhabited, though sinless, more then now, Avoided pinching cold and scorching heate? These changes in the Heav'ns, though slow, produc'd Like change on Sea and Land, sideral blast, Vapour, and Mist, and Exhalation hot, Corrupt and Pestilent: Now from the North Of NORUMBEGA, and the SAMOED shoar Bursting thir brazen Dungeon, armd with ice And snow and haile and stormie gust and flaw, BOREAS and CAECIAS and ARGESTES loud And THRASCIAS rend the Woods and Seas upturn;
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“
I'll read it off, straight out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram— lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull— he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins— that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path— he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales—happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang comes the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Waterbearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby Dick: or, the White Whale)
“
Out beyond and way back and further past that still. And such was it since. But after all appearances and some afternoons misspent it came to pass not all was done and over with. No, no. None shally shally on that here hill. Ah, but that was idle then and change was not an old hand. No, no. None shilly shilly on that here first rung. So, much girded and with new multitudes, a sun came purple and the hail turned in a year or two. And that was not all. No, no. None ganny ganny on that here moon loose. Turns were taken and time put in, so much heft and grimace, there, with callouses, all along the diagonal. Like no other time and the time taken back, that too like none other that can be compared to a bovine heap raising steam, or the eye-cast of a flailing comet. Back and forth, examining the egg spill and the cord fray and the clowning barnacle. And all day with no break to unwrap or unscrew or squint and flex or soak the brush. No, no. None flim flim on that here cavorting mainstay. From tree to tree and the pond there deepening and some small holes appearing and any number of cornstalks twisting into a thing far from corn. That being the case there was some wretched plotting, turned to stone, holding nothing. No, no. None rubby rubby on that here yardstick. Came then from the region of silt and aster, all along the horse trammel and fire velvet, first these sounds and then their makers. When passed betwixt and entered fully, pails were swung and notches considered. There was no light. No, none. None wzm wzm on that here piss crater. And it being the day, still considered. Oh, all things considered and not one mentioned, since all names had turned in and handed back. Knowing this the hounds disbanded and knowing that the ground muddled headstones and milestones and gallows and the almond-shaped buds of freshest honeysuckle. And among this chafing tumult fates were scrambled and mortality made untidy and pithy vows took themselves a breather. This being the way and irreversible homewards now was a lifted skeletal thing of the past, without due application or undue meaning. No, no. None shap shap on that here domicile shank. From right foot to left, first by the firs, then by the river, hung and loitered, and the blaze there slow to come. All night waking with no benefit of sleeping and the breath cranking and the heart-place levering and the kerosene pervading but failing to jerk a flame from out any one thing. No, none. None whoosh whoosh on that here burnished cunt. Oh, the earth, the earth and the women there, inside the simpering huts, stamped and spiritless, blowing on the coals. Not far away, but beyond the way of return.
”
”
Claire-Louise Bennett (Pond)
“
Light, The Hymn
Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!
In light we are made.
In light we are born.
In light we are raised.
In light we are enthroned.
In our minds it is wisdom.
In our hearts it is faith.
In our souls it is love.
In our lives it is God.
My mind honors light.
My heart esteems light.
My soul extols light.
How awesome light is.
How majestic light is.
How wonderful light is.
Feeding plants.
Nourishing animals.
Sustaining nature.
Serving people.
Supporting all.
Light illuminates the world.
Light illuminates the stars.
Light illuminates the universe.
Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!
Hail to God!
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
I heard a rapid alternation of notes,
a vibrating staccato of an ancient instrument,
nearly as old as nature herself,
a cricket singing
in my garden last night,
the first time this year.
When turning my garden's soil,
I often uncover crickets,
curmudgeons that scramble to find solitude
and cover from the light,
but I rarely hear their
ancient song 'till near
summer's end.
Although the wind is now lofting the branches
and rustling the leaves,
the evening sun
still warms my face.
And my garden still blooms full
with pink-papered hollyhocks
and blue, green spikes of lavender,
and roses,
bright pinks and yellows,
all glowing from sunshine-swelled canes,
and zinnias,
rainbow-shingled orbs,
and more.
And yet, I am already dreading
the coming of fall,
all dressed in small rags
of red, yellow, and orange.
I know that my summer garden
is nearing its end,
as hailed by the cricket's song.
