The Agony And The Ecstasy Quotes

After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.

Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.

I freeze and burn, love is bitter and sweet, my sighs are tempests and my tears are floods, I am in ecstasy and agony, I am possessed by memories of her and I am in exile from myself.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.

It's freezing up here. What did you use to keep warm?" "Indignation," said Michelangelo. "Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Half agony, half hope. Half pain, half ecstasy. Half grief, half joy. Half my downfall, half my savior.

To try to understand another human being, to grapple for his ultimate depths, that is the most dangerous of human endeavors.

We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.

He had always loved God. In his darkest hours he cried out, "God did not create us to abandon us.

The most perfect guide is nature. Continue without fail to draw something every day.

Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.

Listen, my friend, all forms that exist in God's universe can be found in the human figure. A man's body and face can tell everything he represents. So how could I ever exhaust my interest in it?

We...believe that art is religious, because it is one of man's highest aspirations. There is no such thing as pagan art, only good and bad art.

An artist without ideas is a mendicant; barren, he goes begging among the hours.

Drawing is the poet's written line, set down to see if there be a story worth telling, a truth worth revealing.

What we know of others is our personal secret.

Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]

What meaning has a compliment if one hears it night and day.

No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him.

A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life.

He had never believed that spirituality had to be anemic or aesthetic.

The sculptor is master of time; he can change his subjects forward or back.

A mirth which is not gaiety is often the mask which hides the convulsed and distorted features of agony--and laughter, which never yet was the expression of rapture, has often been the only intelligible language of madness and misery. Ecstasy only smiles--despair laughs.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.

...and rout the magical mystical moonlight with fierce proof of its own greater power to light, to heat, to make everything known.

Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within.

L'arte è fatta per coloro che si sente indegno senza di essa.

Alla guerra di amor vince chi fugge.

One should not become an artist because he can, but because he must. It is only for those who would be miserable without it.

A new doctor had been sent for, Lazzaro of Pavia, who had administered to Lorenzo a pulverized mixture of diamonds and pearls. This hitherto infallible medicine had failed to help.

The most dangerous part of lending books lies in the returning. At such times, friendships hang by a thread. I look for agony, ecstasy, for tears, transfiguration, trembling hands, a broken voice - but what the borrower usually says is, "I enjoyed it." I enjoyed it - as if that were what books were for.

Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony.

Finally he said, “I like everything that wild Irish maniac, J. P. Donleavy, ever wrote.” It wasn’t so much a discussion as a sharing of taste. He also liked The Agony and the Ecstasy and Lust for Life by Irving Stone.

As he reached the door of the chapel and turned back for a last look, he saw that the Virgin too was sad and lonely; the most alone human being God ever put on earth.

I used to try and forget, now I desperately try to remember. I used to control my thoughts, now they control me. I used to fear death, now I fear life.

Even in your kindness there is a cruel revelation. Life is cruel, never love.

Naći će se drugi papa, ali nikad više neće biti Botičelija.

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, --as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? --from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

It's pleasant to get used to the expensive, the soft, the comfortable. Once you're addicted, it's so easy to become a sycophant, to trim the sails of your judgment in order to be kept on. The next step is to change your work to please those in power, and that is death to the sculptor.

I understand," I cried to myself, "I understand at last. Life, life, life, this is life, full to overflowing with every ecstasy and every agony. It is mine, mine to hug, to exhaust, to drain.

We are giving the world back to man, and man back to himself. Man shall no longer be vile, but noble. We shall not destroy his mind in return for an immortal soul. Without a free, vigorous and creative mind, man is but an animal, and he will die like an animal, without any shred of a soul. We return to man his arts, his literature, his sciences, his independence to think and feel as an individual, not to be bound to dogma like a slave, to rot in his chains.

He...breathed in heavy gulps of air to prove to himself that he was three-dimensional.

Have you ever been in love?" "...in a way." "It's always 'in a way.

Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.

Art has an enemy called ignorance

There is only a God-given number of years in which to work and fulfill yourself. Don't squander them.

That was how his pen finally designed his sculpture; in the center the weak, confused, arrogant, soon to be destroyed young man holding cup a loft, behind him the idyllic child, clear-eyed, munching his grapes, symbol of joy ; between them the tiger skin. The Bacchus, hollow within himself, flabby, reeling, already old; the Satyr, eternally young and gay, symbol of man’s childhood and naughty innocence

From this vantage point he came to a realization that everything that had happened to him before this had been a journey upward through time, everything that occurred after it a descent. If he could not control his fate, why be born?

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself?

Indignation. Best fuel I know. Never burns out.

Art has a magic quality: the more minds that digest it, the longer it lives.

A work of art meant growth from the particular to the universal. To a work of art, time brought timelessness.

When do we get to the interesting part—the tortured souls, the impossible dreams, the agony and the ecstasy of creation?

... sculpture bore the relationship the truth did to falsehood... if a painter blundered, what did he do? He patched and repaired and covered over with another layer of paint. The sculptor on the contrary had to see within th marble the form that it held. He could not glue back broken parts.

His copy was full of lofty echoes: Greek Tragedy; Damocle's sword; manna from heaven; the myth of Sisyphus; the last of the Mohicans; hydra-headed and Circe-voiced; experiments with truth; discovery of India; biblical resonance; the lessons of Vedanta; the centre does not hold; the road not taken; the mimic men; for whom the bell tolls; a hundred visions and revisions; the power and the glory; the heart of the matter; the heart of darkness; the agony and the ecstasy; sands of time; riddle of the Sphinx; test of tantalus; murmurs of mortality; Falstaffian figure; Dickensian darkness; ...

He had come into the autumn of his life: a man had his seasons, even as had the earth. Was the harvesting of autumn less important than the seeding of spring? Each without the other was meaningless.

FROM ECSTASY TO AGONY Romantic Love sticks around long enough to bind two people together. Then it rides off into the sunset. And seemingly overnight, your dream marriage can turn into your biggest nightmare.

Lorenzo il Magnifico, the Plato Four, the humanists had taught him that man was the center of the universe; and this was never more demonstrable that when he stood looking upward and found himself, a lone individual, serving as the central pole holding up the tarpaulin of sun and clouds, moon and stars, knowing that, lone or abandoned as he might feel, without his support the heavens would fall.

It is perhaps in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer.

At the bottom of the pit, there is nothing to fear; above the clouds, there is nothing to hide.

Cardinal Giovanni still did not like delicate matters; they were usually painful.

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been...

I wanted the figures to be real and believable so that you would feel that with their very next breath would begin life itself.

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

Viața însăși îndreaptă spre om o față goală, nepăsătoare, descurajantă, pe care nu se citește nimic, ca și pe pânza asta goală. Dar omul nu se sperie de acest gol, pășește plin de încredere și de curaj, se zbate, clădește, creează, și până la urmă, pânza nu va mai rămâne goală, ci se acoperă cu formele bogate ale vieții.

He turned, stood above the crowd gazing up at him. There was silence in the square. And yet he had never felt such complete communication. It was as though they read each other’s thoughts, as though they were one and the same: they were part of him,every Florentine standing below, eyes turned up to him, and he was a part of them.

Dintotdeauna cititul însemnase pentru el bucuria cea mai mare și mai statornică, și cu atât mai mult îl pasiona acum, când în povestea triumfului sau a înfrângerilor, a suferințelor sau a bucuriilor altora găsea o evadare din umbra stăruitoare a propriei sale nereușite... în fiecare carte pe care o citea încerca să descopere țelul care ar putea da vieții lui un nou sens.

Per me [la creazione] è come una giornata d'uragano quando la tramontana s'abbatte fischiando dai monti. L'arte per me è un tormento, angoscioso quando il lavoro va male, estasiante quando va bene: ma sempre mi possiede senza scampo. Al termine della mia giornata, sono un guscio vuoto: tutto ciò che v'era in me, è passato nel marmo o nell'affresco. Quindi non mi resta più nulla da dare altrove.

