Beautiful and interesting quotes and poems

These are some of the authors I really appreciate and love to read.


Interior Portrait.

You don't survive in me
Because of memories;
nor are you mine because
of a lovely longing's strength.

What does make you present
is the ardent detour
that a slow tenderness
traces in my blood

I do not need
to see you appear
being born sufficed for me
to lose you a little less.

Put Out My Eyes

Put out my eyes, and I can see you still,
Slam my ears to, and I can hear you yet;
And without any feet can I go to you;
And tongue-less, I can conjure you at will
Break off my arms, I shall take hold of you
And grasp you with my heart as with a hand;
Arrest my heart, my brain will beat as true;
And if you set this brain of mine afire,
Then on my blood-stream I yet will carry you.

The Lovers

See how in their veins all becomes spirit:
into each other they mature and grow.
Like axles, their forms tremblingly orbit,
round which it whirls, bewitching and aglow.
Thirsters, and they receive drink,
watchers, and see: they receive sight.
Let them into one another sink
so as to endure each other outright.

Water Lily

My whole life is mine, but whoever says so
will deprive me, for it is infinite.
The ripple of water, the shades of the sky
are mind; it is still the same, my life.

No desire opens me: I am full,
I never close myself with refusal-
in the rhythm of my daily soul
I do not desire- I am moved;

By being moved I exert my empire,
making the dreams of night real:
into my body at the bottom of the water
I attract the beyonds of mirrors.


You Who Never Arrived

You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next moment.
All the immense images in me - the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.

You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window in a country house-, and you almost stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,-- you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back to my too-sudden image.
Who knows? Perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, seperate, in the evening.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~

How glorious is it - and also how painful - to be an exception.

~Alfred de Musset~


August Night

O Muse! What does it matter, life or death?
I love, and want pallor, I love and want the pain;
I love, my genius for a kiss I won't disdain;
I love, and want to feel on my cheek wan
That stream from endless spring forever drawn.
I love, and want to sing of joy and laziness
Of my crazed life and cares of just one day.
I want to tell and say forever and ceaseless
That once vowing to live without mistress,
Only of love I vow to live and die.
Renounce to all your pride that's killing you
The bitter-filled heart that you thought was closed.
Love, and revive; to blossom be a flower.
Having suffered, even more you must suffer,
And keep loving, after having so loved.

Kiss Me More

Kiss me, kiss me more and still more,
Give me that scrumptious kiss of yours,
Give me that kiss that's tenderest,
I'll give you four that are hottest.

Sigh! You gripe? Let me soothe your pain
With ten kisses that are sweetest.
To mix with ours in bliss greatest.
Enjoy each other's over again
Though we each have our private life.
To live and let the other do likewise,
Let me insane for our love's sake.
In discreet life I'd suffer pain
If I could not give myself fain
To you madly for you to take.


Sonnet VIII

I live, I die: I burn, I drown,
Amidst the cold, heat strikes me down
Too soft and too hard my life is to me
My great sorrows are mixed with glee.

All at once I laugh and I cry
And I endure great torment in pleasure.
My happiness flees, but lasts forever.
All at once I wilt and I thrive.
Thus inconstant love torments me.
Just as I think my pain has worsened
Without thinking so I am trouble-free
Then when I believe my joy is certain
With happiness I so craved it fills me,
And sets me back to my first misfortune.


The Walk


Of the blue summer eyes, I'll walk along the paths
Slashed by the wheat blades, trampling upon fine grass,
Dreaming, I will smell the freshness at my feet
And I will let the wind bathe my uncovered head.
I'll say nothing at all, nor will I think at all,

Yet this infinite love will rise to fill my soul
Then I'll go so far away, like a bohemian.
Amidst nature, happy as if with a woman.

~Alfred de Musset~



On Time

Fly, envious Time, till thou run out thy race;
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy plummet's pace;
And glut thyself with what thy womb devours
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And merely moral dross,
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when, as each thing bad thou has entomb'd
And last of all thy greedy self consumed,
Then long eternity shall greet our bliss,
With an individual kiss;
And joy shall overtake us, as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good,
And perfectly divine,
With truth, and peace, and love, shall ever shine,
About the supreme throne
Of him, to whose happy-making sight, alone,
when once our heavenly guided soul shall climb,
Then all this earthly grossness quit,
Attired with stars, we shall forever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee, O Time!

~John Milton~

If one is forever cautious, can one remain a human being?
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn~

Nothing is more humilating than to see idiots succeed in enterprises we have failed in.
~Gustave Flaubert~

One never tires of what is well written, style is life! It is the very blood of thought.
~Gustave Flaubert~

She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more.
~Gustave Flaubert~

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
~Gustave Flaubert~

What is the beautiful, if not the impossible.
~Gustave Flaubert~

Woman is a vulgar animal from whom man has created an excessively beautiful ideal.
~Gustave Flaubert~

Violence is a calm that disturbs you.
~Jean Genet~

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control on them.
~Jack Kerouac~