”
”
Jeffrey A. White (A Blueness I Could Eat Forever)
“
Song using her poem as lyrics that inspired me to read her biography -YouTube Aaron Shay Recuerdo
Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
”
”
Edna St. Vincent Millay
“
life dies sunwards full of faith; but see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it heads some other way. Oh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded thy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas; thou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the wide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor has this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round again, without a lesson to me. Oh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring, rainbowed jet!—that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In vain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening sun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou, darker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy unnamable imminglings, float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of once living things, exhaled as air, but water now. Then hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild fowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though hill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
There was a warrior once who fought
Against man's subtlest, mightiest foe,
And more than valiant deeds he wrought
T' effect th' enslaver's overthrow.
But ah! how dread was his campaign,
Forc'd in the wilderness to stray,
Lone, hungry, stung with grief and pain,
And thus sustain the arduous fray.
Prompt at each call from place to place,
'Mid sin's dark shade and sorrow's flow,
He sped to save man's erring race,
And bear for him the vengeful blow.
But when his soldiers saw the strife,
When imminent the danger grew,
Though 'twas for them he pledg'd his life,
Like dastards from the field they flew.
Wearied, forsaken, still he strove,
And gain'd the glorious victory;
Yet such achievements few could move,
To hail his triumpn 'beath the sky.
Dying he conquer'd; yet at last
No human honours grac'd his bier;
No trumpet wail'd its mournful blast,
No muffl'd drum made music drear.
But when he dy'd the rocks were rent,
The sun his radiant beams withheld,
All nature shudder'd at th' event,
And horror every bosom swell'd.
E'en Death, fell Death! could not detain
Him, who for man his life had given,
He burst the ineffectual chain,
And soar'd his advocate to heaven.
”
”
Thomas Gillet (The Juvenile Wreath; Consisting of Poems, Chiefly on the Subject of Natural History)
“
Iorek Byrnison moved around to the upper side. It was a good shelter from an enemy below, but not good enough; for among the hail of bullets that had chipped fragments off the rock had been a few that had found their target, and that lay where they had come to rest, in the body of the man lying stiff in the shadow.
He was a body, still, and not a skeleton, because the witch had laid a spell to preserve him from corruption. Iorek could see the face of his old comrade drawn and tight with the pain of his wounds, and see the jagged holes in his garments where the bullets had entered. The witch's spell did not cover the blood that must have spilled, and insects and the sun and the wind had dispersed it completely. Lee Scoresby looked not asleep, nor at peace; he looked as if he had died in battle; but he looked as if he knew that his fight had been successful.
And because the Texan aeronaut was one of the very few humans Iorek had ever esteemed, he accepted the man's last gift to him. With deft movements of his claws, he ripped aside the dead man's clothes, opened the body with one slash, and began to feast on the flesh and blood of his old friend. It was his first meal for days, and he was hungry.
”
”
Philip Pullman (The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3))
“
Thomas Carlyle, following Plato, pictures a man, a deep pagan thinker, who had grown to maturity in some hidden cave and is brought out suddenly to see the sun rise. “What would his wonder be,” exclaims Carlyle, “his rapt astonishment at the sight we daily witness with indifference! With the free, open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight.... This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet know; we can never know at all.” How different are we who have grown used to it, who have become jaded with a satiety of wonder. “It is not by our superior insight that we escape the difficulty,” says Carlyle, “it is by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it.... We call that fire of the black thundercloud electricity, and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.” These penetrating, almost prophetic,
”
”
A.W. Tozer (Knowledge of the Holy)
“
O, Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you. Amen.
.
When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. I saw this happen today as the sun went down. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! No herons, no distant music, not even the taste of his lips. How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly?
.
Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
.
I smile and say nothing,
.
If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself.
.
Everything is an illusion - and that applies to material as well as spiritual things.
.
She had spent a lot of her life saying 'no' to things to which she would have liked to say 'yes',
.
My dear, it's better to be unhappy with a rich man than happy with a poor man, and over there you'll have far more chance of becoming an unhappy rich woman.
.
Love isn't that important. I didn't love your father at first, but money buys everything, even true love.
.
Hail Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you. Amen.
.
She would never find what she was looking for if she couldn't express herself.
.
At the moment, I'm far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen, that I will find a job and that I am here because I chose this fate.
.
Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.
.
A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin. Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next.
.
Again, she seemed like a stranger to herself.
.
I let fate choose which route I should take.
.
Some people were born to face life alone, and this is neither good nor bad, it is simply life.
.
I'm not a body with a soul, I'm a soul that has a visible part called the body.
.
She was doing it because she had nothing to lose, because her life was one of constant, day-to-day frustration.
.
Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.
.
We are each of us responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.
.
No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.
.
