What Lies Beyond The Veil Quotes

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There is beauty in knowing who you are, and in embracing that in spite of the potential consequences
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I’ll be your God any day, my star,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I assure you, I do not give the first fuck what is normal when it comes to you. If you want to watch the world burn, I’ll set it on fire for you. If you want to slaughter every woman who has ever taken what is yours, then I will gladly sit back and watch you play,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You’re so pretty until you speak,” I said, smiling at him sweetly. “Do try not to ruin it.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Come out and play with me, my star. I know you’re in there somewhere, burning away where you think no one can see you. Imagine how brightly you’d shine if you embraced all that fire.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Never hesitate to own your love for them, and to make it known that you miss them every day.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
One should always remember that history is written by the victor.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
to become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words...the tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. the world of things we perceive is but a veil. It’s flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. It’s silence remains unbroken; no words can carry it away. Sometimes we wish the world could cry and tell us about that which made it pregnant with fear--filling grandeur. Sometimes we wish our own heart would speak of that which made it heavy with wonder.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
There is beauty in knowing who you are, and in embracing that in spite of the potential consequences.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I felt you live and die for countless lives, felt every one of your life cycles end and grieved the woman I never got to meet. I know you, because you are the other half of me.” Those foreign blue eyes bled to black as he stared at me, and his magic hummed between us. “You are my mate, Estrella, and nothing will come between us now that I have you at my side.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
For the ones who find freedom in the dark.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Who the fuck hurt you?” he growled, his chest rattling in front of my face as I stared up into his obsidian eyes. Something shifted on his face, a rage like I’d never seen taking over as he gritted his teeth when I didn’t give him the answer he demanded. “Who?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I’d never forget the look on his face, the absolute rage on my behalf. My family had loved me, but they’d never promised vengeance for me. No one had ever cared the way he did. That terrified me.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I touched my fingertips to one of the scars in the center of his spine, feeling his body still at my touch. “Who did this to you?” I asked, my voice sounding softer and more broken than I’d ever heard it.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
No, Little One. I’m going to love you,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. His dark eyes glimmered, tiny specks of light shining in the obsidian, like the stars that had become my namesake. “Until you forget what it is to hurt and then long after that. Until the scars you wear like armor have faded from memory, and only we remain.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.
Eugene O'Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
I wasn’t strong enough to stand on my own, and I wasn’t sure I ever would be.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I was so fucking tired of being a victim. Of being treated like I was less than the men around me,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
For you, I can be downright fucking filthy, Estrella, and you will love every Gods damned second of it,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
wondering how my savior had somehow become a morally gray man with no boundaries and a distinct lack of understanding how an actual courtship worked.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
When the time comes, you’ll take all of it and beg me to fuck you harder, Little One.” [Caelum said.]
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Because the one and only man I’d ever allowed to touch me had turned into a pile of snow when he tried to kill me. It was safe to say, my vagina was unfortunately off limits.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
The next time a man like the Lord of Mistfell tries to put his hands on you without your permission, you stab him in the fucking throat,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
He’d be the death of me. If I didn’t kill him first.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I want to worship you like you’re my Goddess.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I would burn the world to the ground and lay it at your feet if you so much as asked it of me, and yet you give me nothing. You’ve never once told me that you feel the same way I do.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Man sets his hand to games of power and influence, he quests for far horizons and wealth beyond imagining. He thinks to own what cannot be possessed. He hews the ancient trees to broaden his grazing lands; he mines the deep caves and topples the standing stones. He embraces a new faith with fervor and, perhaps, with sincerity. But he grows ever further from the old things. He can no longer hear the heartbeat of the earth, his mother. He cannot smell the change in the air; he cannot see what lies beyond the veil of shadows. Even his new god is formed in his own image, for do they not call him the son of man? By his own choice he is cut adrift from the ancient cycles of sun and moon, the ordered passing of the seasons. And without him, the Fair Folk dwindle and are nothing. They retreat and hide themselves, and are reduced to the clurichaun with his little ale jug; the brownie who steals the cow's milk at Samhain; the half-heard wailing of the banshee. They become no more than a memory in the mind of a frail old man; a tale told by a crazy old woman.
