Happy New Year

You are the music while the music lasts.

T S Elliot

It's This Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees,
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary

I can't smell the medicines,
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

Nazim Hikmet

Faiz Ahmed Faiz

I am being accused of loving you, that is all
It is not an insult, but a praise, that is all

My heart is pleased at the words of the accusers
O my dearest dear, they say your name, that is all

For what I am ridiculed, it is not a crime
My heart's useless playtime, a failed love, that is all

I haven't lost hope, but just a fight, that is all
The night of suffering lengthens, but just a night, that is all

In the hand of time is not the rolling of my fate
In the hand of time roll just the days, that is all

A day will come for sure when I will see the truth
My beautiful beloved is behind a veil, that is all

The night is young, Faiz start saying a Ghazal
A storm of emotions is raging inside, that is all

Terrible

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Winston Churchill

This suspense is terrible. I hope it will last.
Oscar Wilde

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

When the blazing sun is gone,
When he nothing shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

Then the traveller in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,
If you did not twinkle so.

In the dark blue sky you keep,
And often through my curtains peep,
For you never shut your eye,
Till the sun is in the sky.

As your bright and tiny spark,
Lights the traveller in the dark,
Though I know not what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end
at the last limit of my power, that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders

Rabindranath Tagore

The Rose that Grew from Concrete

Did you hear about the rose that grew
from a crack in the concrete?
Proving nature's law is wrong,

it learned to walk without having feet.
Funny it seems, but by keeping it's dreams,
it learned to breathe fresh air.
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else ever cared.


Tupac Shakur

Loneliness

Loneliness like a good, old friend
visits my house to pour wine in the evening.
And we sit together, waiting for the moon,
and for your face to sparkle in every shadow.


Faiz Ahmed Faiz

L'Amour

Vous demandez si l'amour rend heureuse;
Il le promet, croyez-le, fût-ce un jour.
Ah! pour un jour d'existence amoureuse,
Qui ne mourrait? la vie est dans l'amour.

Marceline Desbordes-Valmore

Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair.

Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?

When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.

Sleep is a reward for some, a punishment for others.

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle;
Why not I with thine?

See! the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea;
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss me not?

Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Proust

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.
Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.
The bonds that unite another person to our self exist only in our mind.
The only paradise is paradise lost.

Proust

The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
A powerful idea communicates some of its strength to him who challenges it.
Happiness serves hardly any other purpose than to make unhappiness possible.

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.
Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Proust

There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.

We are healed from suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

Love

Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking,
it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails.

Bible

Camus

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question.

Camus

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.

It is normal to give away a little of one's life in order not to lose it all.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Camus

What is a rebel? A man who says no.

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Wondrous Moment

The wondrous moment of our meeting…
I well remember you appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear. 

And here you once again appear
Before me like a vision fleeting,
A beauty's angel pure and clear.
In ecstasy the heart is beating,
Old joys for it anew revive; 

Alexander Pushkin 

Joan of Arc

Act, and God will act.

I am not afraid... I was born to do this.

If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. 

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

You say that you are my judge; I do not know if you are; but take good heed not to judge me ill, because you would put yourself in great peril.

Maybe

Maybe he believes me, maybe not.

Maybe I believe him, maybe not.

Maybe the wind on the prairie,

The wind on the sea, maybe,

Somebody, somewhere, maybe can tell.

I will lay my head on his shoulder

And when he asks me I will say yes,

Maybe.

Sartre

There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

Lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Sartre

We do not judge the people we love.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.

Only the guy who isn't rowing has time to rock the boat.

Carl Sandburg

Under the summer roses

When the flagrant crimson

Lurks in the dusk

Of the wild red leaves,

Love, with little hands,

Comes and touches you

With a thousand memories,

And asks you

Beautiful, unanswerable questions

de Montaigne

A straight oar looks bent in the water. What matters is not merely that we see things but how we see them.

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

I quote others only in order the better to express myself.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

A wise man never loses anything, if he has himself.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can.

de Montaigne

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

The thing I fear most is fear.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

Beauty and Love

Beauty and love are all my dream;
They change not with the changing day;
Love stays forever like a stream
That flows but never flows away;

Andrew Young

Kierkegaard

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Once you label me you negate me.

One can advise comfortably from a safe port.

Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Kierkegaard

Function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.

There is nothing with which every man is so afraid as getting to know how enormously much he is capable of doing and becoming.

I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations - one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it - you will regret both.

Omar Khayyam

A book of verse, underneath the bough,
A jug of wine, a loaf of bread - and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness -
Ah, wilderness were paradise now!

Machiavelli

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.

Before all else, be armed.