However tempted she was to continue, however prepared she was for the challenges she had met on her path, all these months living alone with herself had taught her that there is always a right moment to stop something.
.
He knew everything about her, although she knew nothing about him.
.
She had opened a door which she didn't know how to close.
.
Our experiences have been entirely different, but we are both desperate people.
.
Free yourself from something that cost your heart even more.
.
One moment, you have nothing, the next, you have more than you can cope with.
.
Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country.
.
What the eyes don't see, the heart doesn't grieve over.
.
Because we don't want to forget who we are - nor can we.
.
This was simply a place where people gathered to worship something they could not understand.
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
“
Stanley Perlman. She hurried out of the building at One Market Plaza, stepped off the curb, and hailed a cab. It occurred to her, as it always did, that one of these days when she met with him, it would really be for the last time. He always said it was. She had begun to expect him to live forever, despite his protests, and in spite of the realities of time. Her law firm had handled his affairs for more than half a century. She had been his estate and tax attorney for the past three years. At thirty-eight, Sarah had been a partner of the firm for the past two years, and had inherited Stanley as a client when his previous attorney died. Stanley had outlived them all. He was ninety-eight years old. It was hard to believe sometimes. His mind was as sharp as it had ever been, he read voraciously, and he was well aware of every nuance and change in the current tax laws. He was a challenging and entertaining client. Stanley Perlman had been a genius in business all his life. The only thing that had changed over the years was that his body had betrayed him, but never once his mind. He was bedridden now, and had been for nearly seven years. Five nurses attended to him, three regularly in eight-hour shifts, two as relief. He was comfortable, most of the time, and hadn't left his house in years. Sarah had always liked and admired him, although others thought he was irascible and cantankerous. She thought he was a remarkable man. She gave the cabdriver Stanley's Scott Street address. They made their way through the downtown traffic in San Francisco's financial district, and headed west uptown, toward Pacific Heights, where he had lived in the same house for seventy-six years. The sun was shining brightly as they climbed Nob Hill up California Street, and she knew it might be otherwise when they got uptown. The fog often sat heavily on the residential
”
”
Danielle Steel (The House)
“
Comus.
The Star that bids the Shepherd fold,
Now the top of Heav'n doth hold,
And the gilded Car of Day, [ 95 ]
His glowing Axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantick stream,
And the slope Sun his upward beam
Shoots against the dusky Pole,
Pacing toward the other gole [ 100 ]
Of his Chamber in the East.
Mean while welcom Joy, and Feast,
Midnight shout, and revelry,
Tipsie dance and Jollity.
Braid your Locks with rosie Twine [ 105 ]
Dropping odours, dropping Wine.
Rigor now is gone to bed,
And Advice with scrupulous head,
Strict Age, and sowre Severity,
With their grave Saws in slumber ly. [ 110 ]
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the Starry Quire,
Who in their nightly watchfull Sphears,
Lead in swift round the Months and Years.
The Sounds, and Seas with all their finny drove [ 115 ]
Now to the Moon in wavering Morrice move,
And on the Tawny Sands and Shelves,
Trip the pert Fairies and the dapper Elves;
By dimpled Brook, and Fountain brim,
The Wood-Nymphs deckt with Daisies trim, [ 120 ]
Their merry wakes and pastimes keep:
What hath night to do with sleep?
Night hath better sweets to prove,
Venus now wakes, and wak'ns Love.
Com let us our rights begin, [ 125 ]
Tis onely day-light that makes Sin,
Which these dun shades will ne're report.
Hail Goddesse of Nocturnal sport
Dark vaild Cotytto, t' whom the secret flame
Of mid-night Torches burns; mysterious Dame [ 130 ]
That ne're art call'd, but when the Dragon woom
Of Stygian darknes spets her thickest gloom,
And makes one blot of all the ayr,
Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair,
Wherin thou rid'st with Hecat', and befriend [ 135 ]
Us thy vow'd Priests, till utmost end
Of all thy dues be done, and none left out,
Ere the blabbing Eastern scout,
The nice Morn on th' Indian steep
From her cabin'd loop hole peep, [ 140 ]
And to the tel-tale Sun discry
Our conceal'd Solemnity.
Com, knit hands, and beat the ground,
In a light fantastick round.
”
”
John Milton (Comus and Some Shorter Poems of Milton: Harrap's English Classics)
“
We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams; —
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample a kingdom down.
We, in the ages lying,
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
A breath of our inspiration
Is the life of each generation;
A wondrous thing of our dreaming
Unearthly, impossible seeming —
The soldier, the king, and the peasant
Are working together in one,
Till our dream shall become their present,
And their work in the world be done.