Juliet Marillier (Child of the Prophecy (Sevenwaters, #3))
Fine,” he growled finally, clenching his jaw. “But you do what I say.” “Good luck with that,” I said, smiling at him as I patted his arm
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
He will suffer for every mark on your skin, every moment he frightened you, every tear you shed, before I finally put him out of his misery.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I’m not wearing any trousers.” “And that is the problem. I like my intestines in my stomach and not shoved into my lungs.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Jealous, Little One?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at me as he took another step. “Why don’t you help me erase the memory of the ones who came before you?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Who the fuck hurt you?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
The real question was what would remain of me when it was all over with.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
So, even for those of us who can't personally witness Salome's dance, the fifth veil surely will fall. It will fall at the moment of our death. As we lie there, helpless, beyond distraction, electricity stealing out of our brains like a con man stealing out of a sucker's neighborhood, it will occur to many of us that everything we ever did, we did for money. And at that instant, right before the stars blink off, we will, according to what else we may have learned in life, burn with an unendurable regret--or have us a good silent laugh at our own expense.
Tom Robbins (Skinny Legs and All)
You and the basilisk in your trousers stay right there, thank you very much,” I said, snapping to attention the moment he came closer. He stopped the moment I uttered the command, his face lighting with amusement. “I’m not wearing any trousers.” “And that is the problem. I like my intestines in my stomach and not shoved into my lungs. You just keep that thing away from me,” I said, watching as he chuckled and looked at me as if I’d grown a second head. “I can’t say that I’ve ever heard that one before. Usually women ask me to introduce them to the Gods,” he said. (Estrella and Caelum talking)
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
He felt like coming home after years away, and the breath he expelled into my lungs was the first true breath I’d taken; one of pure, frosty air.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
The scrapes weren’t horrible enough that I’d die or needed serious attention from a healer, but it didn’t take much to cause an infection or make functioning painful.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You can’t kill a man just for having fucked me, Caelum,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
If you want to watch the world burn, I’ll set it on fire for you.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I’ll be your God any day, my star,” he murmured, burying his face into me.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Caelum,” I whimpered. “What happened to God?” he teased,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
What had once been an ashy blond brightened to ashen silver as it grew to a slightly longer,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I would rather die on my feet than live in service to something I don’t believe in,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You and the basilisk in your trousers stay right there, thank you very much,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Show them what they will never have.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You know better than to underestimate a woman, Jensen,” a feminine voice scolded as the owner stepped around the corner of the tunnel.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Tell me again how much you don’t want me, my star. I do so love the way you lie.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Could I really risk my heart in the process? Or had it never really been mine to give?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
All you need is to say the word, and I am yours. So tell me, my star. Do you want me?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You didn’t just decide a woman was yours to protect after a few days spent together.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Your body is different than it was before. You move more swiftly, come upon obstacles quicker. Your reflexes need to catch up and work more efficiently now.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Careful, love. I just might like that.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Sometimes what you think is true, what you think is safe and good, is actually evil in disguise. Evil is so enticing, so deceiving, that you don't know its evil until it's wrapped you up and caressed you as a lover. You gaze into its eyes, enraptured by the pretty words whispers softly in your ears, realzing to late that the pretty words were all just twisted lies
Quinn Loftis (Beyond the Veil (The Grey Wolves, #5))