Pleasure, scarcely in one instance, is ever able to reach ecstasy and rapture; and in no one instance can it continue for any time at its highest pitch and altitude. The spirits evaporate, the nerves relax, the fabric is disordered, and the enjoyment quickly degenerates into fatigue and uneasiness. But pain often, good God, how often! rises to torture and agony; and the longer it continues, it becomes still more genuine agony and torture. Patience is exhausted, courage languishes, melancholy seizes us, and nothing terminates our misery but the removal of its cause, or another event, which is the sole cure of all evil, but which, from our natural folly, we regard with still greater horror and consternation.

The red priestess shuddered. Blood trickled down her thigh, black and smoking. The fire was inside her, an agony, an ecstasy, filling her, searing her, transforming her. Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin, insistent as a lover’s hand.

… evil was vulnerable, even though it wore armor weighing a thousand pounds. There would always be some spot in it which was u defended; and if the good in man were dominant it would find that exposed area and evolve a way to penetrate it. The emotion must convey the idea that his conflict with Goliath was a parable of good and evil.

She clung to him, her hands raking at the smooth skin of her shoulders, the harsh hurry of her breathing matching his, her body poised on the edge of ecstasy, and realized with a kind of anguish that this was the last time she would ever fall through the stars to earth with him, and this agony of pleasure was their farewell to each other.

He turned, stood above the crowd gazing up at him. There was silence in the square. And yet he had never felt such complete communication.

Agony and ecstasy, pleasure and pain.

The ecstasy of seeing her versus the agony of losing her, a million births and a million deaths.

I’m both lost and found. In agony and ecstasy. Nothing and everything all at once.

Michelangelo on sculpture: “I feel about each new figure the way an astronomer does each time he discovers a new star: one more fragment of the universe has been filled in.

When I was a kid, I just read and read. We were lucky enough to have gone to England and had a whole bunch of Penguin Puffins books, like The Land of Green Ginger by Noel Langley, which is hilarious. I would love to be able to write a book like that, but I don't know that I have a humorous bone in my body when it comes to writing. Once on a Time by A.A. Milne. I read a lot of old, old fantasy stuff. The Carbonelbooks by Barbara Sleigh. Then when I got a little older I loved Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was a big fan of romance and when I got a little bit older I would read a Harlequin romance or a Georgette Heyer novel and then David Copperfield, and then another genre book and then Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy. I was that kind of reader. One book that I loved was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. I loved voice and that book had it in spades. And then of course I grew into loving Jane Eyre.

Where do ideas come from, Tomao? Sebastiano asked that same question when he was young. I can only give you the answer I gave him, for I am no wiser at eighty-two than I was at thirty-nine: ideas are a natural function of the mind, as breathing is of the lungs. Perhaps they come from God.

The woman had gasped beneath his heavy body. He rubbed against her, lubricated by the warm, sticky liquid, but as her body gradually grew cold, he felt as though they'd been glued together. She seemed to be see-sawing between agony and ecstasy, but finally Satake pressed his lips over hers to quiet the groans-of pain or pleasure-that were leaking from her mouth. He found the hole that he had made in her side and worked his finger deep into the opening. Blood was pumping from the wound, staining their sex a gruesome crimson. He wanted to get further inside, to melt into her. As he was about to come, he pulled his lips from her and she whispered in his ear: "I'm finished . . . finished." "I know," he'd said, and he could still hear the exact sound of his own voice.

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.

How could he have been so stupid, so blind? David pictured after Goliath could be no one but the biblical David, a special individual. He was not content to portray one man; he was seeking universal man, Everyman, all of whom,from the beginning of time, had faced a decision to strike for freedom

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one ”Go!”, his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species.

How could tickling, even though it causes laughter, be at the same time such a vicious form of torture? Sitting on the edge of my bed, I thought it through. I came to the conclusion, at last, that it was like this: Tickling and learning were much the same thing. When you tickle yourself—ecstasy; but when anyone else tickles you—agony.

That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow - all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected.

No wonder such a big part of growing old is learning to lower one's expectations, only we call that maturity and wisdom so as not to sound too defeatist. When you are young you demand ecstasy; when you are old you settle for anything short of agony.

So, as long as your inner life is enslaved to external situations, it will remain a precarious condition. There is no other way for it to be. What then is the way out? The way out is a very simple change in direction. You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you. Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within.

Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way. These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.

Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflicts, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they must accept both the agony and the ecstasy of that choice. And those who have never been wounded by love will never be able to say: ‘I have lived.’ Because they haven’t.

How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? - from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.

The olives are pressed for oil, the wood is burned cooking soup. Both are consumed. Art has a magic quality: the more minds that digest it, the longer it lives.

Любовта е солта на живота; човек има нужда от нея, за да подчертае вкуса на света.

Everybody wants to feel ecstasy, but nobody wants to go through the agony. Agony is the price – you will have to pay for it.

Was she happy? She thought – yes, reasonably so. Then again, what was happiness but the vast terrain between ecstasy and agony? Was this too small an ambition?

Grief does not kill the light...it reveals it.....Agony does not kill the ecstasy....it unfolds it......Dark does not extinguish the Dawn...it unwinds it.....

If He were omnipotent, why had He not devised a more peaceable way to bring His message to the world?

As agony unfolds into ecstasy, the soul unfurls through the melancholic autumn, the bare winter, finally opening into the youthful spring.

His personal fulfillment did not lead him to evolve a cheerful Madonna; on the contrary this Madonna was sad; she had already, through his sculptures, known the Descent. The tranquility of his early bas-relief, when Mary still had her decision to make, could never be recaptured. This young mother was committed; she knew the end of her boy’s life. That was why she was reluctant to let him go, this beautiful, husky,healthy boy, his hand clasped for protection in hers. That was why she sheltered him with the side of her cloak. The child, sensitive to his mother’s mood, had a touch of melancholy about the eyes. He was strong, he had courage, he would step forth from the safe harbor of his mother’s lap, but just now he gripped her hand with the fingers of one hand, and with the other held securely to her side. Or was it his own mother he was thinking about, sad because she must leave her son alone in the world? Himself, who clung to her?

We read a good novel not in order to know more people, but in order to know fewer. Instead of the humming swarm of human beings, relatives, customers, servants, postmen, afternoon callers, tradesmen, strangers who tell us the time, strangers who remark on the weather, beggars, waiters, and telegraph-boys--instead of this bewildering human swarm which passes us every day, fiction asks us to follow one figure (say the postman) consistently through his ecstasies and agonies. That is what makes one impatient with that type of pessimistic rebel who is always complaining of the narrowness of his life and demanding a larger sphere. Life is too large for us as it is: we have all too many things to attend to. All true romance is an attempt to simplify it, to cut it down to plainer and more pictorial proportions. What dullness there is in our life arises mostly from its rapidity; people pass us too quickly to show us their interesting side. By the end of the week we have talked to a hundred bores; whereas, if we had stuck to one of them, we might have found ourselves talking to a new friend, or a humorist, or a murderer, or a man who had seen a ghost.

His sculpture would have joy in it, try to capture the sense of fertility of Dionysus, the nature god, the power of the intoxicating drink that enabled a man to laugh and sing and forget for a while the sorrow of his earthly miseries. And then, perhaps, at the same time he could portray the decay that came with too much forgetfulness, that he saw all around him, when man surrendered his moral and spiritual values for the pleasures of the flesh. The Bacchus would be the central figure of his theme, a human being rather than a demigod; then there would be a child of about seven, sweet- faced, lovable, nibbling from a bunch of grapes. His composition would have death in it too; the tiger, who liked wine and was loved by Bacchus, with the deadest, dead skin and head conceivable

you will have windows of love,” he says. “They will be brief and wonderful and rapturous; they will fill your heart until it bursts. You will feel a kinship like you’ve never known, and pain like you’ve never imagined, and each parting will tear the breath from your lungs and fill you with a longing that will never be quieted. Agony inseverable from ecstasy,” he says, “neither of which can ever be taken from you.

And because the transformation is going to be from the self toward a state of no-self, agony is very deep. But you cannot have ecstasy without going through agony. If the gold wants to be purified, it has to pass through fire. Love is fire. It is because of the pain of love that millions of people live a loveless life. They, too, suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative; it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste; it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle. The man who is without love is narcissistic, he is closed. He knows only himself.