They had no vision amazing
Of the goodly house they are raising;
They had no divine foreshowing
Of the land to which they are going:
But on one man's soul it hath broken,
A light that doth not depart;
And his look, or a word he hath spoken,
Wrought flame in another man's heart.
And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.
But we, with our dreaming and singing,
Ceaseless and sorrowless we!
The glory about us clinging
Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing:
O men! it must ever be
That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,
A little apart from ye.
For we are afar with the dawning
And the suns that are not yet high,
And out of the infinite morning
Intrepid you hear us cry —
How, spite of your human scorning,
Once more God's future draws nigh,
And already goes forth the warning
That ye of the past must die.
Great hail! we cry to the comers
From the dazzling unknown shore;
Bring us hither your sun and your summers;
And renew our world as of yore;
You shall teach us your song's new numbers,
And things that we dreamed not before:
Yea, in spite of a dreamer who slumbers,
And a singer who sings no more.
”
”
Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Music And Moonlight: Poems And Songs)
“
One day, because I was bored in our usual spot, next to the merry-go-round, Françoise had taken me on an excursion – beyond the frontier guarded at equal intervals by the little bastions of the barley-sugar sellers – into those neighbouring but foreign regions where the faces are unfamiliar, where the goat cart passes; then she had gone back to get her things from her chair, which stood with its back to a clump of laurels; as I waited for her, I was trampling the broad lawn, sparse and shorn, yellowed by the sun, at the far end of which a statue stands above the pool, when, from the path, addressing a little girl with red hair playing with a shuttlecock in front of the basin, another girl, while putting on her cloak and stowing her racket, shouted to her, in a sharp voice: ‘Good-bye, Gilberte, I’m going home, don’t forget we’re coming to your house tonight after dinner.’ That name, Gilberte, passed by close to me, evoking all the more forcefully the existence of the girl it designated in that it did not merely name her as an absent person to whom one is referring, but hailed her directly; thus it passed close by me, in action so to speak, with a power that increased with the curve of its trajectory and the approach of its goal; – transporting along with it, I felt, the knowledge, the notions about the girl to whom it was addressed, that belonged not to me, but to the friend who was calling her, everything that, as she uttered it, she could see again or at least held in her memory, of their daily companionship, of the visits they paid to each other, and all that unknown experience which was even more inaccessible and painful to me because conversely it was so familiar and so tractable to that happy girl who grazed me with it without my being able to penetrate it and hurled it up in the air in a shout; – letting float in the air the delicious emanation it had already, by touching them precisely, released from several invisible points in the life of Mlle Swann, from the evening to come, such as it might be, after dinner, at her house; – forming, in its celestial passage among the children and maids, a little cloud of precious colour, like that which, curling over a lovely garden by Poussin,15 reflects minutely like a cloud in an opera, full of horses and chariots, some manifestation of the life of the gods; – casting finally, on that bald grass, at the spot where it was at once a patch of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the blonde shuttlecock player (who did not stop launching the shuttlecock and catching it again until a governess wearing a blue ostrich feather called her), a marvellous little band the colour of heliotrope as impalpable as a reflection and laid down like a carpet over which I did not tire of walking back and forth with lingering, nostalgic and desecrating steps, while Françoise cried out to me: ‘Come on now, button up your coat and let’s make ourselves scarce’, and I noticed for the first time with irritation that she had a vulgar way of speaking, and alas, no blue feather in her hat.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time: Swann's Way)
“
Now Montezuma [a Tohono O’odham culture hero] called all the tribes together and said, ‘I am greater than anything that has ever been, greater than anything which exists now, and greater than anything that will ever be. Now, you people shall build me a tall house, floor upon floor upon floor, a house rising into the sky, rising far above this earth into the heavens, where I shall rule as Chief of all the Universe.’ The Great Mystery Power descended from the sky to reason with Montezuma, telling him to stop challenging that which cannot be challenged, but Montezuma would not listen. He said: ‘I am almighty. Let no power stand in my way. I am the Great Rebel. I shall turn this world upside down to my own liking.’ Then good changed to evil. Men began to hunt and kill animals. Disregarding the eternal laws by which humans had lived, they began to fight among themselves. The Great Mystery Power tried to warn Montezuma and the people by pushing the sun farther away from the earth and placing it where it is now. Winter, snow, ice, and hail appeared, but no one heeded this warning. In the meantime Montezuma made the people labour to put up his many-storied house, whose rooms were of coral and jet, turquoise and mother-of-pearl. It rose higher and higher, but just as it began to soar above the clouds far into the sky, the Great Mystery Power made the earth tremble. Montezuma’s many-storied house of precious stones collapsed into a heap of rubble. When that happened, the people discovered that they could no longer understand the language of the animals, and the different tribes, even though they were all human beings, could no longer understand each other. Then Montezuma shook his fists toward the sky and called: ‘Great Mystery Power, I defy you. I shall fight you. I shall tell the people not to pray or make sacrifices of corn and fruit to the Creator. I, Montezuma, am taking your place!’ The Great Mystery Power sighed, and even wept, because the one he had chosen to lead mankind had rebelled against him. Then the Great Mystery resolved to vanquish those who rose against him. He sent the locust flying far across the eastern waters, to summon a people in an unknown land, people whose faces and bodies were full of hair, who rode astride strange beasts, who were encased in iron, wielding iron weapons, who had magic hollow sticks spitting fire, thunder, and destruction. The Great Mystery Power allowed these bearded, pitiless people to come in ships across the great waters out of the east - permitted them to come to Montezuma’s country, taking away Montezuma’s power and destroying him utterly. From Montezuma and the Great Flood
”
”
James Wilson (The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America)
“
Praise Him, sun and moon . . . fire and hail, snow and clouds . . . mountains . . . cattle . . . creeping things and flying fowl . . . all peoples. . . . Let them praise the name of the Lord. – from Psalm 148
”
”
Robert J. Morgan (Near To The Heart Of God)
“
He then transferred the potency of those dusty green eyes on Jessica, took her hand, and made a low bow over it. At least he hadn’t kissed it, Richard noted. Kendrick had spared himself being run through. “Jessica,” Kendrick purred. “A lovely name for an even more beautiful woman.” Jessica laughed as she pulled her hand away. “That’s pretty good. Would it be rude to label you a womanizer right now?” Richard almost gasped at her cheek but Kendrick laughed. “Astute and beautiful. Tell me, Lady Jessica. Whence do you hail?” “’Tis on no map you’ll ever see,” Richard interrupted with a grumble. Jessica smiled serenely. “It is rather far away.” “Then it will obviously require a great deal of time to explain where it is,” Kendrick said delightedly, as if he’d just come up with a brilliant scheme. “Richard, fetch some weak wine and join us in your solar. I’m sure being out in this sun cannot be good for this sweet maid.” Richard took Jessica’s hand and pulled her away. “This sweet maid, as you call her, has work to do. Go finish my floor, Jessica. I’m sure Kendrick will survive without your attentions for the next little while.” “How possessive you are, my lord,” Kendrick said, his eyes twinkling. “This is a new side of you, Richard. It’s charming, truly.
”
”
Lynn Kurland (The More I See You (de Piaget, #7; de Piaget/MacLeod, #6))
“
Hail to thee, O teacher of Brahmins!” Onesikritos said after seeking out Dandamis in his forest retreat. “The son of the mighty God Zeus, being Alexander who is the Sovereign Lord of all men, asks you to go to him. If you comply, he will reward you with great gifts; if you refuse, he will cut off your head!” The yogi received calmly this fairly compulsive invitation, and “did not so much as lift up his head from his couch of leaves.” “I also am a son of Zeus, if Alexander be such,” he commented. “I want nothing that is Alexander’s, for I am content with what I have, while I see that he wanders with his men over sea and land for no advantage, and is never coming to an end of his wanderings. “Go and tell Alexander that God the Supreme King is never the Author of insolent wrong, but is the Creator of light, of peace, of life, of water, of the body of man and of souls; He receives all men when death sets them free, being then in no way subject to evil disease. He alone is the God of my homage, who abhors slaughter and instigates no wars. “Alexander is no god, since he must taste of death,” continued the sage in quiet scorn. “How can such as he be the world’s master, when he has not yet seated himself on a throne of inner universal dominion? Neither as yet has he entered living into Hades, nor does he even know the course of the sun over the vast regions of this earth. Most nations have not so much as heard his name!” After this chastisement—surely the most caustic ever sent to assault the ears of the “Lord of the World”—the sage added ironically,
”
”
Paramahansa Yogananda (Autobiography of a Yogi (Complete Edition))
“
Joy. In every breath. In every moment. In every turn of the blossom to face the sun. In every stream of juice that trails my chin from fruit so sweet. In Him. In the coolness of the evening when He walks beside us and His laughter lifts across the river as He delights in our wonder over this place He has given us. In silence. In starlight. In shouting an anthem of gladness that shakes the earth and hails birds into flight.
