Our efforts are those of the unfortunate; our efforts are like those of the Trojans. Somewhat we succeed; somewhat we regain confidence; and we start to have courage and high hopes. But something always happens and stops us. Achilles in the trench before us emerges......
Speak to us of Love. And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said: When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when......
Brushed by the shadows of the dead On the grass where day expires Columbine strips bare admires her body in the pond instead A charlatan of twilight formed Boasts of the tricks to be performed The sky without a stain unmarred Is studded......
Love, a noun – alias substantive, indeed substantive, in the singular form, neither feminine nor masculine, etymologically defenceless. In the plural form defenceless loves. Fear, a common noun, at first in the singular form and then in the plural: fears. Fears of everything from now......
Learn the simplest things! For you whose time has come it is never too late! Learn your ABC, it is not enough, but learn it! Do not let it discourage you, begin! You must know everything! You must take over......
If you are truly one of the select few, watch how you acquire your power. However much you are glorified, however much the cities in Italy and in Thessaly acclaim your achievements, however many decrees in your honor your admirers may have issued in Rome,......
Here, half-way along the road The time has come for me to say Other things are the ones I love I set out for something completely different. Amid the true and the false I hereby confess I was like someone else and not me Acting......
On the March to Sinopi Mithridatis, glorious and powerful, ruler of great cities, master of strong armies and fleets, on the march to Sinopi took a route through a remote part of the country where a soothsayer lived. Mithridatis sent one of his officers to......
All things unto me are queries That from normalness depart, And their ceaseless asking wearies My heart. Things are and seem, and nothing bears The secret of the life it wears. All things’ presence e’er is asking Questions of disturbing pain With dreadful hesitation tasking......
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average human being to supply any given army on any given day and the best at murder are those who preach against it and the best at hate are those who preach love and the......
“You may have flaws, live anxious, and sometimes get angry, but never forget that your life is the biggest company in the world. And you can keep it from going bankrupt. There are many people who need, admire and cheer for you. I wish that......
Ideal and beloved voices of those who are dead, or of those who are lost to us like the dead. Sometimes they speak to us in our dreams; sometimes in thought the mind hears them. And with their sound for a moment return other sounds......
AEQUAM MEMENTO To keep the soul serene even when we come upon The arduous, and yet remain moderately unmoved When gifts roll in, well, that’s my advice for you, Friend Dellius, for you are mortal too. Evenness is good, Whether disasters make Everything crooked, or......
I counted my years and realized that I have less time to live by, than I have lived so far. I feel like a child who won a pack of candies: at first, he ate them with pleasure but when he realized that there was......
He didn’t know, King Kleomenis, he didn’t dare— he just didn’t know how to tell his mother a thing like that: Ptolemy’s demand, to guarantee their treaty, that she too go to Egypt and be held there as a hostage— a very humiliating, indecorous thing.......
Where are those tears in your eyes, my child? How horrid of them to be always scolding you for nothing! You have stained your fingers and face with ink while writing- is that why they call you dirty? O, fie! Would they dare to call......
And since he thought it beautiful for each to be in another’s embrace the large watering troughs filled with love the cattle lowered their heads gently, oxen and cows as though the world held no temptations as though knives were yet unknown “To endure peace......
A poor lad once and a lad so trim Gave his love to her that loved not him. And says she, “fetch me tonight you rogue” Your mother’s heart to feed my dog! To his mother’s house went that young man Killed her, and took......
And you judges who would be just, What judgement pronounce you upon him who though honest in the flesh yet is the thief in spirit? What penalty lay you upon him who slays in the flesh yet is himself slain in the spirit? And how......
Out of talk, appearance, and manners I will make an excellent suit of armor; and in this way I will face malicious people without feeling the slightest fear or weakness. They will try to injure me. But of those who come near me none will......
Though you with line and color excel, securing for art such laurels as great nature wore, even better, you’ve gained on her, by making more beautiful her own beauty for our sake; and now, with that studious pen in hand, you take a nobler role,......
And if ever the moment comes when they take us apart, my love, don’t lose courage The great human virtue is to hold on to our heart But even greater than this, when needed, is to set our heart aside Children of the future......