The most important idea he gleaned from the swift, learned talk was that religion and knowledge could exist side by side, enriching each other. Greece and Rome, before the dawn of Christianity, had built gloriously in the arts, humanities, sciences, philosophy. Then for a thousand years all such wisdom and beauty had been crushed, declared anathema, buried in darkness. Now this little group of men, the sensual Poliziano, the lined Landino, the tiny Ficino, the golden-haired Pico della Mirandola, these few fragile men, led and aided by Lorenzo de' Medici, were attempting to create a new intellect under the banner of a word Michelangelo had never heard before: Humanism. What did it mean?

GARDEN OF WISDOM A heart that has ached mercilessly Can spin a lifetime of agony Into a solacing garden of wisdom, Offering you comfort And peace. It’s the same heart that knows the Ecstasy of just being alive And cherishes every moment.

Go into it, suffer love, because through the suffering comes great ecstasy. Yes, there is agony, but out of the agony, ecstasy is born. Yes, you will have to die as an ego, but if you can die as an ego, you will be born as God, as a buddha.

What went through the mind of Christ between the sunset hour when the Roman soldier drove the first nail through his flesh, and the hour when he died? For these thoughts would determine not only how he accepted his fate, but also the position of his body on the cross. Donatello’s Christ accepted in serenity, and thought nothing. Brunelleschi’s Christ was so ethereal that he died at the first touch of the nail, and had no time to think. He returned to his workbench, began exploring his mind with charcoal and ink. On Christ’s face appeared the expression, “I am in agony, not from the iron nails, but form the rust of doubt.” He could not bring himself to convey Christ’s divinity by anything so obvious as a halo; it had to be portrayed through an inner force, strong enough to conquer his misgivings at this hour of severest trial. It was inevitable that his Christ would be closer to man than to God. He did not know that he was to be crucified. He neither wanted it nor liked it. And as a result his body was twisted in conflict, torn, like all men, by inner questioning. When he was ready to begin carving he had before him a new concept: he turned Christ’s head and knees in opposite directions, establishing through his contrapuntal design a graphic tension, the intense physical and spiritual inner conflict of a man who is being pulled two ways.

I was not alone. The room was the same, unchanged in any way since I came into it. I could see along the floor, in the brilliant moonlight, my own footsteps marked where I had disturbed the long accumulation of dust. In the moonlight opposite me were three young women, ladies by their dress and manner. I thought at the time that I must be dreaming when I saw them, they threw no shadow on the floor. They came close to me, and looked at me for some time, and then whispered together. Two were dark, and had high aquiline noses, like the Count, and great dark, piercing eyes, that seemed to be almost red when contrasted with the pale yellow moon. The other was fair, as fair as can be, with great masses of golden hair and eyes like pale sapphires. I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where. All three had brilliant white teeth that shone like pearls against the ruby of their voluptuous lips. There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain, but it is the truth. They whispered together, and then they all three laughed, such a silvery, musical laugh, but as hard as though the sound never could have come through the softness of human lips. It was like the intolerable, tingling sweetness of waterglasses when played on by a cunning hand. The fair girl shook her head coquettishly, and the other two urged her on. One said, “Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin.” The other added, “He is young and strong. There are kisses for us all.” I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood. I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one’s flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.

Have I not taught you that pain is merely the other face of pleasure? That a cry of agony sounds no different from a cry of ecstasy? Tonight you will enjoy both, without guilt, without blame, because I am the one in command. Do you not feel yourself craving it, longing for it Are you not already wet, your body preparing itself to accommodate what is to come?

Jesus' words "When i am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself," (John 12:32) refers not only to his crucifixion but also to his resurrection. Being lifted up means not only being lifted up as the crucified one but also being lifted up as the risen one. It speaks not only about agony but also about ecstasy, not only about sorrow but also about joy.

How beautiful, how beautiful you streamed upon my sight, In glory and in grandeur, as a gorgeous sunset-light! How softly, soul-subduing, fell your words upon mine ear, Like low aerial music when some angel hovers near! What tremulous, faint ecstasy to clasp your hand in mine, Till the darkness fell upon me of a glory too divine! The air around grew languid with our intermingled breath, And in your beauty's shadow I sank motionless as death. I saw you not, I heard not, for a mist was on my brain--I only felt that life could give no joy like that again. And this was love--I knew it not, but blindly floated on, And now I'm on the ocean waste, dark, desolate, alone; The waves are raging round me-- I'm reckless where they guide; No hope is left to lighten me, no strength to stem the tide. As a leaf along the torrent, a cloud across the sky, As dust upon the whirlwind, so my life is drifting by. The dream that drank the meteor's light--the form from Heav'n has flown-- The vision and the glory, they are passing--they are gone. Oh! Love is frantic agony, and life one throb of pain; Yet I would bear its darkest woes to dream again.

The kid looked up from her wampum and stared inscrutably at her and then, for the first time since Tracy bought her, Courtney smiled. A beatific sunbeam of a smile. Tracy beamed back, a bubble-burst of mixed emotion – ecstasy and agony in equal, confusing measure inside her – rising in her chest. Jesus. How did parents manage with this kind of stuff on a daily basis? She found herself blinking back tears.

The touch of his skin against hers was not a caress, but a wave of pain, it became pain by being wanted too much, by releasing in fulfillment all the past hours of desire and denial. It was an act of clenched teeth and hatred, it was the unendurable, the agony, an act of passion—the word born to mean sunering—it was the moment made of hatred, tension, pain—the moment that broke its own elements, inverted them, triumphed, swept into a denial of all suffering, into its antithesis, into ecstasy.

My back hit the wall. He closed in with an almost terrifying intensity. His muscular body boxed me in. “Rogan,” I warned. In my head, a song played over and over, singing to me in a seductive voice, Rogan, Rogan, Rogan, sex . . . want . . . “Remember that dream you had?” His voice was low, commanding. “Rogan!” The delicious warmth danced around my neck. “Where I had no clothes?” The warmth split and slid over me, over the sensitive nerves in the back of my neck, over my collarbone, around my breasts, cupping them and sliding fast to the tips, tightening my nipples, then sliding down, over my stomach, over my sides and butt, down between my legs. It was everywhere at once, and it flowed over me like a cascade of sensual ecstasy, overloading my senses, overriding my reason, and rendering me speechless. I hurtled through it, trying to sort through the sensations and failing. My head spun. He was right there, masculine, hot, sexy, so incredibly sexy, and I wanted to taste him. I wanted his hands on me. I wanted him to press himself against the aching spot between my legs. His arms closed around me. His face was too close, his eyes enticing, compelling, excited. “Let’s talk about that dream, Nevada.” I was trapped. I had nowhere to go. If he kissed me, I would melt right here. I would moan and beg him, and I would have sex with him right here, in the Galleria, in public. A spark of pain drained down my arm, driven by pure instinct. I grabbed his shoulder. Feathery lightning shot out and singed him. Agony exploded in me, cleansing like an ice-cold shower. Rogan’s body jerked, as if struck by an electric current. It lasted only a second, and I didn’t push as hard as I could have. I was learning to control it. Rogan whipped back to me, his eyes feral. His voice was a ragged growl. “Was that supposed to hurt?” “It was supposed to get your attention.” I pushed him back with my hand. “You were getting really excited.” “‘No’ would’ve been sufficient.” “I wasn’t sure.” I pushed from the wall and headed for the exit. “I said ‘once.’ That was more than once. I wanted you to stop.” “I was encouraged by you breathlessly moaning my name.” I spun on my foot. “I wasn’t moaning your name. I was shrieking in alarm.” “That was the sexiest throaty shrieking I’ve ever heard.” “You need to get out more.” My cheeks were burning.

Thus, by the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the emphasis of hymn, sermon, and story was less on the bread of heaven than on flesh (i.e., meat) and blood. To eat God was to take into one's self the suffering flesh on the cross. To eat God was imitatio crucis. That which one ate was the physicality of the God-man. If the flesh was sweet as well as bitter, that was because all our humanness, including our fleshliness, was redeemed in the fact of the Incarnation. If the agony was also ecstasy, it was because our very hunger is union with Christ's limitless suffering, which is also limitless love.

