Following are the writings contained in my second volume of quotations I compiled over a period of a few years in a ratty old leather journal, including the little "Foreword" . I've always treasured these words. This one is still, as of yet, not completely filled. Some words are my own, but not many. If you actually have the patience to read and consider them all, I congratulate you and hope you walk away with an idea...a feeling...an inspiration...

-R

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QUOTATION COMPILATION *** Volume Two *** 1997-1999

To the reader:

I became so seduced by the occasional scribbling of snatches of beauty and wisdom into the first volume of quotes that when I finished it, I found it impossible to stop. My friends and family are also perpetually passing on a delicious phrase they heard or read somewhere, as well as giving gifts of numerous published quotation compilations on holidays and birthdays. I may never stop ...

These quotes are taken from various sources as compiled by myself over a period of a few years. Some are my own words but most are taken from the works of others, minds and spirits far greater than my own. But somehow I feel that having taken them and scribbled them in the once-blank pages of this book. I’ve taken them into my heart, captured them and somehow made them my own. They’ve become personal and precious. Some liberties have been taken -- mostly by mistake -- but sometimes intentionally (changing thous to yous, etc.). Also, I would remind you that ninety-nine percent of the time, a quote is attributed as unknown, it means only that it is unknown to me, not to humankind.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

~ Alexander Pope

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“Wise men have more to learn of fools than fools of wise men.”

~ Montaigne

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“The worst is not ... so long as we can say, ‘This is the worst.’”

~ Shakespeare

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“What peaceful hours I once enjoyed ...

How sweet their memory still.

But they have left an aching void

The world can never fill.”

~ William Cowper

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“Do not pluck the beard of a dead lion.”

~ Martial

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“I shall never be ware of my own wit till I break my shins against it.”

~ Shakespeare

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“Let men say whatever they will,

Woman, woman, rules them still.”

~ Thomas Moore / Isaac Bickerstaff

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“He’s a fool that cannot conceal his wisdom.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

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“Nature has given man one tongue and two ears, that we may hear twice as much as we speak.”

~ Epictetus

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“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”

~ Genesis 2:23

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“Canst thou by searching find out God?”

~ Job 11:7

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“Cupid abroad was lated in the night,

His wings were wet with ranging in the rain.”

~ Robert Greene

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“The frolic architecture of the snow.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“Friendship should be more than biting Time can sever.”

~ T. S. Eliot

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“Quem Jupiter volt perdere, dementat privs.”

~ James Duport

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“Sure the poet ... spewed up a good lump of clotted nonsense at once.”

~ John Dryden

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“I am a little world made cunningly

Of elements, and an angelic sprite.”

~ John Donne

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“Laugh at all you trembled at before.”

~ William Cowper

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“It strains credulity, Your Honor.”

~ J. Cochran

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“Tempt me no more; for I have known the lightning’s hour, the poets inward pride, the certainty of power.”

~ Cecil Day-Lewis

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“The strangest whim has seized me ... After all I think I will not hang myself today.”

~ Earl of Chesterton

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“I don’t pretend to understand the Universe -- It’s a great deal bigger than I am ... People ought to be modester.”

~ Thomas Carlyle

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“Something will come of this. I hope it may not be human gore.”

~ Charles Dickens

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“There is a pleasure sure in being mad, which none but madmen know.”

~ John Dryden

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“Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions.”

~ Benjamin Disraeli

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“The clock has stopped in the dark.”

~ T. S. Eliot

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“All love is lost but upon God alone.”

~ William Dunbar

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“But love’s a malady without a cure.”

~ John Dryden

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“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes

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“For God’s sake, hold your tongue and let me love.”

~ John Donne

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“But whispering tongues can poison truth.”

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“My winged hours of bliss have been

Like angel visits, few and far between.”

~ Thomas Campbell

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“I am ashes where I once was fire.”

~ Lord Byron

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“All poets are mad.”

~ Robert Burton

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“Love, half-angel and half-bird

And all a wonder and a wild desire.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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“Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.”

~ John Selden

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“I wish you all the joy of the worm.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“I am devilishly afraid, that’s certain; but ... I’ll sing, that I may seem valiant.”

~ John Dryden

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“There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know.”

~ William Cowper

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“The silent touches of time. The grand instructor, Time.”

~ Edmund Burke

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“Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.”