”
”
Alanna Rusnak (Eve Undone)
“
But Stephanie hailed from suburban, midwestern nowhere, and there had been a club whose snack bar served thin, greasy burgers rather than salade niçoise with fresh seared tuna, like this one, but where tennis had been played on sun-cracked courts, and where Stephanie had achieved a certain greatness at around age thirteen. She hadn’t played since.
”
”
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
“
She leaned heavily against the front door, put her hand on the doorknob and although her husband had said nothing of his vision of the black coach wet with rain, she caught a glimpse of it herself in that second between the moment she closed her eyes and the next one when she began a Hail Mary. The amniotic fluid was like something sun-warmed against her leg. It quickly soaked her terry-cloth slipper and then pooled on the linoleum at her feet. Her heel skidded in it a little as she slowly let go of the doorknob and carefully—a reluctant skater on a pond—got herself across the hallway, onto the living-room carpet, and across the living room, a slug’s trail of dark water behind her, and onto the couch. She still held Jacob’s coat in her hand and she threw it over the cushions before she eased herself down, praying all the while the formal prayer that held off both hope and dread, as well as any speculation about what to do next. She must have said a dozen of them—it only occurred to her after about the seventh or eighth that she should have been counting them off on her fingers—when the first cramp seized her and then she threw the prayers aside as if they had been vain attempts to speak in her high-school French. Oh look, she said. Don’t let this happen. Come on. Be reasonable. Long before the fireman pounded at the door (or was it an angel, or a banshee, or the ghost of the other Jacob?), she had listened to the rise and fall of the wind outside. Long
”
”
Alice McDermott (After This)
“
Triple spring mated to beget all things.
A divine stone quickened by the sun and moon Changed from egg to ape to reach the Great Way.
Loanname and surname matched elixir made. Formless inside he yields no image known;
His outward guise coheres in action shown.
In every age all persons will yield to him:
Hailed a king, a sage, he is free to roam.
”
”
Wu Cheng'en (The Journey to the West, Volume 1 (Journey to the West))
“
Triple spring mated to beget all things.
A divine stone quickened by the sun and moon
Changed from egg to ape to reach the Great Way.
Loanname and surname matched elixir made.
Formless inside he yields no image known;
His outward guise coheres in action shown.
In every age all persons will yield to him:
Hailed a king, a sage, he is free to roam.
”
”
Wu Cheng'en
“
Sometimes the sun is covered by dense layers of dark clouds. A person looking up would swear that there is no sun. But still the sun shines. At night, when there is no light, still the sun shines. During rain or hail or hurricane or tornado, still the sun shines.
Does the sun ask itself, "Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?" No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?" No, it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, "Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?" No, it burns, it shines.
In this country in the coming years, I think that there will be a terrible storm. I think that the skies will darken beyond all recognition. Those who walk the streets will walk them in darkness. Those who are in prisons and mental institutions will not see the sky at all, only the dark out of barred windows. Those who are hungry and in despair may not look up at all. They will see the darkness as it lies on the ground in front of their feet. Those who are raped will see the darkness as they look up into the face of the rapist. Those who are assaulted and brutalized by madmen will stare intently into the darkness to discern who is moving toward them at every moment. It will be hard to remember, as the storm is raging, that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun shines. It will be hard to remember that still, even though we cannot see it, the sun burns. We will try to see it and we will try to feel it, and we will forget that it warms us still, that if it were not there, burning, shining, this earth would be a cold and desolate and barren place.
As long as we have life and breath, no matter how dark the earth around us, that sun still burns, still shines. There is no today without it. There is no tomorrow without it. There was no yesterday without it. That light is within us—constant, warm, and healing. Remember it, sisters, in the dark times to come.
”
”
Andrea Dworkin (Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics)
“
Triple spring mated to beget all things.
A divine stone quickened by the sun and moon Changed from egg to ape to reach the Great Way.
Loanname and surname matched elixir made. Formless inside he yields no image known;
His outward guise coheres in action shown.
In every age all persons will yield to him:
Hailed a king, a sage, he is free to roam.
”
”
Wu Cheng'en (The Journey to the West, Vol. 1)
“
Triple spring mated to beget all things.
A divine stone quickened by the sun and moon
Changed from egg to ape to reach the Great Way.
Loanname and surname matched elixir made.
Formless inside he yields no image known;
His outward guise coheres in action shown.
In every age all persons will yield to him:
Hailed a king, a sage, he is free to roam.
