hello! i really really loved your compilation of quotes about tenderness, thank you so much for sharing! much love to the anon that sent the ask as well! i hope it's okay to ask, would you happen to have favorites about the moon too? if so, could you please share them?? thank you so very much, i hope you have a lovely day ♡
“I am always thinking of the moon rising
I am always thinking of you”
— Frank O’Hara, “Biotherm (for Bill Berkson)”
“I defend a moon that is still suitable for a love poem.”
“I saw the moon shining here,
its grief plain, like an orange in the night.
It guides us in the wilderness to stray paths...
Without it, mothers could not meet their children.
Without it, wanderers could not read
their names in the night.”
— Mahmoud Darwish, “Counterpoint (For Edward W. Said)” / “Like a Hand Tattoo in an Ode by an Ancient Arab Poet” tr. Mohammad Shaheen
“My friend the moon rises:
she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?”
“The moon is hanging over the earth, meaningless but full of messages. It’s dead, it’s always been dead, but it pretends to be something else, burning like a star, and convincingly, so that you feel sometimes it could actually make something grow on earth.”
— Louise Glück, “October” / “A Village Life”
“What is the phrase for the moon? And the phrase for love?”
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
“I am living on the moon, I told myself, I have a little house all by myself on the moon.”
— Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
“Can you imagine? What would it be like if we had more than one moon? I think I like it as it is, not too crowded and not too lonely.”
— Maggie Nelson, “Birthday Poem”
“It the moon smiled, she would resemble you
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful but annihilating.”
— Sylvia Plath, “The Rival”
“There is so much loneliness in that gold.
The moon of every night is not the moon
That the first Adam saw.
The centuries
Of human wakefulness have left it brimming
With ancient tears. Look at it. It is your mirror.”
— Jorge Luis Borges, “The Moon,” tr. Robert Mezey
“The moon is way up in the sky. Aren’t you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight, paler than a corpse’s face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries . . . Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandson’s grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You’ve shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don’t you suffer? I myself can’t stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in humus, eyeless for all eternity, I, I! for all eternity . . . and the indifferent, triumphant moon, it’s pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I dead.”
— Clarice Lispector, “Another Couple of Drunks”
I’ve also recently loved these quotes despite them being by Haruki Murakami:
“The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring — and all of the acts carried out — on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon.”
“That familiar, yellow, solitary moon. The same moon that silently floated over fields of pampas grass, the moon that rose—a gleaming, round saucer—over the calm surface of lakes, that tranquilly beamed down on the rooftops of fast-asleep houses. The same moon that brought the high tide to shore, that softly shone on the fur of animals and enveloped and protected travelers at night. The moon that, as a crescent, shaved slivers from the soul—or, as a new moon, silently bathed the earth in its own loneliness.”
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