~ William Shakepspeare

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“Thank you, Lord. Thank you for life. Thank you for this day, this hour, this minute.”

~ Maya Angelou

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“I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”

~ Walt Whitman

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“Happiness is no laughing matter.”

~ Richard Whatley

Archbishop of Dublin

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“Tacitae per amica silentia lunae.”

~ Virgil

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“I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

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“It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.”

~ Walt Whitman

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“We will either find a way, or we will make one.”

~ Hannibal

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“Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.”

~ Horace Walpole

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“Immortal cherubims!”

~ Thomas Traherne

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“Be near me when the sensuous frame

Is racked with pains that conquer trust;

And Time, a maniac scattering dust,

And Life, a Fury slinging flame.”

~ Tennyson

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“You were as true a lover as ever sighed upon a midnight pillow.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Between the idea and the reality ...

Between the motion and the act ...

Falls the shadow.”

~ T. S. Eliot

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“The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for.”

~ E. Hemingway

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“Slice him where you like, a hellhound is always a hellhound.”

~ P. G. Wodehouse

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“He who knows about depth knows about God.”

~ Paul Tillieh

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“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”

~ Lord Tennyson

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“When you are old and gray and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled.”

~ W. B. Yeats

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“Vae, puto deus fio.” (L)

~ Emperor Vespasian

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“Those who have courage to love should have courage to suffer.”

~ Anthony Trollope

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“When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind.”

~ John Dryden

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“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of Heaven.”

~ Walt Whitman

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“There was silence deep as death, and the boldest held his breath for a time.”

~ Thomas Campbell

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“I have tasted the sweets and the bitters of love.”

~ Byron

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“As is you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

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“It’s a marvelous night for a moondance.”

~ V. Morrison

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“Maddest man, he knows not why,

He thinks he was not made to die.”

~ Lord Tennyson

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“Supercalafragalisticexpyaladocious.”

~ Mary Poppins

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“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then, I contradict myself,

I am large, I contain multitudes.”

~ Walt Whitman

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“That old devil moon deep in your eyes.”

~ Lane

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“A kiss may not be the truth ... but it is what we wish were true.”

~ Martin

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“One of the things a wife of a writer must learn ... is that when he sits for hours on end gazing out the window ... he’s working.”

~ Unknown

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“I was there when the bear ate his head ... he thought it was a candy.”

~ Matthews

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“Storms make oaks take deeper roots.”

~ Unknown

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“Anger is 99% of danger.”

~ Unknown

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“If it is to be ... it is up to me.”

~ Sir George Wilkins

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“What makes folks think they know how God likes his coffee?”

~ Kamau

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“To be born is to forget ... to die is to remember.”

~ Kamau

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“Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

~ Browning

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“For the sake of the rose, the thorn is watered.”

~ African Proverb

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“As sweet as remembered kisses after death.”

~ Tennyson

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“I think and think on things impossible,

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope.”

~ Dryden

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“Is not old wine wholesomest, old wood burns brightest, old linens the softest, old warriors the surest ... and old lovers the soundest.”

~ Unknown

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“Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?”

~ Artemis Ward

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“Quem fugis ... demens? Habitiarunt di quoque silvas.” (L)

~ Virgil

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“Here on the beach I wandered ... nourishing a youth sublime. With the faery tales of science ... and the long result of time.”

~ Tennyson

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“Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand ... and he laid it upon my lips.”

~ Song of Solomon 30:6

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“If you fall asleep on the couch in a house where a woman is present, there will be a blanket covering you when you awaken.”

~ Carlin

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“A Vila Mon Couer Gardi Limo.” (Early French)

~ Medieval posey ring statement

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“Nature is usually wrong.”

~ James McNeil Whistler

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“Hereafter, in a world better than this ...

I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.”

~ Shakespeare

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“There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher.”

~ Goldsmith

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“Nothing is or can be accidental with God.”

~ Longfellow

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“The heart will commonly govern the head; and any strong passion, set the wrong way, will soon infatuate even the wisest of men.”

~ Waterland

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“When you’ve got them by their balls ... their hearts and minds will follow.”

~ Saying from the war in Vietnam

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“Beware you are not swallowed up in books ... An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

~ Charles Wesley

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“A hush with the setting moon.”

~ Tennyson

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“Cupid is a knavish lad ... thus to drive the poor females mad.”

~ Shakespeare

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“When I was a kid I used to think it was all the same clouds that kept coming by.”