The Abominable Snowman has arrived,” he said to Milo. “If I’m not as clean as most abominable snowmen are, it is because I was kidnapped as a child from the slopes of Mount Everest, and taken as a slave to a bordello in Rio de Janeiro, where I have been cleaning the unspeakably filthy toilets for the past fifty years. A visitor to our whipping room there screamed in a transport of agony and ecstasy that there was to be an arts festival in Midland City. I escaped down a rope of sheets taken from a reeking hamper. I have come to Midland City to have myself acknowledged, before I die, as the great artist I believe myself to be.

Man is not ... of fixed and enduring form. He is ... an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature ... man ... is a bourgeois compromise That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow

Thus spoke the Beauty and her voice had a cheerful ring, and her face was aflame with a great rejoicing. She finished her story and began to laugh quietly, but not cheerfully. The Youth bowed down before her and silently kissed her hands, inhaling the languid fragrance of myrrh, aloe and musk which wafted from her body and her fine robes. The Beauty began to speak again. 'There came to me streams of oppressors, because my evil, poisonous beauty bewitches them. I smile at them, they who are doomed to death, and I feel pity for each of them, and some I almost loved, but I gave myself to no one. Each one I gave but one single kiss — and my kisses were innocent as the kisses of a tender sister. And whomsoever I kissed, died.' The soul of the troubled Youth was caught in agony, between two quite irresolvable passions, the terror of death and an inexpressible ecstasy. But love, conquering all, overcoming even the anguish of death's grief, was triumphant once again today. Solemnly stretching out his trembling hands to the tender and terrifying Beauty, the Youth exclaimed, 'If death is in your kiss, o beloved, let me revel in the infinity of death. Cling to me, kiss me, love me, envelop me with the sweet fragrance of your poisonous breath, death after death pour into my body and into my soul before you destroy everything that once was me!' 'You want to! You are not afraid!' exclaimed the Beauty. The face of the Beauty was pale in the rays of the lifeless moon, like a guttering candle, and the lightning in her sad and joyful eyes was trembling and blue. With a trusting movement, tender and passionate, she clung to the Youth and her naked, slender arms were entwined about his neck. 'We shall die together!' she whispered. 'We shall die together. All the poison of my heart is afire and flaming streams are rushing through my veins, and I am all enveloped in some great holocaust.' 'I am aflame!' whispered the Youth, 'I am being consumed in your embraces and you and I are two flaming fires, burning with the immense ecstasy of a poisonous love.' The sad and lifeless moon grew dim and fell in the sky — and the black night came and stood watch. It concealed the secret of love and kisses, fragrant and poisonous, with gloom and solitude. And it listened to the harmonious beating of two hearts growing quieter, and in the frail silence it watched over the final delicate sighs. And so, in the poisonous Garden, having breathed the fragrances which the Beauty breathed, and having drunk the sweetness of her love so tenderly and fatally compassionate, the beautiful Youth died. And on his breast the Beauty died, having delivered her poisonous but fragrant soul up to sweet ecstasies. ("The Poison Garden")

And still, still, there is more to describe- we paint because drawing breath is an agony and exhaling an ecstasy and somewhere in the space in-between we think we once found a truth; and the eternal part of us desires to share this truth at all costs only it's never quite how we pictured it, and it's never quite received the way we want and the paint drips with our own blood the handles of our brushes are our own bones our own tears become the words to our most beautiful love songs and we know we'll never get it right before we die- getting up every morning and facing our own limited truth is a courage so divine most men quell and women stay enslaved in silence.

A lot of it was just sheer grinding shitwork. You think making a revolution is all agony and ecstasy? It's not, it's mostly drudgery. Hard, disciplined, repetitive work that's boring and necessary. But what keeps you going is that twenty times a week something would happen—out there in that lousy capitalist world or inside among your comrades—and you'd remember. You'd remember why you were here, and what you were doing it all for, and it was like a shot of adrenalin coursing through your veins. The world was all around you ail the time. That was the tremendous thing about those times. The sense of history that you lived with daily. The sense of remaking the world. Every time I wrote a leaflet or marched on a picket line or went to a meeting I was remaking the world.

Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it possible, but it's turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he's not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony. Richard is certain that other species fall in love - primates, of course, and canines - but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard's opinion it's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.

Notice that your everyday, not-so-dire experience and behavior, what we can think of as your mental and physical worldline, unwinds smoothly from one moment to the next. Whatever it is that you’re thinking and doing and feeling right now will of course change, but it evolves into each successive moment according to transitions that, even though they might not realize your hopes, are nonetheless causally perfect. Although you don’t always get what you want, or even what you need, what you always get is an unobstructed, unhindered unfolding of experience and behavior into the next moment. What is this? It’s nature doing what it does, effortlessly: being the many-leveled, interlocked and evolving patterns, conforming to what we call laws of nature, that constitute you. You, in your compulsory struggle to control, achieve, persist and enjoy, are exactly what fits and gets expressed in this bit of space-time. You, a person, are in fact a process that’s perfectly entailed from moment to moment by the local configuration of impersonal factors cooked up by evolution and culture, genes and memes. We can trace the you-process historically and we can see it concurrently – what the organism and its mind do in transaction with immediate surroundings. Either way, what we see is an unhindered expression of cause and effect, the patterning of natural laws as they constitute you the person, whether in agony or ecstasy, joy or regret.

As a rule, in times of joy and elation, one finds God's footsteps in the majesty and grandeur of the cosmos, in its vastness and its stupendous dynamics. When man is drunk with life, when he feels that living is a dignified affair, then man beholds God in infinity. In moments of ecstasy God addresses Himself to man through the twinkling stars and the roar of the endlessly distant heavens: ברכי נפשי את ד’, ד’ אלקים, גדלת מאד, הוד והדר לבשת "O Lord my God Thou are very great, Thou are clothed with glory and majesty." In such moments, Majestas Dei, which not even the vast universe is large enough to accommodate, addresses itself to happy man. However, with the arrival of the dark night of the soul, in moments of agony and black despair, when living becomes ugly and absurd; plainly nauseating, when man loses his sense of beauty and majesty, God addresses him, not from infinity but from the infinitesimal, not from the vast stretches of the universe but from a single spot in the darkness which surrounds suffering man, from within the black despair itself... God, in those moments, appeared not as the exalted, majestic King, but rather as a humble, close friend, brother, father: in such moments of black despair, He was not far from me; He was right there in the dark room; I felt His warm hand, כביכול. on my shoulder, I hugged His knees, כביכול. He was with me in the narrow confines of a small room, taking up no space at all. God's abiding in a fenced-in finite locus manifests His humility and love for man. In such moments Humilitas Dei, which resides in the humblest and tiniest of places, addresses itself to man.

True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little. If you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love. Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com 1579 Nothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven. Oh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness. ‘Does she still come to the Luxembourg?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘This is the church where she attends mass, is it not?’ ‘She no longer comes here.’ ‘Does she still live in this house?’ ‘She has moved away.’ ‘Where has she gone to dwell?’ ‘She did not say.’ What a melancholy thing not to know the address of one’s soul! Love has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child of him! There is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away. Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,—that would suffice for my eternity! Ye who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it. Love. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony. Oh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing. 1580 Les Miserables Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise. Deep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again. I encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul. What a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake. If there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.