”
”
Wu Cheng'en
“
One d-day,” Old Gertrude muttered, in an agonizingly slow and leathery voice that suggested she was actually closer to two hundred years old, “there is going to be … a gigantic f-fish … called Brian ….” “Yes?” asked Yam, scribbling down her every word frantically (which was unnecessary, because she left such long pauses in between her words that he could have written them down, climbed to the top of one of the highest jungle trees bordering the village, tamed the fifty or so parrots living in its branches, and then come down again before she even said the next thing). Gertrude’s lips quivered. “It is going to eat ….” “Eat, yes, what’s it going to eat?” cried the Chief. Gertrude’s whole body was shaking from the sheer effort now. Sweat ran down her brow. Her blank face had morphed into a look of such concentration that it could probably be considered a workout. The whole village leaned forward, their breaths held in excitement. “It is going to eat,” Old Gertrude whispered …. “Yes!?” cried the Chief. “THE SUN,” Old Gertrude finished. Steve gawped in disbelief. “A fish is going to eat the sun?” “BRILLIANT!” shouted Yam, hurriedly writing the last words of Old Gertrude’s newest prediction into the book. “SHE’S DONE IT AGAIN!” bellowed the Chief—and with that, the entire village erupted into an enormous cheer—with the exception of Gertrude herself, that was, who had sagged in relief now the sheer effort of verbalizing her ‘prediction’ was over. “HURRAH FOR OLD GERTRUDE!” chorused the village. Chuck clucked crossly, rustling his feathers. “Hmph.” “AND ALL HAIL THE ONE TRUE KING, OF COURSE!” the natives added. Chuck stopped his rustling. “Better.” “Get her back to her hut and put her in bed, Yam,” said the Chief. “She looks like she’s about to fall over.” Yam nodded, then scooped up Old Gertrude and hurried her away, at rather a quicker pace than he’d brought her out at. “So, there you go,” said the Chief, looking pleased. “You’ve witnessed one of Old Gertrude’s amazing predictions. A gigantic fish eating the sun, eh? Madness! I do hope I’m alive to see it!
”
”
Splendiferous Steve (The Quest for the Obsidian Pickaxe, Books 1 - 5: An Unofficial Minecraft Series (The Quest for the Obsidian Pickaxe Collection))
“
Honor He Wrote Sonnet 12
After all this time, the sun doesn't say to us,
Listen you guys, you owe all your light to me.
The trees don’t grab our throat with its vines,
And yell, all your air and food are my charity.
A candle does not burn to be appraised,
But because to burn is the purpose of a candle.
A candle not burning is no candle at all,
Be a burning candle and live life purpose-driven.
Life is a vessel of infinite majesty and potential,
Let us not let it rot at the shore playing safe.
Come hail or high water, let us be shredded,
Let us be annihilated in service and in help.
Let us be human, let us be alive across all narrowness.
Let us be the shinning beacon of supreme unselfishness.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables)
“
In the opening paragraphs of the first chapter, the narrator is speaking casually to Mirdath the Beautiful, a maiden of the gentry of the English rural countryside. A more comfortable and bucolic setting cannot be imagined. Then, when he says, 'It is an elf night; the Towers of Sleep rise' she answers by speaking of the Moon-Garden, the City of Twilight, and the Tree with the Great Painted Head. By that word she reveals that she is like him: a soul that is more than mortal, that has lived other lives in other cycles of reincarnation, dimly half-forgotten. She and he are both travelers from moon-lit elfin lands or empires of cloudy nightmare, and they hail from places far beyond the little fields we know, older than human history: they have seen the light of other suns, other days. They dance to music we cannot hear. No one of their own time will understand them.
”
”
John C. Wright (Awake in the Night Land)
“
Ain't No Coward (Sonnet 1137)
Praying to be saved from danger,
Ain't no spineless coward I.
Let all the dangers hail my way,
Each crisis is like a trip to Hawaii.
Won't listen to no forbiddance,
Won't heed no foreboding.
None can sense the extent of my senses,
Night and day are my own making.
When all are eager for the sun to rise,
I grab the night and conjure up dawn.
Leave no corner of mindland unharvested,
Struggle isn't over till gloom turns to morn.
”
”
Abhijit Naskar (Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo)
“
them as possible,” he said. I have often met with such treatment from people that I was all the while endeavouring to serve. At other times I have been extolled extravagantly when I have had little or no merit. These are the operations of nature. It sometimes is cloudy, it rains, it hails, again ’tis clear and pleasant, and the sun shines on us.
”
”
H.W. Brands (The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin)
“
War
Private Smith of the Royals; the veldt and a slate-black sky,
Hillocks of mud, brick-red with blood, and a prayer—half curse—to die.