I wouldn’t be carried through the woods like a damsel, not when I knew I was capable of walking myself. To think such a small wound could render me incapable would only make me angrier.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
The silence is positively deafening,” he said, his face breaking into a full-blown smile. “Do shut up. We can’t all be perfect men who know how to navigate and fight and walk flawlessly,” I said,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You’re slow because you’re in pain. We’ll move faster if I carry you,” he said, striding forward as if he didn’t have the weight of a whole-ass person draped over his arms like a rug that needed cleaning.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I assure you, I do not give the first fuck what is normal when it comes to you. If you want to watch the world burn, I’ll set it on fire for you. If you want to slaughter every woman who has ever taken what is yours, then I will gladly sit back and watch you play,” he said, a twisted smile toying about his lips as he dropped his mouth to my lips and sank his teeth into the plump flesh. “Now fucking come for me, Estrella.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
We were supposed to go together, despite my hesitation in trusting him. I couldn’t give myself to him wholeheartedly, not with whatever he didn’t want me to know looming between us, but I couldn’t let him go, either.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
But I knew the man he really was. I knew how gentle he could be when he rocked himself into me, and how sweetly he caressed my skin when he thought I was sleeping, as if he couldn’t quite convince himself I was real.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Was your father a Lord or something?” I asked, unable to stop the burning curiosity. “You could say that,” he said evasively, shrugging his shoulders. That certainly explained why he’d been tolerated even though he wasn’t a legitimate child.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Money could buy many things. Even a bastard child as an official heir. I quieted down, reading the signs of his unwillingness to discuss more about his father’s title. It didn’t matter in the end. Nothing about the world we’d known mattered anymore.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
What difference did it make to me if he touched another woman with those gentle fingers that so often stroked my skin? If his breath washed over another woman’s cheek while he murmured in her ear? If he tore another woman in two with his monumental cock?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
No. I’m saying you should let yourself love someone. If it is your mate, then so be it. But do not keep yourself guarded from the possibility of something more, out of fear of being hurt, because it is worth every moment of pain it will bring when it ends
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Because life isn’t always tidy. We don’t always have the answers we want, and love isn’t always pretty,” he said, his gaze pointed as I swallowed audibly. “It’s messy and painful, but it is always worthwhile. It is always the answer, my star, not the problem.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
and soon the mountains loomed ahead at the top of the ridge. He traversed it, picking his way toward them and the possibility of more caves and, hopefully, a place to hide while I healed enough to travel. Right now, we were losing time with every hour that passed that I was unable to move on my own.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Our life is like a journey…’ – and so the journey seems to me less an adventure and a foray into unusual realms than a concentrated likeness of our existence: residents of a city, citizens of country, beholden to a class or a social circle, member of a family and clan and entangled by professional duties, by the habits of an ‘everyday life’ woven from all these circumstances, we often feel too secure, believing our house built for all the future, easily induced to believe in a constancy that makes ageing a problem for one person and each change in external circumstances a catastrophe for another. We forget that this is a process, that the earth is in constant motion and that we too are affected by ebbs and tides, earthquakes and events far beyond our visible and tangible spheres: beggars, kings, figures in the same great game. We forget it for our would-be peace of mind, which then is built on shifting sand. We forget it so as not to fear. And fear makes us stubborn: we call reality only what we can grasp with our hands and what affects us directly, denying the force of the fire that’s sweeping our neighbour’s house, but not yet ours. War in other countries? Just twelve hours, twelve weeks from our borders? God forbid – the horror that sometimes seizes us, you feel it too when reading history books, time or space, it doesn’t matter what lies between us and it. But the journey ever so slightly lifts the veil over the mystery of space – and a city with a magical, unreal name, Samarkand the Golden, Astrakhan or Isfahan, City of Rose Attar, becomes real the instant we set foot there and touch it with our living breath.
