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But, O Sarah!
if the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they
loved, I shall always be near you; In the gladdest days and in the darkest
nights . . . always, always, and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek,
it shall be my breath, as the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall
be my spirit passing by. Sarah do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and
wait for thee, for we shall meet again.
Major Sullivan
Ballou, to his wife, a week before his death in1861 |
Life is made
up of small comings and goings and for everything that we take with us,
there’s something that we leave behind.
I have two
luxuries to brood over in my walks! your loveliness and the hour of my
death .O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo
in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass
and loses itself in the sunset.
- - - Crowfoot,
Blackfoot warrior and orator, 1890
I would rather
be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark burn out in a brilliant
blaze than it be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
- - - Jack
London, 1916
Watching a
peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a
million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to
disappear into the endless night forever.
- - - Elisabeth
Kuebler-Ross, "On Death and Dying," 1969
Love anything
and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.If you want to make sure
of keeping it intact you must give it to no one,not even an animal.wrap
it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;avoid all entanglements.lock
it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.But in that casket
–safe,dark, motionless,airless- it will change.It will not be broken;it
will become unbreakable,impenetrable ,irredeemable.To love is to be vulnerable.
Never lose
an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God’s
handwriting_a wayside sacrament.Welcome it in every fair face, in every
fair sky, in every flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
Come to me
in the silence of the night
Come in the
speaking silence of a dream
Come with
the soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight
on a stream
Come back
in tears
O, memory,
hope, love of finished eyes.
Yes, let them
flow, they are very dear to me, these tears rising from a heart still wounded!
Don’t dry them, leave this veil of the past on my eyes.
Time has a
way of insulting the most beautiful things and will fade your rosy cheeks
just as he has wrinkled my brow.
My life resembles
those dried up leaves of winter that
havenot yet
fallen from the trees, but will be carried off by the slightest wind.
Cherish your
visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart,
the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest
thoughts, for out of them will grow delightful conditions, all heavenly
environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at
last be built.
- - - James
Allen
Son of man,
keep not silent, forget not deeds of tyranny. Cry out at the disaster of
a people, recount it unto your children and they unto theirs. From generation
to generation the hordes swept in, ran wild and savage and there was no
deliverance, valiance, and revolt. How the mighty are fallen, the great
in spirit and stout of heart, walking to their death with a halo of eternity.
- - - Yehuda
L. Bialer (reference to the Holocaust)
There is one
kind of laugh that I always did recommend; it looks out of the eye first
with a merry twinkle, then it creeps down on its hands and knees and plays
around the mouth like a pretty moth around the blaze of a candle, then
it steals over into the dimples of the cheeks and rides around in those
whirlpools for a while, then it lights up the whole face like the mellow
bloom on a damask rose, then it swims up on the air, with a peal as clear
and as happy as a dinner-bell, then it goes back again on gold tiptoes
like an angel out for an airing, and it lies down on its little bed of
violets in the heart where it came from.
- - - Josh
Billings
To see a hillside
white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but
to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that
beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.
- - - Hal
Borland, New York Times, November 28, 1948
The true beloveds
of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school
bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday,
lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes,
it being the earth and water of existence, memory.
- - - Truman
Capote "Other Voices, Other Rooms"
When you long
with all your heart for someone to love you, a madness grows there that
shakes all sense from the trees and the water and the earth. And nothing
lives for you, except the long deep bitter want. And this is what everyone
feels from birth to death.
- - - Denton
Welch
We grow great
by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of
a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us
let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse
them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which
comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
- - - Woodrow
Wilson
A tearing
wind last night. A flurry of red clouds, hard, a water colour mass of purple
and black, soft as a water ice, then hard slices of intense green stone,
blue stone and a ripple of crimson light.
- - - Virginia
Woolf, in her diary, August 17 1938
The
grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something
to love and somethig to hope for.
When I am
dead ,forget me dear
For I shall
never know.
Though over
my cold and lifeless hands your burning tears shall flow
I’ll cancel
with my living voice
The debt you
owe the dead
Give me the
love you’d show me then
But give it
now instead
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