"I swore an oath to Durin. To some, that may now hold little weight. But in my esteem, it is by such things our very souls are bound. I do not intend to let mine slip away on the basis of mere hope." - Elrond to Gil-galad

The artist's Death: His last Friend - By Zygmunt Andrychiewicz, 1901

“Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.” - Pádraig Pearse (A country without a language is a country without a soul.)

Hercules fighting the Nemean lion, Peter Paul Rubens

“Beatrice”, Marie Spartali Stillman, 1895.  

“Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think.”

(“Old Man in Sorrow”, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890)

Melancholy, Domenico Fetti

Listening to Schumann by Fernand Khnopff (1883)

“We suffer more often in imagination than reality.” - Seneca

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

View of Dresden by Moonlight,  Johan Christian Dahl,  1839.

“Tristan and Isolde”, Edmund Leighton, 1902

(Joseph Haydn playing quartets, Anonymous, 1790.)

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” - Plutarch

“Cogito ergo sum. (I think, therefore I am.)” - René Descartes

Farewell by Edmund Blair Leighton