Annemarie Schwarzenbach (All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey (The Swiss List))
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Edgar Allan Poe (The Best Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe)
With just one kiss, he’d proven everything I’d already known. The man would be the end of me. “I would wait an eternity for you, Little One. You never need to be sorry,” he said, dropping one last gentle kiss to my mouth and backing away. I peeled myself off the tree, turning my attention back to the village as he gave me space.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I was a liability to him, and yet, I couldn’t bring myself to sneak off in the night. The thought of what he would do when he hunted me down once again was enough to keep me by his side, wondering how my savior had somehow become a morally gray man with no boundaries and a distinct lack of understanding how an actual courtship worked.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Hands cling to hands and eyes linger on eyes: thus begins the record of our hearts. It is the moonlit night of March; the sweet smell of henna is in the air; my flute lies on the earth neglected and your garland of flowers in unfinished. This love between you and me is simple as a song. Your veil of the saffron colour makes my eyes drunk. The jasmine wreath that you wove me thrills to my heart like praise. It is a game of giving and withholding, revealing and screening again; some smiles and some little shyness, and some sweet useless struggles. This love between you and me is simple as a song. No mystery beyond the present; no striving for the impossible; no shadow behind the charm; no groping in the depth of the dark. This love between you and me is simple as a song. We do not stray out of all words into the ever silent; we do not raise our hands to the void for things beyond hope. It is enough what we give and we get. We have not crushed the joy to the utmost to wring from it the wine of pain. This love between you and me is simple as a song.
Rabindranath Tagore (The Gardener)
When you walked through a park, the immersive world that surrounded you was something that existed inside your own brain as a pattern of neurons firing. The sensation of a bright blue sky wasn't something high above you, it was something in your visual cortex, and your visual cortex was in the back of your brain. All the sensations of that bright world were really happening in that quiet cave of bone you called your skull, the place where you lived and never, ever left. If you really wanted to say hello to someone, to the actual person, you wouldn't shake their hand, you'd knock gently on their skull and say "How are you doing in there?" That was what people were, that was where they really lived. And the picture of the park that you thought you were walking through was something that was visualized inside your brain as it processed the signals sent down from your eyes and retina. It wasn't a lie like the Buddhists thought, there wasn't something terribly mystical and unexpected behind the veil of Maya, what lay beyond the illusion of the park was just the actual park, but it was all still illusion.
Eliezer Yudkowsky (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality)
With just one kiss, he’d proven everything I’d already known. The man would be the end of me. “I would wait an eternity for you, Little One. You never need to be sorry,” he said, dropping one last gentle kiss to my mouth and backing away. I peeled myself off the tree, turning my attention back to the village as he gave me space. My lips burned, the flesh bruised from his kiss as the cold air erased the heat of his mouth. And I still thought it had been worth it.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Oh!” she said, glancing out the side of her eye to where Jensen stared at me. “We tend to be more…open in our relationships. You should probably be ready to bathe him in piss if you want the other girls to know they aren’t able to take him for a ride,” she said, a teasing lilt coming into her voice. I didn’t have any desire to mark my territory. Okay, I did, but I didn’t want to have to. Any man who couldn’t be trusted to label himself as off-limits wasn’t worth my energy.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
She thought constantly about Paris and avidly read all the society pages in the papers. Their accounts of receptions, celebrations, the clothes worn, and all the accompanying delights enjoyed, whetted her appetite still further. Above all, however, she was fascinated by what these reports merely hinted at. The cleverly phrased allusions half-lifted a veil beyond which could be glimpsed devastatingly attractive horizons promising a whole new world of wicked pleasure. From where she lived, she looked on Paris as representing the height of all magnificent luxury as well as licentiousness...she conjured up the images of all the famous men who made the headlines and shone like brilliant comets in the darkness of her sombre sky. She pictured the madly exciting lives they must lead, moving from one den of vice to the next, indulging in never-ending and extraordinarily voluptuous orgies, and practising such complex and sophisticated sex as to defy the imagination. It seemed to her that hidden behind the façades of the houses lining the canyon-like boulevards of the city, some amazing erotic secret must lie. "The uneventful life she lived had preserved her like a winter apple in an attic. Yet she was consumed from within by unspoken and obsessive desires. She wondered if she would die without ever having tasted the wicked delights which life had to offer, without ever, not even once, having plunged into the ocean of voluptuous pleasure which, to her, was Paris.
