Echoes

I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

In this world / we walk on the roof of hell / gazing at flowers

After the dazzle of day is gone, only the dark, dark night shows to my eyes the stars; after the plain of the surface and the breakers have gone, the depths of the ocean show beautiful forms.

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.

Come, let us go snow-viewing till we are buried.

That though the radiance which was once so bright be now for ever taken from my sight, though nothing can bring back the hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

The blue of the sky compensates for the brevity of life.

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers.

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

"Tell me, gentle traveller, thou Who hast wandered far and wide, Seen the sweetest roses blow And the brightest rivers glide,— Say, of all thine eyes have seen, Which the fairest land has been.""Lady, shall I tell thee where Nature seems most blest and fair, Far above all climes beside?— ’Tis where those we love abide; And that little spot is best Which the loved one’s foot hath pressed."Though it be a fairy space, Wide and spreading is the place; Though ’twere but a barren mound, ’Twould become enchanted ground. With thee, yon sandy waste would seem The margin of Al Cawthar's stream; And thou canst make a dungeon’s gloom A bower where new-born roses bloom.

The aesthetic quality of a product is an integral aspect of its usefulness. But a thing can only be beautiful if it is also well made.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.

Earth hath no sorrows that earth cannot heal, or heaven cannot heal, for the earth as seen in the clean wilds of the mountains is about as divine as anything the heart of man can conceive!

'What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well.'

I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on high o'er vales and hills, when all at once I saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils.

Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult.

This world of dew / is only a world of dew — / and yet... and yet...

An old silent pond. A frog jumps into the pond — splash! Silence again.

Furthermore, form and substance are like dew on a blade of grass, and fleeting life is as a flash of lightning, instantly emptied and immediately lost.

Never say of anything, 'I have lost it'; but, 'I have returned it.' Is your child dead? It is returned. Is your wife dead? She is returned. Is your estate taken away? Well, and is not that likewise returned?

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, give me juicy autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, give me a field where the unmowed grass grows, give me an arbor, give me the trellis'd grape.

I have endowed everyone with a temperament of his own, given everyone an idiom of his own; so that what is praise for him is blame for thee, what is honey for him is poison for thee, what is light for him is fire for thee, what is rose for him is thorn for thee, what is good for him is evil for thee, what is beautiful for him is ugly for thee. In the people of Hindustan the idiom of Hindustan is praiseworthy; in the people of Sind, the idiom of Sind is praiseworthy. I do not see the outward and the speech; I see the inward and the state [of feeling]. For the heart is the substance and speech an accident. So, the accident is subservient, the substance is the [real] object. The religion of love stands apart from all religions. For lovers the [only] religion and creed is God.