β
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
β
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
β
β
Maya Angelou
β
Books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has only happened once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook)
β
True love is rare, and it's the only thing that gives life real meaning.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (Message in a Bottle)
β
Everyone has talent. What's rare is the courage to follow it to the dark places where it leads.
β
β
Erica Jong
β
It's a lot easier to be lost than found. It's the reason we're always searching and rarely discovered--so many locks not enough keys.
β
β
Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)
β
But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
β
β
Madeline Miller (Circe)
β
In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche
β
the free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it - basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.
β
β
Charles Bukowski (Tales of Ordinary Madness)
β
Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)
β
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.
β
β
Jean de la Fontaine
β
And what would humans be without love?"
RARE, said Death.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Sourcery (Discworld, #5; Rincewind, #3))
β
Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.
β
β
Margaret Drabble
β
Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
β
I wanted to tell the book thief many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn't already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race-that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.
β
β
Leonardo da Vinci
β
Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like betrayal
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.
β
β
Benjamin Alire SΓ‘enz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
β
If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering outspoken fellow; but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
There is nothing more rare, nor more beautiful, than a woman being unapologetically herself; comfortable in her perfect imperfection. To me, that is the true essence of beauty.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (M Is for Magic)
β
If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.
β
β
Ralph Waldo Emerson
β
Going round and around inside a dryer can be fatal, whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
β
β
Francesco Petrarca
β
Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket.
But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Manβs Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
β
He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
β
β
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
β
We...we could be friends.'
We COULD be rare specimens of an exotic breed of dancing African elephants, but we're not. At least, I'M not.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (Coraline)
β
The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.
β
β
Richard Bach (Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah)
β
Too weird to live, too rare to die!
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.
β
β
Mark Twain
β
Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.
β
β
Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto)
β
It had flaws, but what does that matter when it comes to matters of the heart? We love what we love. Reason does not enter into it. In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.
β
β
Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Manβs Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
β
However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship.
β
β
Albert Einstein
β
It's a rare person to face who they are and not run from it - not be broken by it.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
β
That's why I like you. Do you realize how rare it is to come across a hot girl who creates a adjectival version of the word pedophile? You are so busy being you that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.
They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β
The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.
β
β
Steven Moffat
β
We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn't matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It's quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.
β
β
John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
β
It doesn't take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (My Sisterβs Keeper)
β
People rarely bring flowers to a suicide.
β
β
Jennifer Niven (All the Bright Places)
β
When you hold a grudge, you want someone elseβs sorrow to reflect your level of hurt but the two rarely meet.
β
β
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
β
Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside a dryer with the clothes,β Clary said. βThe difference is, she didnβt let me.β
βProbably because going around and around in a dryer can be fatal,β Jace pointed out, βwhereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1))
β
I see you're determined to miss my point."
"If you're point is that there was a pretty girl in the room and it was distracting you, then I think I've taken your point handily."
"You think she's pretty?" Will was surprised; Jem rarely opinioned this sort of thing.
"Yes, and you do too."
"I hadn't noticed, really."
"Yes, you have, and I've noticed you noticing.
β
β
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
β
I am a jumble of passions, misgivings, and wants. It seems that I am always in a state of wishing and rarely in a state of contentment.
β
β
Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, #3))
β
Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin
β
People are rarely as attractive in reality as they are in the eyes of the people who are in love with them. Which is, I suppose, as it should be.
β
β
David Levithan (Every Day (Every Day, #1))
β
If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love.
β
β
Thich Nhat Hanh (Living Buddha, Living Christ)
β
Madness is something rare in individuals β but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
β
There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
β
Men rarely see their own actions as unjustified.
β
β
Brandon Sanderson (The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1))
β
You're arguing that the fragile, rare thing is beautiful simply because it is fragile and rare. But that's a lie, and you know it.
β
β
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
β
Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it.
β
β
Emily Dickinson
β
I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.
Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.
β
β
Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber (Outlander, #2))
β
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just canβt help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year.
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights)
β
I suppose that since most of our hurts come through relationships so will our healing, and I know that grace rarely makes sense for those looking in from the outside.
β
β
William Paul Young (The Shack)
β
And then there are the rare ones who know love, who understand it. Who freely give of themselves, demanding only a return of that love,that trust.
β
β
Kim Harrison (Every Which Way But Dead (The Hollows, #3))
β
What is normal? Normal is only ordinary; mediocre. Life belongs to the rare, exceptional individual who dares to be different.
β
β
V.C. Andrews (My Sweet Audrina (Audrina, #1))
β
I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I even simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant...I AM HAUNTED BY HUMANS.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
In this world of numbness and information overload, the ability to feel, my boy, is a rare gift indeed.
β
β
Patrick Ness (The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, #2))
β
We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness and affection.
Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between two people when it exists within each one of them β we can only love others as much as we love ourselves.
Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.
β
β
BrenΓ© Brown (The Gifts of Imperfection)
β
The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.
β
β
George R.R. Martin
β
One rarely falls in love without being as much attracted to what is interestingly wrong with someone as what is objectively healthy.
β
β
Alain de Botton
β
Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am much more preoccupied with loving.
β
β
AnaΓ―s Nin (Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of AnaΓ―s Nin, 1931-1932)
β
People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing.
β
β
Dale Carnegie
β
I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I ever simply estimate it.
β
β
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
β
It was brave," countered Issa. "It was rare. It was love, and it was beautiful.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2))
β
[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.
β
β
Stephen Hawking
β
Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.
β
β
Terry Goodkind (Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth, #1))
β
You rarely have time for everything you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.