NON EBUR Ceilings of gold or ivory do not glisten in my house. No beams of Mount Hymettus rest on columns quarried in farthest Africa. Nor have I, an unknown heir, inherited the Palace of Attalus nor do honorable clients spin for me the Spartan......
Don’t stay motionless by the side of the road, don’t suspend joy or love halfheartedly don’t save yourself now or ever. don’t save yourself. don’t fill yourself with calm. don’t reserve a still corner in this world don’t let your eyelids droop heavy like judgements......
This now happens, and then that; and later, in a year or two (I think), the same deeds, the same ways. We will not worry about the aftermath. It’s for the best we will strive. And as we strive, we make it worse, we will......
I can become happy with the simplest things the most insignificant.. even the every day ones of every day. It is sufficient for me that weeks have Sundaysand I am satisfied that years keep their Christmas for the very end that winters have stone houses......
RECTIUS VIVES You will live better, Licinius, by neither always pressing the deep nor, while you carefully dread storms, by excessively pressing the treacherous shore. Whoever values a golden mean is safely free from the squalor of a worn-out house, is soberly free......
III. So I talk about you and me Because I love you and in the love I know To enter like a Full Moon From everywhere,like your little foot in the immense sheets To pluck jasmines and I have the power Asleep,to blow to lead......
OUT from behind this bending, rough-cut Mask, (All straighter, liker Masks rejected—this preferr’d,) This common curtain of the face, contain’d in me for me, in you for you, in each for each, (Tragedies, sorrows, laughter, tears—O heaven! The passionate, teeming plays this curtain hid!) This......
The new day comes down from the far mountains, The morning wakening is out of twilight, Adorned and cheerful, and it smiles at humans, It pierces humans, gently, with delight. A new life for the future is unveiling, With blossom, sign of happy days, The......
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair,......
Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old— This knight so bold— And o’er his heart a shadow— Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like......
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. ......
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high a nd falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark MICHELANGELO (1475 – 1564)...
If you’ve regrets, and moderate emotions touch your heart, then halt your feet, while you can, at the first threshold. Crush the evil germs of sudden illness while they’re young, and prevent your horse’s gallop at the start. For time gives strength, time ripens tender......
For we have no steersmen here among Phaeacia’s crews or steering-oars that guide your common craft. Our ships know in a flash their mates’ intentions, know all ports of call and all the rich green fields. With wings of the wind they cross the sea’s......
Too bad that, cut out as you are for grand and noble acts, this unfair fate of yours never offers encouragement, always denies you success; that cheap habits get in your way, pettiness, or indifference. And how terrible the day you give in (the day......
Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent. I don’t want to look......
My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav’d of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree And sitting......
There is not the slightest doubt that things in the Colony don’t go as one would wish, and though we move forward, anyway, perhaps, as not a few think, the time has come for us to bring in a Political Reformer. Yet the obstacle and......
Phernazis the poet is at work on the crucial part of his epic: how Dareios, son of Hystaspis, took over the Persian kingdom. (It’s from him, Dareios, that our glorious king, Mithridatis, Dionysos and Evpator, descends.) But this calls for serious thought; Phernazis has to......
He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routes every day, who never changes pace, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly. He or she who shuns passion,......
XLII A stagecoach passed by on the road and went on; And the road didn’t become more beautiful or even more ugly. That’s human action on the outside world. We take nothing away and we put nothing back, we pass by and we forget; And......
Without reflection, without mercy, without shame, they built strong walls and high, and compassed me about. And now I sit here and consider and despair. My brain is worn with meditating on my fate: I had outside so many things to......
My happiness is me, not you. Not only because you may be temporary, But also because you want me to be what I am not. I cannot be happy when I change Merley to satisfy your selfishness. Nor can I feel content when you critize......
At the noisy end of the café, head bent over the table, an old man sits alone, a newspaper in front of him. And in the miserable banality of old age he thinks how little he enjoyed the years when he had strength, eloquence, and......
(Imitation – “A Dream within a Dream, 1827) TAKE this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now, Thus much let me avow — You are not wrong, who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away......
