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“On coming suddenly to the brow of the precipice, it was a grand spectacle to see between twenty and thirty of these great birds start heavily from their resting-place, and wheel away in majestic circles.”
The wind cut sharp against my face as I crept along the basalt edge near Santa Cruz, the air thick with the scent of dung long piled upon the rocks. Suddenly, the silence broke; dozens…
“So heart-hungry at times may one be to see a friend in the flesh, however happily full and care-free one’s life may be.”
“What makes me liable to great calamity is my having the body (which I call myself).”
“Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.”
“She had, according to her opportunities, thought and pondered, striven and suffered, dived into the depths of existence, and achieved something which surely cannot be without its value to people whose evolution in history took a different way altogether.”
I watched a child pick up a fallen leaf and trace the veins where the sun had touched it before the wind moved it. In that quiet moment, he did not…
“The mind, sharp but not broad, sticks at every point but does not move.”
I sat in my study for hours yesterday, arguing with myself until my throat was dry, yet I could not turn to look at the garden where the wind had already rearranged the leaves. My thoughts were like a needle piercing the same thread over and over, sharp and sure but nowhere near the field I sought.
“Life, it is thanks to Death that I hold thee so dear.”
“It will not do to let this mob revolt or even so much as peep forth from its hiding-place; it is hideous of mien, and its rebel leaders are those flights of imagination which I have been describing.”
I know a gentleman who lets his fancy turn every minor snub into a grand tragedy, only to find himself weeping over a hat that was not even taken off him properly.…
“I recognised that this science, while sufficing its own requirements, could not assist me in arriving at the desired goal.”
I spent days in my study, surrounded by stacks of books on logic and dialectic, trying to build a fortress against doubt. My students praised my arguments for defending orthodoxy against heretics, yet I felt empty inside. I saw clearly that these proofs only worked because we already agreed on the truths they defended. They could expose contradictions in an opponent’s speech, but they could not make my own heart…
I followed an invite here from the Substance team which, as a horror writer, I should probably know better than to do.
Time will tell if that was a foolish decision or not…
“Like a giant oak tree covered with apple blossoms is the vast man in you.”
I stood beneath the old cedars where the wind moved like a slow breath, watching the heavy boughs hold their fruit against the sky while the roots drank deep from the dark earth, knowing that strength and beauty must grow together to shelter those who walk below.
“What use will memory be to me, if it can alike hurt and help me, and all depends upon the blessing of God?”
You seek to carry your past into this day as a trophy, but I warn you that what serves you today may poison you tomorrow. Do not trust in the weight of your own deeds; ask only for His rule to govern them now. Turn from your ledger and look to Him before the sun sets.
“To the artist, expression is the only mode under which he can conceive life at all.”
I once believed that silence was death until I saw men crushed by laws they could not speak. Christ taught me to listen to the voiceless ones who bear the weight of the world. Before nightfall, do you dare to give a name to your own pain so it may no longer be dumb?
“I soon get acquainted anywhere in camp, with officers or men, and am always well used.”
I walked through the freezing tents where the ground was hard as stone and snow fell lightly, yet I found no barrier between myself and the suffering there. When a young soldier clung to my coat with desperate fingers, asking only that I sit by him for hours while he whispered of home or pain, I understood that care has no rank. The officer who shared his thin salt pork…
“Though a man have abilities as admirable as those of the Duke of Chau, yet if he be proud and niggardly, those other things are really not worth being looked at.”
I once saw a young master in Lu who could recite all the ancient histories by heart and play the lute with perfect skill. Yet when his father fell ill, he refused to fetch water himself, claiming it was…
“How long slow of heart? why do ye love vanity, and seek after leasing?”
“Why what hope of freedom is left to us? Would there were any!”
“What noble philosophy!
You might just as well take the sun out of the sky as friendship from life; for the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.”
I recall a young man in Athens who told me he would never bind himself to another soul, lest he lose his liberty. He spoke with the gravity of a statesman, yet he was terrified of a single meal shared without suspicion.…
“Zat competition cantata?
I vill not ave zat! She is bad—bad; she is impossible to play.”
Cherubini heard the title of my new work and instantly rejected it, declaring it bad and unplayable. He knew only that it was written for a contest, not realizing that such rules demand fresh voices rather than safe repetitions. I stood before him in the Conservatoire corridor, holding nothing but my score and a desperate hope to…
“And so the King’s work is like to be well done.”