β
β
Fred Rogers
β
Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if oyu planned on fallin gin love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
β
Life teaches us the right path is rarely the easy one.
β
β
Roy T. Bennett (The Light in the Heart)
β
I am a rare species, not a stereotype.
β
β
Ivan E. Coyote
β
It's a rare book that wins the battle against drooping eyelids.
β
β
Tracy Chevalier
β
It is so rare in this world to meet a trustworthy person who truly wants to help you, and finding such a person can make you feel warm and safe, even if you are in the middle of a windy valley high up in the mountains.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)
β
Nothing is ever simple. And when it is, it's rarely every worth it.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (From Blood and Ash (Blood and Ash, #1))
β
Like a church bell, a coffin, and a vat of melted chocolate, a supply closet is rarely a comfortable place to hide.
β
β
Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book (A Series of Unfortunate Events))
β
You guys didn't really think you could go off on a party weekend without me, did you? Especially here of all placesβ" He froze and it was one of those rare moments when Adrian Ivashkov was caught totally and completely off guard.
"Did you know," he said slowly, "that Victor Dashkov is sitting on your bed?"
"Yeah," I said. "It was kind of a shock to us too.
β
β
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
β
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
β
β
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
β
One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. "Good" is no longer good when one's neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a "common good"! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.
β
β
Friedrich Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil)
β
I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?
β
β
Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights)
β
Barrons laughed again. "And there, my dear Fio, you make one of Womankind's greatest mistakes: Falling in love with a man's potential. We so rarely share the same view of it, and even more rarely care to achieve it. Stop pining for the man you think I could be -- and take a good, long, hard look at the one I am.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
β
I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky.β I finished the sixth, and was well on my way sawing through the seventh before I said, βI never knew why. I rarely went outside at nightβusually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder β¦ β I pulled out the seventh and final arrow. βI wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fireβbut that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didnβt bother to look, but to only fear it β¦ Then I didnβt particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this placeβlooking for you all.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
β
Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.
β
β
Tennessee Williams
β
Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant things from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
β
β
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
β
Genuine love is rarely an emotional space where needs are instantly gratified. To know love we have to invest time and commitment...'dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love -- which is to transform us.' Many people want love to function like a drug, giving them an immediate and sustained high. They want to do nothing, just passively receive the good feeling.
β
β
bell hooks
β
That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.
β
β
Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner)
β
He would see her again. He knew he would. Magic bent the world. Pulled it into shape. There were fixed points. Most of the time they were places. But sometimes, rarely, they were people. For someone who never stood still, Lila felt like a pin in Kell's world. One he was sure to snag on.
β
β
Victoria E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1))
β
When Great Trees Fall
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
β
β
Maya Angelou
β
A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.
β
β
Erich Fromm (The Art of Being)
β
Love.
Not the kind you see in the movies or hear about on the radio.
The real kind.
The kind that gets beaten down and bloody, yet perseveres.
The kind that hopes even when hope seems foolish.
The kind that can forgive. The kind that believes in healing.
The kind that can sit in silence and feel renewed.
The real kind of love.
It's rare and we have it...
β
β
Chelsea Fine (Sophie & Carter)
β
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door β
Only this, and nothing more."
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; β vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow β sorrow for the lost Lenore β
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore β
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me β filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door β
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; β
This it is, and nothing more."
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you"β here I opened wide the door; β
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" β
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore β
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; β
'Tis the wind and nothing more."
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door β
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door β
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore β
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaningβ little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door β
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore.
β
β
Edgar Allan Poe (The Raven)
β
A secret is a strange thing.
There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid.
And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it.
Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate.
All of us have secrets in our lives. Weβre keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches β thatβs what will be left at the end of it all.
β
β
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
β
The one thing I know for sure is that feelings are rarely mutual, so when they are, drop everything, forget belongings and expectations, forget the games, the two days between texts, the hard to gets because this is it, this is what the entire world is after and youβve stumbled upon it by chance, by accidentββso take a deep breath, take a step forward, now run, collide like planets in the system of a dying sun, embrace each other with both arms and let all the rules, the opinions and common sense crash down around you. Because this is love kid, and itβs all yours. Believe me, you're in for one hell of a ride, after allββthis is the one thing I know for sure.
β
β
Beau Taplin
β
Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you.
β
β
Edna St. Vincent Millay
β
No, it's not that. It's not what you're thinking. I was serious when I said 'all of it'. I can remember every moment we were together, and in eachof them there was something wonderful. I can't really pick any one time that meant more than any other. The entire summer was perfect, the kind of summer everyone should have. How could I pick one moment over another? Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.
β
β
Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook (The Notebook, #1))
β
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessnessβin a landscape selected at randomβis when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concernβto the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
β
β
Vladimir Nabokov
β
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
β
I like you in my bed,β Patch said. βI rarely pull down the covers. I rarely sleep. I could get used to this picture.β
βAre you offering me a permanent place?β
βAlready put a spare key in your pocket.β
I patted my pocket. Sure enough, something small and hard was snug inside. βHow charitable of you.β
βIβm not feeling very charitable now,β he said, holding my eyes, his voice deepening with a gravelly edge. βI missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didnβt feel you missing from my life. You haunted me to the point that I began to believe Hank had gone back on his oath and killed you. I saw your ghost in everything. I couldnβt escape you and I didnβt want to. You tortured me, but it was better than losing you.
β
β
Becca Fitzpatrick (Silence (Hush, Hush, #3))
β
When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.
β
β
Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)