Strange, to wander in the fog. Each bush and stone stands alone, No tree sees the next one, Each is alone. My world was full of friends When my life was filled with light, Now as the fog descends None is still to be seen.......
The ageing of my body and my beauty is a wound from a merciless knife. I’m not resigned to it at all. I turn to you, Art of Poetry, because you have a kind of knowledge about drugs: certain sedatives, in Language and Imagination. It’s......
After a while you learn the subtle difference Between holding a hand and chaining a soul, And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning And company doesn’t mean security. And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts And presents aren’t promises, And you begin......
The young poet Evmenis complained one day to Theocritus: “I’ve been writing for two years now and I’ve composed only one idyll. It’s my single completed work. I see, sadly, that the ladder of Poetry is tall, extremely tall; and from this first step I’m......
ALL that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts. In a justly ordered universe, where loss of equipoise would mean total destruction, individual responsibility must be absolute. A man’s weakness and strength, purity and......
Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears … It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus’ dog he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy. In......
I said it to you for the clouds I said it to you for the tree of the sea For each wave for the birds in the leaves For the pebbles of sound For familiar hands For the eye that becomes landscape or face And......
I failed in everything. Since I had no aims, maybe everything was indeed nothing. What I was taught, I climbed out of that, down from the window at the back of the house. I went to the countryside with grand plans, But all I found there......
I am like the king of a rainy land, Wealthy but powerless, both young and very old, Who contemns the fawning manners of his tutors And is bored with his dogs and other animals. Nothing can cheer him, neither the chase nor falcons, Nor his......
Half past twelve. The time has quickly passed since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading, without speaking. With whom should I speak, so utterly alone within this house? The apparition of my youthful......
When suddenly, at midnight, you hear an invisible procession going by with exquisite music, voices, don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now, work gone wrong, your plans all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly. As one long prepared, and graced with courage, say goodbye to her,......
According to one version of this myth, Aphrodite didn’t give real Helen to Paris, but one phantom image of her. Hermes ordered by Hera led Helen to Egypt, at the palace of the king Protea, where Menelaos met her as he was returning from Troy.......
A spring evening. A large room in an old house. A woman of a certain age, dressed in black, is speaking to a young man. They have not turned on the lights. Through both windows the moonlight shines relentlessly. I forgot to mention that the......
So we stood there, trading heartsick stories, deep in grief, as the tears streamed down our faces. But now there came the ghosts of Peleus’ son Achilles, Patroclus, fearless Antilochus—and Great Ajax too, the first in stature, first in build and bearing of all the......
For some people it comes a day when either the great Yes or the great No needs to be said. It’s clear at once who has ready within him the Yes, and by saying it, he follows the path of honor and conviction. The......
Honor is due to those who are keeping watch, Sentinels guarding their own Thermopylae; Never distracted from what is right to do, And right to be; in all things virtuous, But never so hardened by virtue as not to be Compassionate, available to pity;......
RECTIUS VIVES You will live better, Licinius, by neither always pressing the deep nor, while you carefully dread storms, by excessively pressing the treacherous shore. Whoever values a golden mean is safely free from the squalor of a worn-out house, is soberly free from an......
And if you can’t shape your life the way you want, at least try as much as you can not to degrade it by too much contact with the world, by too much activity and talk. Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,......
Bend and you will be whole. Curl and you will be straight. Keep empty and you will be filled. Grow old and you will be renewed. Have little and you will gain. Have much and you will be confused. Therefore, the Sage embraces the One,......
May 1907 As long as you chase happiness, you are not ready to be happy, even if you owned everything. As long as you lament a loss, run after prizes in restless races, you have not yet known peace. But when you have moved beyond......
When they saw that Patroclus was slain, who had been so stalwart, and strong, and young, the horses of Achilles started to weep; their immortal nature was indignant at the sight of this work of death. They would shake their heads and toss their manes,......
O you who are cruel still, and a master of Venus’s gifts, when a white, unexpected plumage surmounts all your arrogance, and the tresses that wave on your shoulders have all been shorn away, and the colour that now outshines the flower of the crimson......