There was a man in the garden with the little girl. He was turning over the soil in a garden bed. He had obviously heard the car, because he raised his hand in greeting, but then he had gone back to his work. He had actually turned his back on the car. Tina thought she knew what that meant. The man had not wanted to see Pete the policeman. Maybe he thought Pete was bringing bad news. Tina smiled. Here was good news. Finally, here was good news for this family. The man dug the garden fork into the soil with a little bit of effort. He was deliberately not looking at Pete. The little girl walked down the driveway towards them. Pete said quietly, ‘No real way to prepare them. You go ahead, Lockie.’ Lockie squeezed Tina’s hand. ‘Go on, Lockie, it’s your dad. He’s been looking for you for a long time. Go on.’ She pulled her hand slowly out of Lockie’s grip. She wanted to save him from his fear, but she had saved him once. Lockie would have to do this by himself. The little girl who was surely Sammy looked back at her father, but he was still concentrating on his work. She smiled in Pete’s direction and then she focused on Lockie. She stared at him, as if trying to work out exactly who he was. Lockie pushed his hood back, exposing his short blond hair. He stood, and Tina could sense him holding his breath, waiting for his sister to see him. To really see him. Sammy stared hard at Lockie now, frowning. And then Tina saw recognition light up her face. She looked at her father who had still not looked up. She looked back at Lockie. She started jumping up and down. ‘Lockie!’ she screamed. ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie!’ Lockie smiled.The man jerked upright and dropped the garden fork. ‘Stop that, Samantha,’ he whispered angrily. ‘Jesus, stop that! Be quiet. Stop that.’ ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie!’ The little girl flew down the driveway and launched herself at her brother, who went, ‘Oof,’ but he steadied himself and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Lockie, Lockie, Lockie,’ she repeated, as if to make the moment real for herself. The man stood and stared at his children, still without realising that he was indeed looking at both his children. He started walking down the driveway. He began with an angry quick stride but the closer he got the more unsure his steps became. He was a big man in charge of a big farm but his steps became small and faltering. Tina could see the disbelief spreading across his face. Sammy let go of Lockie and took his hand. She started pulling him up the driveway. ‘It’s Lockie, Dad. Look, it’s Lockie, come look, Dad, Lockie’s home. He’s home, Dad. I knew he home. He’s home, Dad. I knew he would come home. I told you, Dad. Look its Lockie. Lockie, Lockie, Lockie’s home. Lockie’s home.’ The man stopped a few feet away from Lockie. His mouth was open. He moved it once or twice, but no words came out, and then came a sound that Tina had never heard before. It was a moaning, keening sound, but rough with the depth of his voice. It was four months of agony and the ecstasy of this moment all rolled into one. It was his heart right out there in the open for everyone to see. He opened his arms and dropped to his knees. Lockie let go of Sammy’s hand and continued alone up the driveway towards his father. He was twisting his hands and pulling at his jumper. He walked into his father’s arms and was completely surrounded by the large man. ‘I’m sorry, Dad,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry.’ At the bottom of the driveway Tina watched Lockie and his father. Lockie’s voice was muffled by his father’s arms, but Tina could still hear him repeating, ‘I’m sorry.’ Say it, Tina begged the man silently. Please, please, just say it. ‘Oh, Lockie,’ said the man through his tears, his large shoulders heaving. ‘It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry, Lockie. I’m sorry. I’ve been looking for you, Lockie. Where did you go, mate? Where did you go?

Any memories of other women were banished permanently from his mind... there was only Evie, her red hair streaming and curling over his stomach and thighs, her playful fingers and frolicsome mouth causing him an agony of pleasure like nothing he had ever felt before. When he could no longer hold back his groans, she climbed over him carefully, straddling him, crawling up his body slowly like a sun-warmed lioness. He had one glimpse of her flushed face before she sought his mouth with teasing, sucking kisses. The rosy tips of her breasts dragged through the hair on his chest... she rubbed herself against him, purring with satisfaction at the hard warmth of the male body beneath her. His breath snagged in his throat as he felt her hand slip between their hips. He was so aroused that she had to gently pull his sex away from his stomach before she could fit it between her thighs. The crisp red curls of her mound tickled his exquisitely sensitive skin as she guided him between the hot folds of her body. "No," Sebastian managed, recalling the bet. "Not now. Evie, no---" "Oh, stop protesting. I didn't make nearly this much of a fuss after our wedding, and I was a virgin." "But I don't want---oh God. Holy Mother of God---" She had pushed the head of his sex into her entrance, the sweet flesh so snug and soft that it took his breath away. Evie writhed a little, her hand still grasping the length of his organ as she tried to guide him deeper. Seeing the difficulty she was having in accommodating him caused him to swell even harder, his entire body flushed with prickling excitement. And then came the slow, miraculous slide, hardness within softness. Sebastian's head fell back to the pillow, his eyes drowsy with intense desire as he stared up into her face. Evie made a little satisfied hum in her throat, her eyes tightly closed as she concentrated on taking him deeper. She moved carefully, too inexperienced to find or sustain a rhythm. Sebastian had always been relatively quiet in his passion, but as her lush body lifted and settled, deepening his penetration, and his cock was gripped and stroked by her wet depths, he heard himself muttering endearments, pleas, sex words, love words. Somehow he coaxed her to lean farther over him, resting more of her body against his, adjusting the angle between them. Evie resisted briefly, fearing she would hurt him, but he took her head in his hands. "Yes," he whispered shakily. "Do it this way. Sweetheart. Move on me... yes..." As Evie felt the difference in their position, the increased friction against the tingling peak of her sex, her eyes widened. "Oh," she breathed, and then inhaled sharply. "Oh, that's so---" She broke off as he set a rhythm, nudging deeper, filling her with steady strokes. The entire world dwindled to the place where he invaded her, their most sensitive flesh joined. Evie's long auburn lashes lowered to her cheeks, concealing her unfocused gaze. Sebastian watched a pink flush creep over her face. He was suspended in wonder, suffused with vehement tenderness as he used his body to pleasure hers. "Kiss me," he said in a guttural whisper, and guided her swollen lips to his, slowly ravishing her mouth with his tongue. She sobbed and shuddered with release, her hips bearing greedily against his as she took his full length. The rim of her sex clamped tightly around him, and Sebastian gave himself up to the squeezing, enticing, pulsing flesh, letting her pull the ecstasy from him in great voluptuous surges. As she relaxed over him, trying to catch her breath, he drew his hands over her damp back, his fingertips gently inquiring as they traveled to the plump curve of her bottom. To his delight, she squirmed and tightened around him in helpless response. If he had his usual strength... oh, the things he would have done to her...

Thus, Kinsey and his other pedophiles define their victims’ agony as ecstasy, name it “orgasm,” and use this new definition to help ambush American, and global western, culture. These records are blatant evidence of the child sexual abuse of 196 to perhaps over 2,000 small boys (discussed further shortly) by Kinsey’s adult team of sex criminals, rapists, and sodomizers.

I’ve heard agony and I’ve heard ecstasy, but I can’t tell what I’m hearing from Stefan now. I only know I’ve never heard anything like it, and hope to never hear it again, a jubilant keening that warbles and wails to a point no human voice could go without breaking, except his continues onward, upward. He folds in half, backward, no longer able to hold himself upright—only Jaeger is keeping him standing. On his upside-down face is a wide-eyed look of transcendence and awe. Yogis spend their entire lives hoping for one peek at whatever he’s seeing.

The memories are scattered along the pathway, and the unremembered times come back to life. There I see the enigma of reminiscence, how can it pull a heart into the light, yet break it in pieces, how agony and ecstasy blend with one another.....

Love is soft and love is sweet, and speaks in accents fair; Love is mighty agony, and love is mighty care; Love is utmost ecstasy and love is keen to dare; Love is wretched misery. To live with, it’s despair.

We stare into the radiant light and stumble blind and mad into the moonless night. We bow not our heads, nor do we ask for mercy. The world is agony. This is a journey of pain, ecstasy, and death. We do not seek companionship because this prison of flesh is a solipsism. We straddle the balancing point between light and darkness, love and hate, life and death. We hide our countenance to reveal the hidden face of god. We hang our self from trees and crosses. We bleed and suffer. All in roaring silence. Eternity is but an instant.

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too.

ecstasy cannot live without agony, life cannot exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sadness.

It was ecstasy just to lie there, to be flat and to have shape, and to be so nearly dead that there was no pain. Death was so sweet, so utterly desirable. And life such an unbearable torment of agony, such a throbbing, piercing nightmare of anguished convulsion. If only the life that was approaching would pass swiftly.

A potent idea, given a name and a face across five millennia, this deity is the incarnation of fear as well as love, of pain as well as pleasure, of the agony and ecstasy of desire

All I know is that I have to take life as it comes. The good and the bad. The happy and the sad. The ecstasy as well as the agony.

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged.

my experience, the emotionally charged content always lies there, hidden, waiting to be tapped, and although musicians tailor and mold their work to how and where it will be best heard or seen, the agony and the ecstasy can be relied on to fill whatever shape is available.

