A poet by Hafiz

Vladimir Gussev Art

A poet is someone who can
pour light into a cup,
then raise it to nourish
your beautiful, parched holy mouth.
Hafiz

Two modes of criticism by Margaret Fuller

Graham Gercken Art

There are two modes of criticism.One which crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant.

There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood.
Margaret Fuller,
“Poets of the People”in Art,Literature and the Drama

We die to each other daily by T.S. Eliot

Delphin Enjolras Art

We die to each other daily.What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them.And they have changed since then.To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.
T.S. Eliot,The Cocktail Party

Life Quote by Vincent Van Gogh

Robert Hagan Art

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily.
VINCENT VAN GOGH

Awakening by Anaïs Nin

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness.Monotony,boredom,death.Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices.They drive a car.They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.Some never awaken.
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

The Song of the Birds: value what you have

Vladimir Gusev Art

The Song of the Birds

The owner of a small business,a friend of the poet Olavo Bilac,
met him on the street and asked,

“Mr. Bilac, I need to sell my small farm the one you know so well. Could you please write an announcement for me for the paper?”

Bilac wrote: “For sale: a beautiful property, where birds sing at dawn in extensive woodland, bi-sected by the brilliant and sparkling waters of a large stream. The house is bathed by the rising sun.
It offers tranquil shade in the evenings on the veranda.”

Some time later, the poet met his friend and asked whether he had sold the property to which he replied:

“I’ve changed my mind.
When I read what you had written,I realized the treasure that was mine.”

Sometimes we underestimate the good things we have,
chasing after the mirages of false treasures.
Look around and appreciate what you have:
your home,your loved ones,friends on whom you can really count,
the knowledge you have gained, your good health.
And all the beautiful things of life,
that are truly your most precious treasure.

Who science has and art by Johann wolfgang Goethe

Delphin Enjolras Art

Who science has and art
He has religion too
Who neither of them owns
Religion is his due.
Johann wolfgang Goethe

Wer Wissenschaft und Kunst besitzt,
Hat auch Religion;
Wer jene beiden nicht besitzt,
Der habe Religion.
Goethe

Secrets of Your life by Margaret Atwood

Daniel Gerhartz Art

I wonder which is preferable,to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them,or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph,every sentence,every word of them,so at the end you’re depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold,as close to you as your skin – everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone – and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright fluorescent label so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you?
Margaret Atwood

Autumn Walk by Jane Austen

Jane ward Art

Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn–that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness–that season which has drawn from every poet worthy of being read some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
Jane Austen, Persuasion

I Sit beside the fire And Think by J.R.R Tolkien

I Sit And Think
J.R.R Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.