Don’t break a bird’s wings and then tell it to fly. Don’t break a heart and then tell it to love. Don’t break a soul and then tell it to be happy. Don’t see the worst in a person and expect them to see the......
The houses I had they took away from me. The times happened to be unpropitious: war, destruction, exile; sometimes the hunter hits the migratory birds, sometimes he doesn’t hit them. Hunting was good in my time, many felt the pellet; the rest circle aimlessly or......
Meditations pure were ours Side by side, along the ways; We held each other’s hand without Speaking, among the hidden flowers. Alone we walked as if betrothed, Lost in the green night of the fields; We shared this fruit of fairy reels, The moon,......
April 1918 Books All the books of this world Will bring you no happiness Yet they secretly show you the way, Back to yourself. There is everything, that you need, Sun, star and moon, Because the light, after which you ask, Lives within yourself. Wisdom,......
My mind to me a kingdom is; Such perfect joy therein I find That it excels all other bliss Which God or nature hath assign’d. Though much I want that most would have, Yet still my mind forbids to crave. No princely port, nor wealthy......
1901 Request When you give me your little hand, Your hand that says so many unsaid things, Have I ever asked you then, If you love me? For I do not want you to love me, I only want to know that you are near......
God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like a......
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum? The barbarians are due here today. Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating? Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now?......
Once through the forest Alone I went; To seek for nothing My thoughts were bent. I saw i’ the shadow A flower stand there As stars it glisten’d, As eyes ’twas fair. I sought to pluck it,– It gently said: “Shall I be......
Learn the simplest things! For you whose time has come it is never too late! Learn your ABC, it is not enough, but learn it! Do not let it discourage you, begin! You must know everything! You must take over the leadership! Learn, man in......
Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence? I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds. Open your doors and look abroad. From your blossoming garden gather fragrant......
Nero wasn’t worried at all when he heard the utterance of the Delphic Oracle: “Beware the age of seventy-three.” Plenty of time to enjoy himself still. He’s thirty. The deadline the god has given him is quite enough to cope with future dangers. Now, a......
To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To......
Whatever you do , wherever you act, whichever race you come from, being mine or a stranger, of the evil! In front of you, you will always have me, you run behind me, do not make your running faster and be out of breath. Remember......
Come back often and take hold of me, sensation that I love come back and take hold of me— when the body’s memory awakens and an old longing again moves into the blood, when lips and skin remember and hands feel as though they touch......
Detested by both men and gods, like nobles who have bitterly decayed, the Verlaines wither; wealth remains to them, of rich and silvery . With ‘Les Chatiments’ the Hugos are intoxicated by their terrible Olympian revenge. But I shall write a sorrowful ballade to the......
“Negative attachments, Richard. If you really want to remove a cloud from your life, you do not make a big production out of it, you just relax and remove it from your thinking. That’s all there is to it.” A cloud does not know why......
I used to worship the gods grudgingly, and not often, a wanderer expert in a crazy wisdom, but now I am forced to sail back and once again go over the course I had left behind. For Jupiter who usually parts the clouds with the......
The City You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead. How long can......
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore......
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.......
Born like this Into this As the chalk faces smile As Mrs. Death laughs As the elevators break As political landscapes dissolve As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree As the oily fish spit out their oily prey As the sun is masked......
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by......
What blessing shall the bard entreat The god he hallows, as he pours The winecup? Not the mounds of wheat That load Sardinian threshing floors; Not Indian gold or ivory—no, Nor flocks that o’er Calabria stray, Nor fields that Liris, still and slow, Is eating,......
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats’ feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without......
I used to worship the gods grudgingly, and not often, a wanderer expert in a crazy wisdom, but now I am forced to sail back and once again go over the course I had left behind. For Jupiter who usually parts the clouds with the......
This Morning I Pray for My Enemies And whom do I call my enemy? An enemy must be worthy of engagement. I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking. It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind. The......
Happy the man, whose wish and care A few paternal acres bound, Content to breathe his native air, In his own ground. Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, Whose flocks supply him with attire, Whose trees in summer yield him shade, In winter......
I know the names no longer of a world that disavows me. I read seashells, leaves, and the stars clearly. I have no need of hatred on the roads of the sky Unless the dream is that which watches me again As I walk by......