A lung and a Mauser bullet; pink froth and a half-choked cry.
Private Smith of the Royals; a torrent of freezing rain;
A hail of frost on a life half lost; despair and a grinding pain.
And the drip-drip-drip of the Heavens to wash out the brand of Cain.
Private Smith of the Royals; the blush of a dawning day;
The fading mist that the sun had kissed—and over the hills away
The blest Red Cross like an angel in the trail of the men who slay.
But Private Smith of the Royals gazed up at the soft blue sky—
The rose-tinged morn like a babe new born and the sweet-songed birds on high—
With a fleck of red on his pallid lip and a film of white on his eye.
”
”
Herbert Cadett
“
One Immortal Prince by Maisie Aletha Smikle
One Prince comes
Born in a stable
An army He did not bring
Throngs and arms He had none
Alone on a colt He comes
Humble and filled with Peace
One Prince comes to save the world
To save generations and spread goodwill
To save billions a Prince came
So people may abide in peace
All hail the Prince
The Prince of Glory
A Prince Immortal
Filled with holy power
Full of might
So fair and so bright
Like the stars
He shone
Radiant as the sun
Is the Son who comes on a colt
They call Him Emmanuel
They call Him Messiah
They call Him Rabbi
They call Him Savior
They call Him Prince
They call Him King
They call Him Master
They call Him Jesus
They call Him Christ Son of God
Prince of the Kingdom of everlasting Peace
Redeemer and Savior who makes completely whole
A world of shattered disheveled pieces
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
Light, The Hymn
Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!
In light we are made.
In light we are born.
In light we are raised.
In light we enthroned.
In our minds it is wisdom.
In our hearts it is faith.
In our souls it is love.
In our lives it is God.
My mind honors light.
My heart esteems light.
My soul extols light.
How awesome light is.
How majestic light is.
How wonderful light is.
Feeding plants.
Nourishing animals.
Sustaining nature.
Serving people.
Supporting all.
Light illuminates the world.
Light illuminates the stars.
Light illuminates the universe.
Hail to the sun.
Hail to the stars.
Hail to the cosmos.
Hail to light!
Hail to God!
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
Tribute: Nelson Mandela
Tonight, I salute not the sun.
Tonight, I salute not the stars.
Tonight, I laud a hero.
Tonight, I extol a legend.
Tonight, I hail Nelson Mandela.
"He came from the sky," some say.
"He came from the stars," others claim.
"He came from Heaven," many declare.
"He came from God," all affirm.
Madiba, you are my teacher.
Madiba, you are my elder.
You are my father.
You are my hero.
I won't break even if they imprison me.
I won't shake even if they threaten me.
I won't weep even if they kill me.
I won't yield even if they assassinate me.
You are our symbol of courage.
You are our emblem of hope.
You are our model of faith
You are our paragon of love.
You are our champion.
You are our hero.
You are our legend.
We fight for you.
We suffer for you.
We are even prepared to die for you.
You opened our eyes.
You opened our ears.
You opened our minds.
You opened our hearts.
How sharp your mind was.
How strong your heart was.
How pure your soul was.
You were a fox,
you were a lion,
but you were also a dove.
Long live Madiba, Africa remembers you!
Long live Madiba, Africa honors you!
Long live Madiba, Africa celebrates you!
Long live Madiba, the world loves you!!!
”
”
Matshona Dhliwayo
“
The true test of a warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance'. Meaning, how you stand up after the rain, a tornado, or blizzard (the unpredictable weather of life) is the ultimate test of the strength of your spirit. Even through the stormiest weather, a warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up to stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail ― time and time again.
”
”
Suzy Kassem
“
The sun had barely come up, but the city was already full of life. Men carried dark suitcases, and women in stylish winter coats scurried along like ants in a gigantic ant farm, all of them knowing exactly where they were headed, no time needing to be wasted. Business men and women poured out of never-ending lines of yellow cabs that never had to wait long before new, hurried customers jammed themselves into the vehicles. It was Matt and Maude’s turn to scramble inside a cab Matt had successfully hailed.
”
”
Anna Adams (A French Girl in New York (The French Girl, #1))
“
Storms, hail, floods and all sorts of bad weather will come in life, but you know what, so will sunshine.
Do not give up on your path to breakthroughs just because there are mountains to climb along the way.
Remain steadfast in your faith.
When everything seems so dark, remember that one day, the sun will shine again.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (The Essence of Faith: Daily Inspirational Quotes)