~ Carlin

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“Actors are the only honest hypocrites. Their life is a voluntary dream; and the height of their ambition is to be beside themselves. Their very thoughts are not their own.”

~ Hazlitt

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“In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every on of them is signed by God’s name, and I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

~ Walt Whitman

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“The blind hysterics of the Celt.”

~ Tennyson

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“For I am not one of those gentle ones that will use the Devil himself with courtesy...”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit.”

~ Dryden

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“The life, death, miracles of Saint Somebody ...

Saint Somebody Else ... his miracles, death ... life.”

~ Browning

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“Let me be dressed as fine as I will ...

Flies, worms, and flowers, exceed me still.”

~ Isaac Watts

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“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

~ Voltaire

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“I did at midnight speak with the Sun!”

~ Henry Vaughan

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“Hike up your skirt a little more ... and show your world to me ... in a boy’s dream ... in a boy’s dream.”

~ Matthews

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“Her eyes are the homes of silent prayer.”

~ Tennyson

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“Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish;

A vapour sometime like a bear or lion.”

~ Shakespeare

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“I long to kiss the image of my death.”

~ William Drummond

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“Germs live in my hat.”

~ Carlin

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“There’s nothing sooner dry than women’s tears.”

~ John Webster

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“Sure I had drunken in my dreams,

And still my body drank.”

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“There are nights when the wolves are silent, and only the moon howls.”

~ Carlin

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“Much of a madness ...”

~ Sir John Vanbrugh

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“Fe que no duda es fe muerta.”

~ Miguel De Unamuno

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“Let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die.”

~ Isaiah 22:13

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“To see a World in a Grain of Sand,

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.”

~ William Blake

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“Fear Death? -- to feel the fog in my throat,

The mist in my face.”

~ Robert Browning

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“A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry ... of some strong swimmer in his agony.”

~ Lord Byron

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“Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem.” (L)

~ Catullus

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“Is man an ape or an angel? Now I am on the side of the angels.”

~ Benjamin Disraeli

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“And love’s the noblest frailty of the mind.”

~ Dryden

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“ ... A hungry, lean-faced villain, a mere anatomy, a threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller, a needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch ... a living dead man.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Bold knaves thrive without one grain of sense.”

~ John Dryden

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On the feast of St. Stephen, I was driving my hearse to the wholesale liverwurst outlet when suddenly a hermaphrodite in a piano truck backed out of a crackhouse driveway, and, as my shoes caught fire, I pirouetted across Boris Karloff Boulevard, slapping a Chattanooga road map, even though he was humming ‘The Pussycat Song.’”

~ Carlin

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“Give not thy soul unto a woman.”

~ Ecclesiasticus 9:2

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“She was an Amazon. Her whole life was spent riding at breakneck speed along the wilder shores of love.”

~ Lesley Blanch

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“To define true madness, What is it but to be nothing else but mad?”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure; Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”

~ Lord Byron

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“The day breaks not, it is my heart.”

~ John Donne

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“I grew intoxicated with my own eloquence.”

~ Benjamin Disraeli

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“What is commonly called Love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.”

~ Henry Fielding

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“Miss Twye was soaping her breasts in the bath when she heard behind her a meaning laugh. And to her amazement she discovered a wicked man in the bathroom cupboard.”

~ Gavin Ewart

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“Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills.”

~ Sir George Etheredge

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“One religion is as true as another.”

~ Robert Burton

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“I am not a slut, though I thank the gods I am foul.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Gott wurfelt nicht.” (G)

~ Albert Einstein

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“Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon.”

~ Walter De la Mare

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“Love’s tongue is in the eyes.”

~ Phineas Fletcher

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“In and out, above, about, below ... ‘tis nothing but a magic shadow show,

Played in a box whose candle is the Sun

Round which we phantom figures come and go.”

~ Edward Fitzgerald

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“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back -- the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth and all the men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to perils, to love, to vain effort -- to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, that glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires too soon ... before life itself.”

~ Joseph Conrad

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“For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, and breathed in the face of the foe as he passed.”

~ Lord Byron

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“Verte desnuda as recordar la Tierra.”

~ Federico Garcia Lorca

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“I rage, I melt, I burn ... the feeble God has stabbed me to the heart.”

~ John Gay

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“I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain ... and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat.

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.”