I’ve Brought to Art I sit in a mood of reverie. I brought to Art desires and sensations: things half-glimpsed, faces or lines, certain indistinct memories of unfulfilled love affairs. Let me submit to Art: Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty, almost imperceptibly......
Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die, Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams. For if dreams go, Life is a barren field Covered with snow. Langston Hughes Image : homme-models.tumblr.com...
I only sing because you loved me in the past years. And in sun, in summer’s prediction and in rain and snow, I only sing because you loved me. Only because you held me in your arms one night and you kissed my lips, only......
As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them: you’ll never find things like that on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,......
For ease, in wide Aegean caught, The sailor prays, when clouds are hiding The moon, nor shines of starlight aught For seaman’s guiding: For ease the Mede, with quiver gay: For ease rude Thrace, in battle cruel: Can purple buy it, Grosphus? Nay, Nor gold,......
Ask not (’tis forbidden knowledge), what our destined term of years, Mine and yours; nor scan the tables of your Babylonish seers. Better far to bear the future, my Leuconoe, like the past, Whether Jove has many winters yet to give, or this our last;......
You have to be always drunk. That’s all there is to it—it’s the only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually drunk. But on what?......
This poem is believed to have been written either by an American poet, Nadine Stair or Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), an Argentine poet. If I could live my life again. Next time, I would try to make more mistakes. I would not try to......
Now, with the melted led of St John’s festivity with the brilliance of summer pelagos, all the nakedness of life, and the going beyond and the staying put the leaning down and the upsurge the lips, the caressed skin they all long to be burned.......
I cannot give you solutions to all life’s problems, Nor do I have answers to your doubts or fears But I can listen to you and share it with you I cannot change neither your past nor your future. But when you need me I’ll......
Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while. The morning sea and cloudless sky a brilliant blue, the yellow shore; all beautiful and grand in the light. Here let me stop. Let me fool myself: that these are what I......
The day was cloudy. No one could come to a decision; a light wind was blowing. ‘Not a north-easter, the sirocco,’ someone said. A few slender cypresses nailed to the slope, and, beyond, the sea grey with shining pools. The soldiers presented arms as it......
“So although we approve of many things in Homer, this we will not approve of… nor will we approve of Aeschylus when he makes Thetis say that Apollo sang at her wedding in celebration of her child: that he would not know sickness, would live......
The fog fell with the evening — the lightship lost — and you arrived unexpected in the pilot-house to see me. You are wearing all white and you’re wet, I’m plaiting your hair into ropes. Down in the waters of Port Pegassu It always rains......
The years you ask are not many If you want me to tell my opinion it takes a long time to see, live and learn. But as life is short and gives us a few years we said near 18 that starts Adulthood and the......
In a small village in Morocco a man was looking at the only well in the whole region. A kid approached him: What is there?, he wanted to know. God… Is God hidden inside this well? Yes. Let me see, said the kid hesitantly The......
I want you to hear me without judging me I want your opinion without advice I want you to trust me without requirements I want your help, and not to make decisions concerning me I want you to take care of me without disdaining me......
In one of Aesop’s fables -and those are some of the greatest fables in the world, so simple and so significant -a small...
Our approach to life becomes increasingly mechanical. The aim of social efforts is to produce things, and. in the process of idolatry of...
Before we begin, we may well ask whether we should bother fighting in the first place. Self-deception has been favored by natural selection,...
Nothing, therefore, needs to be more emphasized than the warning that we should not, like sheep, follow the lead of the throng in...
At the root of our challenging relationship with our own brains is the fact that it’s a device that was assembled, tested, and (mostly)...
Lysander's trick that crowned the Spartans victorious in the Peloponnesian War413 BC The war was raging and it was difficult to end. The...
All humans are artists, all of us. Every symbol, every word, is a little piece of art. From my point of view, and...
It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Evening came on, the last evening of the year. In...
Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man: that is -- fast asleep even while awake. You sleep when you sleep, but you also sleep...
Rawls presents this argument by comparing several rival theories of justice, beginning with feudal aristocracy. These days, no one defends the justice of...