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies.

Like many before and since, my master became enamoured with the sweet ecstasy of unrequited passion; he saw his "problem" as not being loved, when really it was the inability to give love. He was so green behind the ears, so naive, that he thought love arrived fully formed and complete. It never occurred to him, after that first rejection, to earn Charlotte's respect or her heart. He flounced off to his studio. I'm sorry to say that some find the agony of rejection far sweeter than the ecstasy of consummation.

Here is the ecstasy and the agony of the Old Testament: the rich, breathtaking vocation of Israel and the dark, tragic fact that this vocation, this rescue mission, was to be undertaken by a people who were themselves in sore need of the very same rescue.

I had learned long ago that vampire beauty was dangerous, a trap set with silver teeth. Their allure was made to draw in prey. I recognized this, and yet in this moment, when the full force of her presence hit me, I would have died for her. I would have killed for her. I would have shivered in ecstasy if she had offered me agony by those stunning blood-dipped fingertips.

There is a journey that all must take regardless of its direction or apparent meaning. An artist plucks out their heart, holds it forth, and be it through agony or ecstasy, is prepared to be measured for the gift that is the highest honor, to create, and therein be judged on those merits alone. And, somewhere in the skein of all creation is that which demands of those whom would aspire to create beauty and wonder, no matter the cost, because creation, all of it, is worth every ounce the pain of its birth. From the novel, Diminished Fifth

Jabril’s epicurean tongue rimmed at my anal receptacle before jabbing into my tunnel of love with abandon. His commanding lividity drove my tilting pelvis to receive slivers of his dripping saliva. He was preparing me for the feast of the gods. And I was delighted to suffice. Much like my Valet relishing the helmsman’s mightiness, Victor devoured the captain’s prowess with avid ferocity. Spittle of beaming wetness coated their organs. Tad led me above deck while the men followed suit. Pulling me atop a comfortable mattress, I straddled the athlete with aplomb, kissing his succulent mouth with wanton fervency. Quivers of euphoric rhapsody surged through my body when his tumid avidity eased into my passageway of forbidden love. His bouncing gyrations commingled with my lustful kisses brought our hankering spirits into a unified entity. Just as this newfound vivacity took hold, I felt another force in my core. This elevated double entry catapulted me into an uncharted and blissful realm. The captain and the champion tantalized my tightness with symmetrical cadences as we tangoed to the rhythm of the lapping waves. Tad’s provocative expertise, coalescing with Fahrib’s rousing mastery, hurled my frenzied soul to an intensified crescendo of erotic gratification. Rainbows of aesthetic enthusiasm flashed before me as Andy and Victor mirrored one another as the Levantine logerez himself onto their throbbing hardness simultaneously. He was at once in agony and ecstasy before his misshapen expression transformed into gleeful entrancement. Heaving sighs of euphoric relief, he accommodated both obelisks with pride.

every triumph is also a defeat, and the ecstasies of those who prevail are matched by the agonies of those who lose.

My lover’s alluring propensities took on a vivacity I had difficulty conceding. His passion magnified a thousand-fold within my consciousness as I closed my eyes to this wanton dexterity. I desired him, and he wanted me. Under this euphoric ecstasy, I relinquished my person to his coveted demands.               My Apollo, my Phoebus, who never failed to brighten my person and radiate my soul, had coiled me into his solicitous web of ardent devotion. My coverings fell away with every inhalation of his loving elixir. My lover had exposed my nakedness to the gazing eyes of the unseen voyeur and stalker. They alone were granted dispensation to witness the audacity between my lover and me.               Our fiery gazes never left or strayed from each other. Bewitched by his blueish-green eyes, my soul was bare to him. His oral stimulation had fostered me to arch my back in a balletic pose as his hands supported the small of my back. Watched through the submerged glass, we felt like Poseidon’s pleasure slaves, performing solely for his gratification. I was awed by our agility and reminded of a supple aquatic dance performance I had witnessed during my extensive travels. My former ballet training surged through me as I saw myself swirling and pirouetting across the room, and Andy’s thickness gyrated within the core of my being. The ecstasy and the agony of my dance pedagogy had transformed into the art of intercourse. The grace of movement and the beauty of love had merged into a seraphic epiphany – a unity of the Godhead within and without.               At the precise moment of our orgasmic exultations, I finally grasped my chaperone’s universal knowledge: that the divine and I are but one and the same. It was then I comprehended my guardian’s god-like comportment. Andy knew his birth-right, and he wore his divinity with pride and honour. All of that I saw in him as it came gushing to the forefront. He was indeed a Phoebus Apollo, a sun god beheld in a darkened chamber. There and then, I made a secret covenant to myself, like an apostle to the Son of God - I would follow in his footsteps.               My Valet’s sanctity swirled within me, flooding my kernel with beatific sows of celestial grace. Overjoyed by his tokens of affection, I too released my passion into his garnering gulf. Streams of my succulent splendour oozed from his enticing lips. It was only when we shared the final droplets of my luscious deposits that he liberated his engorgement from my sopping honeycomb. I supped at his dripping remains before sharing my fill with him, so we could both partake in this sexual liturgy of heavenly Eucharist.               We did not relinquish our performance after the lights and music had disappeared, but remained entwined in darkness, savouring the inseparable devotion that had once been the domain of Apollo and his beloved Hyacinth.

The Heart's Pleasure We are born with this need to cry our naked cry inside each other. We are so shy about our sexuality that we often miss the quiet teachings that overcome us in moments of true intimacy. The deep intensity of sensitivity during orgasm, for instance, is a sweet paradox in how we all cherish that moment and want to return there, over and over, and yet none of us can endure that ecstasy for very long. This heightened moment reveals a great deal to us about both our very human limitations and our deepest moments of being alive. It is not by chance that we feel compelled to be naked and vulnerable in the presence of another, that despite all our fears and defensive styles, we want to be held and touched completely just at the moment when we are unbearably sensitive. This is the heart's definition of pleasure, and though we need this moment of exposure and release to feel complete, we also must accept that we cannot bear it for very long. This is why the cries of ecstasy and agony often sound the same. That we need to feel such complete sensitivity and vulnerability in union with another is proof that no one can live this life alone. In this way, true intimacy cannot happen without trust. When we let our bodies become this sensitive while holding back the heart, we forego ecstasy and experience its smaller echo, climax. In actuality, this moment of ecstasy, of holding nothing back, can be experienced not just during sex, but in the being and doing and truth telling of all our relationships—in the ecstatic moment when we allow ourselves to be completely revealed and held at the same time. In this daring and fragile moment, the heart rehearses all its gifts: being who we really are, holding nothing back, trusting another, being complete, and witnessing the completeness of another. This is a meditation on intimacy to be shared with a loved one. Sit facing each other and breathe slowly until you find a natural common rhythm. Maintain eye contact and gently hold each other's face. Trace each other's features slowly and lightly with your fingertips, letting the walls between you thin.

The way out is a very simple change in direction. You just need to see that the source and basis of your experience is within you. Human experience may be stimulated or catalyzed by external situations, but the source is within. Pain or pleasure, joy or misery, agony or ecstasy, happens only inside you. Human folly is that people are always trying to extract joy from the outside. You may use the outside as a stimulus or trigger, but the real thing always comes from within. Right

An entire life, lavishly colored with ecstasies and agonies, is exclusively born from the functional expression of neurochemistry. Every time that we sob in sorrow or laugh in joy, we do so, steered by a glorious storm of hormonal interplay within the deepest parts of our mind. And with each drop of tear that we shed in our times of excruciating pain, our brain constructs majestic new cellular connections to aid in the pursuit of our passion - in the pursuit of truth.

Something is causing Pain and something energizes the Agony: may it not be caused through the latent Idea of Supreme Bliss? And this eternal expectation, this amassing of ornament on decay, this ever-abiding thought- is coincidental with the vanity preceding death? O, squalid thought from the most morbid spleen how can I devour thee and save my Soul? Ever did it answer back-"Pay homage where due: the Physician is the Lord of existence!" This superstition of medicine-is it not the essence of cowardice, the agent of Death?  Strange no one remembers being dead? Have you ever seen the Sun?-If you have then you have seen nothing dead-in spite of you different belief! Which is the more dead "you" or this corpse? Which of you has the greater degree of consciousness? Judging by expression alone-which of you appears enjoying Life most? May not this "belief" in death be the "will" that attempts "death" for your satisfaction, but can give you no more than sleep, decay, change-hell? This constant somnambulism is "the unsatisfactory.

