BLOOD
Still falls the rain
In the field of blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.
~ Dame Edith Sitwell
Still Falls the Rain
I don't agree with a word you say but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. ~ Voltaire
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. ~ Barry Lopez Arctic Dreams
The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch, that hurts, and is desired. ~ William Shakespeare Anthony & Cleopatra
Seeing death had no part in him anymore, no power upon his head; He has bought his eternity with a little hour and is not dead. ~ A.C. Swinburne
One cannot live with the dead; either we die with them or we make them live again. Or else we forget them. ~ Louis Martin-Chauffier L'Homme et la Bete
A cemetery saddens us because it is the only place of the world in which we do not meet our dead again. ~ Francois Mauriac "All Souls Day"
Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Life is not separate from death. It only looks that way. ~ Native American Proverb (Blackfoot)
Christianity has made of death a terror which was unknown to the gay calmness of the Pagan. ~ Ouida
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death. ~ David Sarnoff
Everyone has got to die, but I have always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what? ~ William Saroyan
Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. ~ Dylan Thomas
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die. ~ Oscar Wilde The Ballad of Reading Gaol
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task. ~ Virgil Aeneid (70 BC - 19 BC)
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end? ~ Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967)
O man! Thou feeble tenant of an hour Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power, Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust Degraded mass of animated dust! Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat Thy smiles hipocrisy, thy world deceit! By nature vile, enobled but by name, Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. ~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses. ~ Dean Koontz
We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with. ~ C.S. Lewis
Maybe this world is another planet's hell ~ Aldous Huxley
Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee why so pale? ~ Sir John Suckling Why So Pale and Wan, Fond Lover?
O Rose thou art sick the invisible worm that flies in the night in the howling storm: has found out thy bed of crimson joy: and his dark secret love does thy life destroy. ~ William Blake
Pale, beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal With cold immortal hands; Her languid lips are sweeter Than love's who fears to greet her To men that mix and meet her From many times and lands. ~ A.C. Swinburne
A slumber did my spirit seal; I had no human fears; She seemed a thing that could not feel The touch of earthly years. No motion has she now, no force; She neither hears nor sees; Rolled round in earth's diurnal course, With rocks, and stones, and trees. ~ William Wordsworth Lucy (V)
And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine; A being breathing thoughtful breath, A traveler between life and death; The reason firm, the temperate will, Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill; A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light. ~ William Wordsworth She Was a Phantom of Delight
If a man carefully examine his thoughts he will be surprised to find how much he lives in the future. His well-being is always ahead. Such a creature is probably immortal. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, unless we were meant to be immortal. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorn "The Old Manse" (1846)
If life were eternal all interest and anticipation would vanish. It is uncertainty which lends its fascination. ~ Yoshida Kenko Tsure-Zure Gusa (1330-35)
A syllogism: other men die; but I Am not another; therefore I'll not die. ~ Vladimir Nabokov Pale Fire (1962)
People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. ~ James Baldwin
He that shut Love out, in turn shall be shut out from Love, and on her threshold lie Howling in the outer darkness. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
One cannot be strong without love. For love is not an irrelevant emotion; it is the blood of life, the power of reunion of the separated. ~ Paul Tillich
For every ray of beauty there is an equal element of horror. ~ Christopher Pike
The Art of Love: knowing how to combine the temperment of a vampire with the discretion of an anemone. ~ E.M. Cioran
Then star nor sun shall waken, Nor any change of light; Nor sound of waters shaken Nor any sound or sight; Nor wintry leaves nor vernal Nor days nor things diurnal; Only the sleep eternal In an eternal night. ~ A.C. Swinburne The Garden of Proserpine
While the fates allow us, let us satiate our eyes with love, the long night is coming, nor will the day return. ~ Propertius
We of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights abd ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea. ~ Henry Beston Night on the Great Beach (1928)
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventures of humanity. ~ Henry Beston Night on the Great Beach
Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is ttruly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~ Saint-Exupery Flight to Arras (1942)
The loveliest of faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy. ~ Persian Proverb
The Night darkens the spirit, but only to illuminate it. ~ St. John of the Cross
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success. ~ Henry David Thoreau
.. Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole. ~ Oscar Wilde "De Profundis"
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. ~ T. E. Lawrence The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~ William Dement
Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~ George Carlin
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~ Edgar Allan Poe
There is nothing like the fear a maneater brings. It owns the night and kills so quickly. ~ The Ghost And The Darkess
How glorious it is - and how painful - to be an exception. ~ Alfred de Musset
I feel more alone when in a room full of people, than when I'm all alone. ~ Henry David Thoreau
Stella realized then that Charlie's unhappiness had locked him out of this community as effectively as hers had, and she felt a dull sense of confirmation, she felt she might have known, this is the nature of people, unerringly select as their victim the one who most needs their warmth. ~ Patrick McGrath Asylum
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and again I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. They they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up. ~ Martin Niemoeller
We are but dust and shadows. ~ Horace
He stood a stranger in this breathing world, An erring spirit from another hurled ~ George Gordon, Lord Byron
... once he drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips as sunlight drinketh dew. ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson
But first, on earth as Vampire sent, Thy corpse shall from its tomb be rent: Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race; There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corpse. Thy victims are they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers withered on the stem. ~ Lord Byron Giaour
The vampire is the night-prowling symbol of man's hunger for - and fear of - everlasting life... The mixture of attraction and repulsion...is the essence of the vampire concept. ~ Margaret Carter
Take me from this earth an endless night- this, the end of life. From the dark I feel your lips and taste your bloody kiss. ~ Type O Negative
Nosferatu! Vampire! First I will save your soul, then I will destroy you. ~ George Romero Martin (1978)
The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him. ~ Garrett Fort & Todd Browning Dracula (1931)
Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks. ~ Karl Marx Capital (1867)
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. ~ Sylvia Plath Daddy
She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave. ~ Walter Pater "Leonardo da Vinci" (1873)
We must all die. There’s nothing terrible about death. But to live on after death, a soul, earthbound, a vampire—you don’t wish any such fate for your beloved. ~ Guy Endore & Tod Browning Mark of the Vampire (1935)
I am the wound and the knife! I am the slap and the cheek! I am the limbs and the rack, And the victim and the executioner! I am the vampire of my own heart. ~ Charles Baudelaire "Heautontimoroumenos" (1857)
His reserve of disdain appears endless. He could no sooner shut it off than a vampire could forgo his nightcap. ~ On Gore Vidal (1983)
The reason good women like me and flock to my pictures is that there is a little bit of vampire instinct in every woman. ~ Theda Bara (1955)
Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-In-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
Am I damned? Am I from the devil? Is my very nature that of a devil? I was asking myself over and over. And if it is, then why do I revolt against it, tremble when Babette hurls a flaming latern at me, turn away in disgust when Lestat kills? What have I become in becoming a vampire? Where am I to go? And all the while, as the death wish caused me to neglect my thirst, my thirst grew hotter; my veins were veritable threads of pain in my flesh; my temples throbbed; and finally I could stand it no longer. Torn apart by the wish to take no action - to starve, to wither in thought on the one hand; and driven to kill on the other - I stood in an empty, desolate street and heard the sound of a child crying. ~ Anne Rice "Interview with the Vampire" (1976)
Pregnancy demonstrates the deterministic character of woman’s sexuality. Every pregnant woman has body and self taken over by a chthonian force beyond her control. In the welcome pregnancy, this is a happy sacrifice. But in the unwanted one, initated by rape or misadventure, it is a horror. Such unfortunate women look directly into nature’s heart of darkness. For a fetus is a benign tumor, a vampire who steals in order to live. The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way. ~ Camille Paglia Sexual Personae (1990)
The presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire.... She [Leonardo’s Mona Lisa] is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. ~ Walter Pater "Notes on Leonardo da Vinci" (1873)
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