~ Robert Frost

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“Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“There was a pause -- just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly.”

~ Ronald Firbank

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“ ... At the center of his rage was terror, like a cold curdle of rancid cream in the middle of a poisoned chocolate.”

~ Stephen King

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“In the Country of the Blind, the One-eyed Man is King.”

~ H. G. Wells

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“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

And the momeraths outgrabe.

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frimerous Bandersnatch!’

He took his vorpal sword in hand,

Long time the manxome for he sought.

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with it’s head

He went galumphing back.

‘And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’

He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.

All mimsy were the borogroves

And the momeraths outgrabe.”

~ Lewis Carroll

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“A foolish consistency in the hobgoblin of little minds.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“When love grows diseased, the best thing we can do is put it to a violent death; I cannot endure the torture of a lingering and consumptive passion.”

~ Sir George Etheredge

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“So we reach into the raging chaos, and we pluck some small glittering thing, and we cling to it, and tel ourselves it has meaning, and that the world is good, and we are not evil, and we will all go home in the end.”

~ Anne Rice

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“God forbid that any book should be banned; The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”

~ Dame Rebecca West

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“The ground flew up and hit me in the head.”

~ Artemus Ward

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“’Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

‘I’ve had nothing yet,’ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘So I can’t take more.’

‘You mean you can’t take less,’ said the Hatter: ‘It’s very easy to take more than nothing.’”

~ Lewis Carroll

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“‘What is the meaning of it, Watson?’ said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. ‘What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.’”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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“He looked as though he had the devil inside him, and the devil knew the whole tale ...”

~ Anne Rice

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“‘There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as religion,’ said Holmes, leaning with his back against the shutters. ‘It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. It’s smell, and it’s colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.’”

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

~ Leo Tolstoy

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“And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes it’s shoes.”

~ Dylan Thomas

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“And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love ... The honey of poison-flowers and all the measureless ill.”

~ Tennyson

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“Everything there is simply order and beauty, luxury, peace and sensual indulgence.”

~ Charles Baudelaire

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“If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.”

~ Samuel Beckett

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“The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.”

~ Proverbs 19

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“The devil’s most devilish when respectable.”

~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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“I don’t mind where people make love, so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”

~ Mrs. P. Campbell

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“You just wait. I’ll sin till I blow up!”
~ Dylan Thomas

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“I don’t think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.”

~ E. M. Forster

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“I’ll be with you in the squeezing of a lemon.”

~ Oliver Goldsmith

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We fell out I know not why, and kissed again with tears.”

~ Tennyson

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“To inspire hopeless passion is my destiny.”

~ William Makepeace Thackeray

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“There are places in the human heart that do not yet exist ... and into them enters suffering so they may have existence.”

~ Unknown

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“Desire to be invited to any sensual feast with you alone.”

~ William Shakespeare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“This barbarous philosophy, which is the offspring of cold hearts and muddy understandings.”

~ Edmund Burke

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“There never was a good war, or a bad peace.”

~ Benjamin Franklin

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Angels in some brighter dreams call to the soul when man does sleep.”

~ Henry Vaughan

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“I learned there are troubles

Of more than one kind.

Some come from ahead ...

And some come from behind.

But I’ve bought a big bat.

I’m all ready, you see.

Now my troubles are going

To have troubles with me!”

~ Dr. Seuss

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“My soul I’ll pour into thee.”

~ Robert Herrick

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“He has no hope who never had a fear.”

~ William Cowper

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Grant me some wild expressions, Heaven, or I will burst ... words, words or I will burst.”

~ George Farquhar

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Every physician almost has his favorite disease.”

~ Henry Fielding

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“When Voltaire was asked why no woman has ever written a tolerable tragedy, ‘Ah (said he) the composition of a tragedy requires testicles.’”

~ Voltaire

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Devotion! daughter of astronomy!

An undevout astronomer is mad.”

~ Edward Young

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“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they so it from religious conviction.”

~ Pascal

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I am ... a mushroom ... on whom the dew of Heaven drops now and then.”

~ John Ford

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“He ... at the conclusion of every sentence would cry out, ‘Fudge!’ -- an expression which displeased us all.”

~ Oliver Goldsmith

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“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

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“A little Love-god lying once asleep,

Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand.

And so the general of hot desire

Was sleeping by a virgin hand.

This Brand she quenched in a cool well by

Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual

Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between the stars ... on stars where no human race is. I have it in me ... so much nearer home ... to scare myself with my own deserted places.”