To feel the fiercest way possible...where you go through the strongest and finest of feelings....the robust and the delicate emotions of all....is to be able to experience life in all its shades....for there is no such thing... as a dull ache...it is an ache either of agony or of ecstasy ...in the most powerful way possible.....

To feel the fiercest way possible...where you go through the strongest and finest of feelings....the robust and the delicate emotions of all....is to be able to experience life in all its colors....for there is no such thing... as a dull ache...it is an ache either of agony or of ecstasy ...in the most powerful way possible....

From the reed flute streams a melody.... cut from the agony of deeps.... for carved are the holes... and thus emerges the flute from a reed........ as the ache that enters your deeps... turns your heart to the sweetest flute... and you become a vessel for a music that fills this earth... every longing is played by the reed flute into the breeze.... as agony cut you in pieces.. .there flew your achiest of aches.... but now the reed flute has you smiling playing the sweetest melody on your lips.... for they come not through the flute... but from your soul. of the deeps... as in agony you turn to the note of ecstasy .... for though your heart is torn asunder... yet altered are they in the reed notes.... as the flute lets the notes play with the winds....

You look rather thirsty," a voice says from behind me, and I turn to face Benediction de la Lucia--the Devil himself. He is a striking man; his long, orange-red hair is as bright as a tropical sunset, and his skin is like freshly-fallen snow. His large, expressive eyes hold all colors, and I feel myself being drawn into them. "G-good evening," I stammer. "I was just looking for--" "I know whom you seek," he purrs "although I was hoping that you would agree to spend a little time with me, first." He tucks a wad of bills into my vest pocket and drapes his arm around my shoulder. "I would be happy to, Lord de la Lucia," I smile, grasping him around the waist. "Do you Hunger?" His eyes glide up and down the line of my body, and I feel a strong desire to swoon. "Always," he murmurs "and please...call me Beni'." The room is spinning, and reality is fading fast...I press my face against his chest and strive to cling to consciousness. He sweeps me up into his arms and carries me to one of the bedrooms, where he feeds from me...and all of a sudden, he is atop me, his snow-white wings outstretched. I feel as if I will die--the pleasure and pain are so intense. I can feel myself bleeding out and being reborn, over and over upon that silken bed, every nerve of my body alive with his essence. We are almost like one, body and soul...and then he pulls back and looks down into my eyes. "You want something," he leers at me "or is it someone?" He sniffs the air. "I can smell it on your sex, My Darling! Don't be afraid to ask, young one--that's why I came to you! Love falls under my realm, Dearest...the human heart is full of darkness, yes?" I curse at him in Japanese and try to push him off of me, but he holds me fast. "Don't be so rude, Darling! I only want to help you! Matthieu-Michele can't do anything for you--he's simply out of his league! He's only a young God, still finding his footing! I am older than the ages, and I know what love is! I know the agony and the ecstasy and the razor's scar that it leaves upon the heart! I know of the poison and the betrayal and the all-consuming obsession! I have ridden the crest and scrabbled in the desolate valleys! I know what you want...I know whom you love...and I can make it happen for you--for a price." "I don't make deals with the Devil," I hiss at him from between clenched teeth...

Art comes with a splash of colors ...as you get torn between depression and elation...agony and ecstasy ...and with the surging and slowing of tides.. there arises the gentle and fierce brush strokes....ultimately creating a mix of emotions on the canvas and there comes the colors on a blank canvas...an art....so virgin, raw and pure...

Art comes with a splash of colors ...as you get torn between depression and elation...agony and ecstasy ...and with the surging and slowing of tides.. there arises the gentle and fierce brush strokes....ultimately creating a mix of emotions on the cloth and there comes the colors on a blank ...an art....so virgin, raw and pure....

Art comes with a splash of colors ...as you get torn between depression and elation...agony and ecstasy ...and with the surging and slowing of tides.. there arises the gentle and fierce brush strokes....ultimately creating a mix of emotions on the cloth and there comes the colors on a blank canvas ...an art....so virgin, raw and pure....

The scream is the great multitasker of human expression. It covers agony, ecstasy, relief, frustration. It's especially useful when you're at a loss for words. Tiger did a lot of screaming that afternoon. With Joe. Coming off the green by himself. Walking toward the clubhouse, in response to his fans. His people. Primal screaming, his mouth so open you could count his teeth. Golf is famously a game for whispering. Roger Maltbie, in the NBC Sports trailers, is the Golf Whisperer. Spectators use their library voices. Players and caddies confer quietly. Golf, Calvinist by origin and reserved by tradition, had never heard such screaming, the likes of Tiger Woods, either. Tiger had won at Augusta, the place where he got the first of his fifteen, and a dam had burst.

why the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world, has emerged as a pressure cooker for producing destitute addicts embroiled in everyday violence. Our challenge is to portray the full details of the agony and the ecstasy of surviving on the street as a heroin injector without beatifying or making a spectacle of the individuals involved,

Every wound you have ever endured ...becomes the seed that someday sprouts and grows into a tree. With time it grows further inside of you and turns into a flowering tree. It carries the sleeping tale of transformation of how agony turned into ecstasy..

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.” A chill crept up the back of Rory’s neck. Coming from anyone else, the words might have seemed ridiculous, the kind of woo-woo stuff one might hear from a palm reader at the fair. But she’d felt it too, hadn’t she? The eerie overlap of Soline’s story with her own. “It’s

Blue Plate Special was the most difficult book I’ve ever written, as well as the easiest. The material was all there. I just had to find the thread, weave it through, and tie it together at the end. No big deal. Ha! It was agony a lot of the time. Ecstasy the rest of the time. Such a roller coaster. I kept vacillating between “I can’t do this, it’s too hard” and “God, this is fun.

To be awakened is to be wild by the pull of life, to acknowledge the subtle push and the forceful ache for it is wisdom to surrender to this truth. To be awakened is to unearth the deeps where agony and ecstasy reside for it is the mouth of wonder....

oh why, at such moments does one's breathing become laboured? Why, by what magic, by what mysterious caprice does the pulse quicken, do tears gush forth from the dreamer's eyes, his pale, moist cheeks burn as his entire being fills with such irresistible delight? Why do whole sleepless nights pass by like a single instant in inexhaustible merriment and happiness, and when the dawn's rosy ray shines through the windows and the daybreak illumines the gloomy room with its dubious fantastic light, such as we have in Petersburg, why does our dreamer, exhausted and weary, throw himself on his bed and fall asleep, his tormented and overwhelmed spirit trembling with ecstasy, while his hear aches with a sweet agony?

If night comes, so will dawn. If deserts come, so will paradise. If agony comes, so will ecstasy.

Born-again is the dark when dawn and night sit together, face to face, one melting into the other. This is how agony evolves into ecstasy, the joyful killing of the night.

If I know what ecstasy is, it is because of agony. If I know what freedom is, it is because of slavery.

Desert rose, sweets of the sand, and pearls, tears of the ocean. How ecstasy is born from the womb of agony!

Desert rose, charm of the drought, and pearls, tears of the ocean. How ecstasy is born from the womb of agony!

Without the dark, we would not be light. Every agony- does it bring the letter of ecstasy? As stones are shaped by the waves, For the sea, in motion, beats the stones, turning them into pebbles of stories of hardness and softness, How the swirl of sea, dulled the hardness, And now, though stones, they are, Yet tender remains, of ancient ages. We, too, are beaten in the pit of dark, Who wept in the valley for ages and ages, But now, a sun of light, an orb of gold.

The language of love is sacrifice.  In this life, “ecstasy without agony is baloney.

Birth is vast and multifaceted; radiant and mysterious. Birth contains multitudes, and through her we birth our multitudes. We give birth to our hopes and our fears, to our ecstasies and our agonies, to our joy and our disappointments. We give birth to our babies, each one perfect and radiant. We give birth through our instincts, and we give birth to our instincts. We give birth to our capacity for instincts, which will match us perfectly with our babies, who are, and always will be, instinctive creatures. May we all be blessed through instinctive birth.