Guy de Maupassant (A Parisian Affair and Other Stories)
I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter desperation of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Edgar Allan Poe (Tales of Mystery and Imagination)
I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter desperation of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Edgar Allan Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher)
How could something new and pure issue from this? It may be from the remotest regions of the spirit that words and figures will come, images and gestures, veiled and unveiled as in a dream. When they meet in their heady course, and the spark of the wonderful is born from the marriage of strange and most strange, then I will know I am facing the new radiance. It will give me a dubious look because, even though I have conjured it up, it exists beyond the concepts of my wakeful thinking; its light is not daylight; it is inhabited by figures which I do not recognize, but know at first sight. Its weight has a different heaviness; its colour speaks to the new eyes which my closed lids have given one another; my hearing has wandered into my fingertips and learns to see; my heart, now that it lives behind my forehead, tastes the laws of a new, unceasing, free motion. I follow my wandering senses into this new world of the spirit and come to know freedom. Here, where I am free, I can see what nasty lies the other side told me.
Paul Celan (Collected Prose)
To the Highland Girl of Inversneyde SWEET Highland Girl, a very shower Of beauty is thy earthly dower! Twice seven consenting years have shed Their utmost bounty on thy head: And these gray rocks, this household lawn, These trees—a veil just half withdrawn, This fall of water that doth make A murmur near the silent lake, This little bay, a quiet road That holds in shelter thy abode; In truth together ye do seem Like something fashion’d in a dream; Such forms as from their covert peep When earthly cares are laid asleep! But O fair Creature! in the light Of common day, so heavenly bright I bless Thee, Vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart: God shield thee to thy latest years! I neither know thee nor thy peers: And yet my eyes are fill’d with tears. With earnest feeling I shall pray For thee when I am far away; For never saw I mien or face In which more plainly I could trace Benignity and home-bred sense Ripening in perfect innocence. Here scatter’d, like a random seed, Remote from men, Thou dost not need The embarrass’d look of shy distress, And maidenly shamefacédness: Thou wear’st upon thy forehead clear The freedom of a mountaineer: A face with gladness overspread, Soft smiles, by human kindness bred; And seemliness complete, that sways Thy courtesies, about thee plays; With no restraint, but such as springs From quick and eager visitings Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach Of thy few words of English speech: A bondage sweetly brook’d, a strife That gives thy gestures grace and life! So have I, not unmoved in mind, Seen birds of tempest-loving kind, Thus beating up against the wind. What hand but would a garland cull For thee who art so beautiful? O happy pleasure! here to dwell Beside thee in some heathy dell; Adopt your homely ways, and dress, A shepherd, thou a shepherdess! But I could frame a wish for thee More like a grave reality: Thou art to me but as a wave Of the wild sea: and I would have Some claim upon thee, if I could, Though but of common neighbourhood. What joy to hear thee, and to see! Thy elder brother I would be, Thy father, anything to thee. Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place: Joy have I had; and going hence I bear away my recompense. In spots like these it is we prize Our memory, feel that she hath eyes: Then why should I be loth to stir? I feel this place was made for her; To give new pleasure like the past, Continued long as life shall last. Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, Sweet Highland Girl! from thee to part; For I, methinks, till I grow old As fair before me shall behold As I do now, the cabin small, The lake, the bay, the waterfall; And Thee, the spirit of them all
William Wordsworth
The Mysterious Visitor Spirit, lovely guest, who are you? Whence have you flown down to us? Taciturn and without a sound Why have you abandoned us? Where are you? Where is your dwelling? What are you, where did you go? Why did you appear, Heavenly, upon the Earth? Mayhap you are youthful Hope, Who arrives from time to time Cloaked in magic From a land unknown? Merciless as Hope, Sweetest joy you show us For a moment, then Take it back and fly away. Was it Love that you enacted For us all in mystery? . . . Days of love, when one beloved Rendered this world beautiful Ah! then, sighted through the veil Earth did seem unearthly... Now the veil has lifted; Love is gone; Life is empty, joy - a dream. Was it Thought, enchanting You embodied for us here? Far removed from every worry, With a dreamy finger pointing To her lips, she sallies forth Just like you, from time to time, Ushers us without a sound Back to bygone days. Or within you dwells the sacred spirit Of Dame Poetry? . . . Just like you, she came from Heaven Veiling us twofold: Using azure for the skies, And clear white for earth; What lies near is lovely through her; All that's distant - known. Or perhaps 'twas premonition That descended in your guise And to us with clarity described All that's sacred and divine? Thus it often happens in this life: Something brilliant flies to meet us, Raises up the veil And then beckons us beyond.