~ Robert Frost

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“‘There’s been an accident!’ they said. ‘Your servant is cut in half; he’d dead!’

‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Jones, ‘and please send me the half that’s got my keys.’”

~ H. Graham

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I know that woman is a dish for the gods, if the Devil dress her not.”

~ William Shakespeare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips, as sunlight drinks the dew.”

~ Tennyson

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“In praise of Ladies dead, and lovely knights.”

~ William Shakespeare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“May opinion never float on the waves of ignorance. May we look forward with pleasure, and backward without remorse. May we never suffer for principles we do not hold. To the man that feels for sorrows not his own. Great men honest, and honest men great. May we live to learn and learn to live well. May we live in pleasure and die out of debt. A head to earn and a heart to spend. Health of body, peace of mind, a clean shirt and a guinea.”

~ Scottish toast - 1822

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“On her soft breasts my hand I laid,

And a quick, light impression made;

They with a kindly warmth did glow,

And swelled, and seemed to overflow.”

~ 18th Century poem

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Babies ... Living jewels dropped unstained from Heaven.”

~ Pollock

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Autumn ... season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.”

~ Keats

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Lying asleep between the strokes of night

I saw my love lean over my sad bed,

Pale as the duskiest lily’s leaf or head,

Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,

Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,

And all her face was honey to my mouth,

And all her body pasture to my eyes;

The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,

And glitter eyelids of my soul’s desire.”

~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

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“Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in.

Time ... you thief!, who loves to get

Sweets into your list ... put that in.

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;

Say that health and wealth have missed me;

Say that I am growing old, but add --

Jenny kissed me.”

~ L. Hunt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“We are never like angels till our passion dies.”

~ Decker

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“My Mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go,

My Mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven. I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.”

~ William Shakespeare

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“May those who love truly be always believed,

And those who deceive us be always deceived.

* * * * *

Here’s to the men of all classes,

Who through lasses and glasses

Will make themselves asses!

* * * * *

I drink to the health of another,

And the other I drink to is he --

In the hope that he drinks to another,

And the other he drinks to is me.”

~ Scottish toasts

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“‘Have some wine,’ the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. ‘I don’t see any wine,’ she remarked. ‘There isn’t any,’ said the March Hare.”

~ Lewis Carroll

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Anger is one of the sinews of the soul.”

~ Thomas Fuller

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“Upon the Seraph-wings of ecstasy, he passed the flaming bounds of place and time; where angels tremble while they gaze.”

~ Thomas Gray

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“Non Angli, sed Angeli.” (L)

~ Pope Gregory the Great

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“In Nature’s infinite book of secrecy ... A little can I read.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Will not my angel comfort?”

~ Emily Bronte

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“When as in silks my lady goes ...

Then, then, I think how sweetly flows

The liquefication of her clothes.”

~ Robert Herrick

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“After all, what is our entire world to the stars above? What do they think of our tiny planet, I wondered, full of mad juxtaposition, happenstance, and endless struggle, and the deep crazed civilizations sprawled upon the face of it, and held together not by will or faith or communal ambition but by some dreamy capacity of the world’s millions to be oblivious to life’s tragedies and again and again sink into happiness, just as if happiness were as natural to all beings as hunger or sleepiness or love of warmth and fear of the cold.”

~ Anne Rice

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“Women are an exquisite hell.”

~ Unknown

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“It is dusk. The crimson sky blazes with God’s fire once more ... a tiny miracle ... another sunset. As I lay my gleaming sword upon the ivy at my feet, my fevered immortal flesh sends tiny wisps of dancing steam toward Heaven. A lion’s heart thunders in my chest, my body quivers ... my human form, and I fall to my knees ... obsidian eyes search the sky to whisper frantic adoration and thanks to the Father.

The demons are slain. The fragrant tree of Life still sways with silver and emerald brilliance in the wind. The legions of the wicked lie broken and defeated at it’s roots. Through almighty mercy, my luminous and battered wings can again embrace and protect the precious sanctity of human life ... tiny delicate human souls.

The armies of Seraphim have ascended. Even Michael and Raphael, stains of demonic blood still wet upon their spears, have bolted to the clouds to ride the celestial winds ... their ethereal singing still echoes in my ears like voices from a dream. And I am left alone in the eternal garden ... battle-worn and breathless ... left to give quiet thanks and talk to you ... tender mortal children of God ... Left to swoon in the aromatic breeze .. to bathe in the romantic prison that is your world. To take a sweet, lingering moment to present myself, cloaked in mystery and legend ... to you.

