I am not an uncritical admirer of the Puritan, although I believe he is more nearly on the side of the angels than is his opposite. I deprecate the smug virtuosity which his kind often favor, I dislike a vinegar morality, and am repelled by the monstrous egoism of the idea that redeeming one's soul is such a serious matter that every moment spared ( Read more... )

Poets that lasting marble seek,
Must carve in Latin or in Greek,
We write in sand, our language grows,
And like our tide, our work o'erflows.

Edmund Waller, "Of English Verse" (ca. 1650).

                                . . .I am left with less
Than one drop of my blood that does not tremble.
Dante, Purgatorio (C14).

Who can tell what tenderness hides in the hardest hearts? Flowers and steel make a man of genius.

Bhavabhuti, The Later Story of Rama (C8).

Already the story's starting to unravel,
the villagers stirring as your heart
pounds into your throat. O why

did you pick that idiot flower?
Because it was the last one
and you knew

it was going to die.

Rita Dove, "Heroes," Mother Love (1995).

That time will now soon arrive, sooner than any one can devise who knows not the tumult of my thoughts, and the labor of my spirit; and when it hath come and passed over,-when my flesh and my bones are decayed, and my soul has passed to its everlasting home, then shall the sons of men ponder on the events of my life; wonder and tremble, and tremble ( Read more... )

Not even in the face of Armageddon.
Never compromise.

Alan Moore, Watchmen #12 (1987).

But for the offences to God i-doon
Many vengeaunces haue be-falle.
Where-of I wole you telle of oon,
It was to moch to telle of alle.

The Romaunce of the Sowdone of Babylone and of Ferumbras his Sone who Conquerede Rome (c. 1400).

Ward off the she-wolf and the wolf; ward off the thief. O night full of waves, be easy for us to cross over.

Rig Veda (C13-10 BC?).

O friendship too unfriendly! Unfathomable seducer of the mind, greed to do harm for fun and sport, desire for another's injury, arising not from desire for my own gain or of vengeance, but merely when someone says, "Let's go! Let's do it!" and it is shameful not to be shameless!

Augustine, Confessions (398).