Vasily Zhukovsky
The Old Issue October 9, 1899 “HERE is nothing new nor aught unproven,” say the Trumpets, “Many feet have worn it and the road is old indeed. “It is the King—the King we schooled aforetime !” (Trumpets in the marshes—in the eyot at Runnymede!) “Here is neither haste, nor hate, nor anger,” peal the Trumpets, “Pardon for his penitence or pity for his fall. “It is the King!”—inexorable Trumpets— (Trumpets round the scaffold at the dawning by Whitehall!) “He hath veiled the Crown and hid the Sceptre,” warn the Trumpets, “He hath changed the fashion of the lies that cloak his will. “Hard die the Kings—ah hard—dooms hard!” declare the Trumpets, Trumpets at the gang-plank where the brawling troop-decks fill! Ancient and Unteachable, abide—abide the Trumpets! Once again the Trumpets, for the shuddering ground-swell brings Clamour over ocean of the harsh, pursuing Trumpets— Trumpets of the Vanguard that have sworn no truce with Kings! All we have of freedom, all we use or know— This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw— Leave to live by no man’s leave, underneath the Law. Lance and torch and tumult, steel and grey-goose wing Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the King. Till our fathers ’stablished, after bloody years, How our King is one with us, first among his peers. So they bought us freedom—not at little cost Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. Give no ear to bondsmen bidding us endure. Whining “He is weak and far”; crying “Time shall cure.”, (Time himself is witness, till the battle joins, Deeper strikes the rottenness in the people’s loins.) Give no heed to bondsmen masking war with peace. Suffer not the old King here or overseas. They that beg us barter—wait his yielding mood— Pledge the years we hold in trust—pawn our brother’s blood— Howso’ great their clamour, whatsoe’er their claim, Suffer not the old King under any name! Here is naught unproven—here is naught to learn. It is written what shall fall if the King return. He shall mark our goings, question whence we came, Set his guards about us, as in Freedom’s name. He shall take a tribute, toll of all our ware; He shall change our gold for arms—arms we may not bear. He shall break his judges if they cross his word; He shall rule above the Law calling on the Lord. He shall peep and mutter; and the night shall bring Watchers ’neath our window, lest we mock the King— Hate and all division; hosts of hurrying spies; Money poured in secret, carrion breeding flies. Strangers of his counsel, hirelings of his pay, These shall deal our Justice: sell—deny—delay. We shall drink dishonour, we shall eat abuse For the Land we look to—for the Tongue we use. We shall take our station, dirt beneath his feet, While his hired captains jeer us in the street. Cruel in the shadow, crafty in the sun, Far beyond his borders shall his teachings run. Sloven, sullen, savage, secret, uncontrolled, Laying on a new land evil of the old— Long-forgotten bondage, dwarfing heart and brain— All our fathers died to loose he shall bind again. Here is naught at venture, random nor untrue— Swings the wheel full-circle, brims the cup anew. Here is naught unproven, here is nothing hid: Step for step and word for word—so the old Kings did! Step by step, and word by word: who is ruled may read. Suffer not the old Kings: for we know the breed— All the right they promise—all the wrong they bring. Stewards of the Judgment, suffer not this King!
Rudyard Kipling
Beyond the veil lies what our eyes cannot see. Beyond the veil lies what our skin cannot feel. Beyond the veil lies what our consciousness cannot absorb.
