The Black Quill

Now cracks a noble heart. Good-night, sweet prince; And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

And for all I can tell, the only difference is that what many see we call a real thing, and what only one sees we call a dream. But things that many see may have no taste or moment in them at all, and things that are shown only to one may be spears and water-spouts of truth from the very depth of truth.

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.

That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die.

Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.

The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

And her life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory of what came, but could not stay.

Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.

Darkness does not age; nothing is always nothing.