May the Lord forgive me my pride. I am the Archangel Gabriel. I dealt God’s venom and damnation upon Sodom and Gommorah. It was my ivory feathers that beat and strained to pull the holy men, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azarian from the furnace. Angel of annunciation, resurrection, mercy, vengeance, and revelation. The winged beast who bestowed the sacred fate upon the Virgin Madonna. I am love incarnate. Ruling prince of the First Heaven. The angel of the moon ... come to give woman and man the gift of hope.

Now amidst the grass and thorns, the Cherubim dancing in the grotto behind me, the archaic fury of battle cools in my veins ... and melts into sensual and sacramental delirium. Take refuge my small ones ... cling to your hearts the faith that I am at your beds while you sleep ... stealing kisses to your cheeks and eyelids.

Defender of the innocent. I weep with you in your loneliness, and I roar with laughter at the giggles of an infant who finds a butterfly amid the roses. I caress and soothe the sick and dying. I defend you from the grinning jaws of decay, and shield you from the poisons of broken dreams and unquenched passions ... a harbour in the tempest.

I love and cherish you, my little ones ... like a mother who holds a suckling babe to her breast. And I am ever present, standing with steel and bone by your side, prayer dripping like nectar from my lips ... watching fierce and patient, like the stars burning in the inky blackness of night.

I am the Archangel Gabriel.

I am God’s love incarnate.

Precious souls .. may Heaven shine upon you all.”

~ Richard Forbes Soppet

(To accompany the sculpture ‘Archangel Gabriel’ 1995)

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“Consider God’s handiwork; who can straighten what he hath made crooked?”

~ Ecclesiastes 7:13

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“What a remarkable fragrance fresh quim projects, a combination of sea salt, and jungle mud and crushed violets.”

~ Asa Barber

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“The wound is invisible that love’s keen arrow makes.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“Too much sanity is madness, and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be.”

~ Cervantes

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“A romantic without a lover is like a poet without a pen. Neither have an outlet for their passions.”

~ Richard Soppet

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“So ... now I search for a woman with a pen.”

~ Gerri Brunken

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“Making a baby, now, has become a science ... Love remains a mystery.”

~ Unknown

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“Lord, for myself, and everyone I care about, please grant happiness, health and safety. Thank you for all my blessings ... way too numerous to count. Love and money ... could always use more of those.”

~ My Prayer - R. Soppet

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“You refresh me with your laughter,

And comfort me with your smile.

As you lavish me with your touches

You capture me with your eyes.

As your hair brushes past my neck,

Your scent invigors my soul.

As you grab my hand and take me with you,

I’m swept away with pleasure.

Your kiss seduces my heart and body,

And leaves my mind at ease.

As long as your eyes long for mine, to speak to you in silence,

My dreams will be our passions,

And our passions will come true.”

~ Jessie Glassman

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“Ferocious angels send me falling stars ... but I know just how dangerous wishes are.

Ferocious angels watch me come and go ... but I’m not too smart to go barging off of rooftops though.

Sit out September on the windowsill.

Saint Christopher lives on the end of a quill.

He doesn’t dangle by the Seraphim ...

He only wants a pretty face by him ... so ...

How could you want him when you know you could have me?”

~ C. Barron

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“I love you. I love you ... that’s been the logic of my life ... and now I have the feeling it’s going to destroy me.”

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“Her breasts always struck him as miracles; when you touched them and suckled them, they seemed entirely too luscious to be more than momentary -- like sherbet or whipped cream, you expected them to melt in your mouth. That they remained, day after day, just waiting for you was part of the whole impossibility of the female sex for him. That was all the science he knew.”

~ Anne Rice

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“He was contented and empty, and full of nothing but a quiet inarticulate love.”

~ Anne Rice

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“When It is dark enough ... you can see the stars.”

~ Charles Brad

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“The only people for me are the mad ones.”

~ Jack Kerouac

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“And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘Whence comest thou?’ Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, ‘From going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.’”

~ Job 11:7

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“We are born astride a grave.”

~ Samuel Beckett

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“I’m looking for a girl with a beautiful body and a sick mind.”