Michael Bassey Johnson (The Oneironaut’s Diary)
No matter what my future looks like, nothing will keep me away from the woman I love. Not even death will keep me from her.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
It was safe to say, my vagina was unfortunately off limits.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Infinity of your thoughts Time does not seem to pass, As moments appear to be frozen in an unknown thought, I try hard to bypass, This eerie feeling and the war always lost yet often fought, And I wonder what is this feeling, This enigmatic state of endless time, With which I have now been for very long dealing, A state where time no longer remembers it is time, Then in this moment, Where infinity is cast in a battle with finity, Time remains suspended in an uncertain moment, Where every virtue exists except for certainty, As the war rages and both lose, Infinity retreats to its zone while finity retains its domain, And time that had been held trapped in this noose, Now attains its lost state and claims its lost domain, That spreads across infinity in the subsets of finity, Then my darling Irma, I love you infinitely, Because now there is certainty, And I want you to know, you are my only joy, my moment in time, my eternity, As time resumes its pace, I think of you in the lanes of my mind, And within it I discover our space, Where time still lies trapped, and it does not mind, This existence in a moment where infinity lies everywhere, The infinity of your feelings, your memories and your beauty, And there I lie thinking of you always somewhere, To feed the appetite of our love and its eternity, So if you ever talk to me my love, Maybe I am thinking in this corner feeding the infinity, Of your beauty and our love, To steal from time, from fate, from the Universe, our destiny, Where you lie within me, And we lie in this space of infinity, You loving me and I loving thee, Discovering the charms of your beauty, That is where my love I shall be, If you ever talk to me and you still need to find me, Walk into my mind, but tread softly for you shall be treading over infinity, Where I have spread my feelings just for thee, only thee, And as you behold me, Do not hesitate to wake me up, There in the corner of my mind where I shall always be, Kiss me and wake me up, Then let me cast you into the infinity of my mind and its thoughts, And reveal your own beauty to you, And as you wake up in the infinity of my thoughts, Allow me to cast the veil of infinity bearing your beauty and you, Then let time stop forever, Because now there shall be no need of new thoughts or new feelings, And we shall now exist forever, and forever, In infinities impenetrable ceilings, Where everything is just you and me, Nothing else, and where nothing exists, You and I lying in an eternally amorous state and what a wonder it shall be, Because now there is no identity, I am you and you are me, And both of us surrounded by eternity, In the universe where we have created our own space beyond every scalable limit, And we have become the masters of our own destiny, With nothing to include and nothing to omit, Because there is only one need, Your love for me and my love for you, And there is nothing to worry about or heed, Just your beauty and you, only you, in an endless existence where it is only you, Everywhere, here and there and even that space that time refers to as somewhere, There we lie wound on every loop of infinity, To spread with it everywhere, And believe in the beauty of our singular destiny!
Javid Ahmad Tak (They Loved in 2075!)
Sometimes, in the night, I looked into that mist and swore I saw the shining beacon of dazzling blue eyes staring back at me.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Men always underestimated the women they saw as insignificant.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
A life without half your soul was unthinkably cruel.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I do so love the way you lie.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
He felt like coming home
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
but I wasn’t certain that his level of insatiability was normal.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Stop looking for answers you aren’t yet ready for, my star,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You’ll come with me anyway.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
But I think we both know it’s only a matter of time before you let me inside your head. If we’re both being entirely honest,” he murmured, his gaze burning into mine. “I’m already there.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Why don’t we find out just how much you like my dick, Little One?
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
I like my intestines in my stomach and not shoved into my lungs.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Those bastards are born with the Mark,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
The Seelie Court claims the Fae of the Spring and Summer Courts, while the Unseelie has Autumn, Winter, and the Shadow Courts,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
These lips were made to moan my name,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
You don’t, but you will,
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
Magic rolled off of him. Shadow hands left his body and touched the corpses at his feet. I stared at his face, horror consuming me as the power poured off of him, forming into shadows that fell to his feet.
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))