Life... a labyrinth... an agony... an ecstasy - Labyrinths

Her voice went to a fierce whisper. “This is living, Kathleen. This is what life is about. The good and the bad. The agony and ecstasy. Being afraid to live life to its fullest is a death all in itself.

Life... a labyrinth... an agony... an ecstasy.

There is a journey that all must take regardless of its direction or apparent meaning. An artist plucks out their heart, holds it forth, and be it through agony or ecstasy, is prepared to be measured for the gift that is the highest honor, to create, and therein be judged on those merits alone. And, somewhere in the skein of all creation is that which demands of those whom would aspire to create beauty and wonder, no matter the cost, because creation, all of it, is worth every ounce the pain of its birth.

Intercession is the surest sign of intimacy with God for as a man draws near to God’s heart he will hear and feel what lies inside. Union with God is the merging of ecstasy and agony; the ecstasy of His presence and the agony of His heart. We pray out the things God has revealed in us.

As in flowers, beauty grows slowly, silently in the poet.

Hayy had already realized that while He transcends all privations, every attribute of perfection can be applied to the Necessarily Existent. He also knew that what in him had allowed him to apprehend this Being was un- like bodies and would not decay as they did. From this he saw that, leaving the body at death, anyone with an identity like his own, capable of aware- ness such as he possessed, must undergo one of these three fates: If, while in command of the body, he has not known the Necessarily Existent, never confronted Him or heard of Him, then on leaving the body he will neither long for this Being nor mourn His loss. His bodily powers will go to ruin with the body, and thus make no more demands or miss the ob- jects of their cravings now that they are gone. This is the fate of all dumb animals—even those of human form. If, while in charge of the body, he has encountered this Being and learned of His goodness but turned away to follow his own passions, until death overtook [96] him in the midst of such a life, depriving him of the experience he has learned to long for, he will endure prolonged agony and infinite pain, either escaping the torture at last, after an immense struggle, to witness once again what he yearned for, or remaining forever in torment, depending on which direction he tended toward in his bodily life. If he knows the Necessarily Existent be- fore departing the body, and turns to Him with his whole being, fastens his thoughts on His goodness, beauty, and majesty, never turning away until death overtakes him, turned toward Him in the midst of actual experience, then on leaving the body, he will live on in infinite joy, bliss, and delight, happiness unbroken because his experience of the Neces- sarily Existent will be unbroken and no longer marred by the demands of the bodily powers for sensory things—which alongside this ecstasy are encumbrances, irritants and evils.

Sometimes the experience of the voices was ecstatic, sometimes so much so that it was almost too intense for me—as when you first bite into an apple or a confection that tastes so delicious and causes such a flood of oral juices that there is a moment of intense pain in your mouth and glands—particularly in the late afternoons of spring and summer, when the sunlight on sunny days achieved moments of immanence and became the color of beaten gold and was itself (the light, as if it were taste) so delicious that it was almost too much to stand, and I would lie on the pile of large pillows in our living room and roll back and forth in an agony of delight and tell my mother, who always read on the couch, that I felt so good and full and ecstatic that I could hardly bear it, and I remember her pursing her lips, trying not to laugh, and saying in the driest possible voice that she found it hard to feel too much sympathy or concern for this problem and was confident that I could survive this level of ecstasy, and that I probably didn’t need to be rushed to the emergency room, and at such moments my love and affection for my mother’s dry humor and love became, stacked atop the original ecstasy, so intense that I almost had to stifle a scream of pleasure as I rolled ecstatically between the pillows and the books on the floor.

Delight, pain, agony, ecstasy, rapture, woe—what curious things. He made himself promise to never ignore them again.

Longinus was suddenly aware of her biting his neck, and he experienced the agony and the ecstasy of her dark kiss.

No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration.

No spiritual exercise is such a blending of complexity and simplicity. It is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, yet the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high. It is as appropriate to the aged philosopher as to the little child. It is the ejaculation of a moment and the attitude of a lifetime. It is the expression of the rest of faith and of the fight of faith. It is an agony and an ecstasy. It is submissive and yet importunate. In the one moment it lays hold of God and binds the devil. It can be focused on a single objective and it can roam the world. It can be abject confession and rapt adoration. It invests puny man with a sort of omnipotence.2

In Every Breath" in every breath if you’re the center of your own desires you’ll lose the grace of your beloved but if in every breath you blow away your self claim the ecstasy of love will soon arrive in every breath if you’re the center of your own thoughts the sadness of autumn will fall on you but if in every breath you strip naked just like a winter the joy of spring will grow from within all your impatience comes from the push for gain of patience let go of the effort and peace will arrive all your unfulfilled desires are from your greed for gain of fulfillments let go of them all and they will be sent as gifts fall in love with the agony of love not the ecstasy then the beloved will fall in love with you.

I started telling myself that I enjoyed my work. I proclaimed that I enjoyed every single aspect of my creative endeavors—the agony and the ecstasy, the success and the failure, the joy and the embarrassment, the dry spells and the grind and the stumble and the confusion and the stupidity of it all. I even dared to say this aloud. I told the universe (and anyone who would listen) that I was committed to living a creative life not in order to save the world, not as an act of protest, not to become famous, not to gain entrance to the canon, not to challenge the system, not to show the bastards, not to prove to my family that I was worthy, not as a form of deep therapeutic emotional catharsis . . . but simply because I liked it. So try saying this: “I enjoy my creativity.” And when you say it, be sure to actually mean it.

What is a book? A piece of my heart; In its words, my dreams unfold, In every chapter, my longings speak, The explosion of unmet desires, As sunlight steals the heart A Feast of agony and ecstasy, all gifted to the world.

In the splendor of dawn, is a blessing, for the night has wept its way into the light, and agony breaks loose into ecstasy. This is the sunrise, spreading over the soul, revealing the fields of light again. This is a blessing, turning the rivers of tears, into rivers of gold.

Being love, all you behold, is candles and the moon, ecstasy in the hands of agony. So you see, light rising from the sea of night.

Let me be the way I'm born to be, writing love letters to the sea, in the quiet weaving of memories, making flowers of all that remains. Let me be the way I'm born to be, drunken with ecstasy, unfurled freshly, for had I not known what agony is, I would have stayed furled as a bud in deep. Let me be the way I'm born to be, the lover of serenity, for had I not left the crowds of people, I would have never known what solitude truly is. Let me be the way I'm born to be, the solitary soul, aware, awake, and playful with life.

With longing, I felt the delight and a quiver, the agony and ecstasy, the torment and thrill of plunging into the rapids. It is a mystery, one that pulls the seeker into the wild ocean, only to find the hidden gems.

Gather the moments when life comes in soft whispers, for it is the milk, it is the honey of tender times that keeps the river wild inside. Ecstasy is its name, the twin of agony. How deeply delight and torment play as light and shadow, shaping the full face of life!

We’re all a collection of our stories, chérie. Our joys and sorrows. Our loves and losses. That is who we are, a tally of all our agonies and ecstasies. Sometimes the agonies leave a mark, like a bruise on the soul. We do our best to hide them from the world, and from ourselves too. Because we’re afraid of being fragile. Of being damaged. That’s what makes us kindred spirits, Rory—our bruises.” A

Burned I was in intense agony only to be enticed by his sweet murmurings. How ecstasy became the other face of agony!

Deep in the agony is the flow of ecstasy. From the mouth of fire, flows the river.

Poems are the whispers of the soul, from the lips of agony spoken soundlessly.

They weep and weeping, they find their songs, for on the edge of agony is the wine of ecstasy. In the thick of torment is the sweetest delight

You must have pearls deep in you, or else, how could you carry the dirt of the world yet release such gems of purest light! You must have light in your soul, or else, how could you bear such agony inside yet be the ocean of ecstasy to the world!

You must have pearls deep in you, or else, how could you carry the dirt of the world yet release such gems of purest light! You must have fire in your soul, or else, how could you bear such agony inside yet be the ocean of ecstasy to the world!