~ Arthur Fellig

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“The quiet in her was talking to the quiet in him.”

~ Anne Rice

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“I renounce nothing of that which is the Mind. I want only to transport my mind elsewhere with it’s laws and it’s organs. I do not surrender myself to the sexual mechanism of the mind, but on the contrary within this mechanism I seek to isolate those discoveries which lucid reason does not provide. I surrender to the fever of dreams, but only in order to derive from them new laws. I seek multiplication, subtlety, the intellectual eye in delirium ... There is a knife which I do not forget.”

~ Antonin Artaud

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“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”

~ William Shakespeare

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“This way for the sorrowful city.

This way for eternal suffering.

This way to join the lost people ...”

~ Dante

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“If any revelation awaits us all, it must be as good as our ideals and our best philosophy. For surely nature must embrace the visible and the invisible ... and it could not fall short of us. The thing that makes the flowers open and the snowflakes fall must contain a wisdom and a final secret as intricate and beautiful as the blooming camellia or the clouds gathering above, so white and pure in the blackness. If that isn’t so, then we are in the grip of a staggering irony. And all the spooks of hell might as well dance in the parlor.”

~ Anne Rice

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“There may always be another reality to make fiction of the truth we think we’ve arrived at.”

~ Christopher Fry

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“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, the other powerless to be born.”

~ The Grande Chartreuse

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“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.”

~ Aeschylus

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“Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky ... like a patient etherized upon a table.”

~ T. S. Eliot

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“Demons from the past can torment you ... or ... set you free.”

~ Unknown

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“Her unblemished fruit, untouched by worm or frost, whose firm, polished skin cries out to be bitten.”

~ Baudelaire

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“And cold madness wandered aimlessly about the house.”

~ Milosz

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“ ... The law, cold and aloof by it’s very nature, has no access to the passions that might justify the cruel act of murder.”

~ Sade

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“Not every thirst should be slaked.”

~ Stephen King

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“It was as if the heart had been burned out of her and the sadness which remained was just another ghost, the memory of love haunting the bones of hate.”

~ Stephen King

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“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”

~ Unknown

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“With sad lament my dreams have faded like a broken melody, while the gods of love look down and laugh at what romantic fools we mortals be.”

~ Unknown

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“If God had given me two hearts, I could use one for hating and the other one for love. But since I was given only one heart, I have only room for love.”

~ Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach

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“If your father is an onion, and your mother is a garlic ... how can you smell good?”

~ Roman Proverb

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“Profanity is better than flattery.”

~ Mark Twain

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“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”

~ Woody Allen

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“There are demons inside me, but I manage to use them for my furtherance.”

~ Sting

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“Thunder jars his head as he weaves toward the bed where dreams coil beneath the pillow.”

~ Thomas Harris

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“If I could break down these walls and shout my name at Heaven’s gate, I’d take these hands and I’d destroy the dark machineries of fate. The vehicles are broken. Heaven is the one above. Hellfire’s a promise away; I’d still be saying, ‘I’m still in love, still in love ... still in love.”

~ Sting

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“Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three, and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.”

~ Anne Rice

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“ ... Some kind of religion is important for the psyche. Mental hospitals are filled because the gods we create in our heads are all inferior.”

~ Sting

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“This time The Cheshire Cat vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the toothy grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.”

~ Lewis Carroll

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"With sad lament my dreams have faded like a broken melody
While the gods of love look down and laugh at what romantic fools we mortals be."

 ~ Alberto Dominguez

(Thanks Schwammy!)

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“When we dance ... Angels will run and hide their wings.”

~ Sting

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“Ive taken to gazing at the cold moon far into the hours of the Autumn night ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to pouring two glasses when I drink my wine in the inky dark ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to dancing in the sand by the ancient sea, holding my breath and counting gulls ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to standing like stone in the road, watching the leaves fall to the fragrant earth ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to catching the cold October wind in my throat, and tasting it ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to writing faery tales and snatches of lullaby for our children’s bedtime ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to whispering promises and taking oaths in the freezing rain ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to thrashing at my demons and calling out to the angels that pass ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to dreaming of love-kisses in bed and you bare-breasted by the firelight ... waiting here for you to come. I’ve taken to talking to you, here amidst the ivy, before we’ve even met, with paper and ink, waiting ... ever patient ... waiting ... waiting here for you to come.”

~ Richard Soppet

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