What did my hands do before they held you?

~ Sylvia Plath

Walt Whitman

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;

I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;

I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;

I see the wife misused by her husband-I see the treacherous seducer of young women;

I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid-I see these sights on the earth;

I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny- I see martyrs and prisoners;

I observe a famine at sea-I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;

I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers,
the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;

All these-All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,

See, hear, and am silent!

Margaret Atwood

Progressive Insanities of a Pioneer

i
He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre
with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally un-enclosed
and shouted:
Let me out!

ii
He dug the soil in rows,
imposed himself with shovels
He asserted in to the furrows,
I am not random
The ground
replied with aphorisms:
a tree-sprout,
a nameless weed,
words he couldn't understand.

iii
The house pitched
the plot staked
in the middle of nowhere
At night the mind inside,
in the middle of nowhere
The idea of an animal
patters across the roof
In the darkness the fields
defend themselves with fences in vain:
everything is getting in

iv
By daylight he resisted.
He said, disgusted
with the swamp's clamourings
and the outbursts of rocks.
This is not order
but the absence of order.
He was wrong, the unanswering
forest implied:
It was an ordered absence

v
For many years he fished for a great vision,
dangling the hooks of sown roots
under the surface of the shallow earth.
It was like enticing whales with a bentpin.
Besides he thought in that country
only the worms were biting

vi
If he had known unstructured space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-boat
with all the animals,
even the wolves
he might have floated.
But obstinate he stated,
The land is solid and stamped
watching his foot sink down through stone
up to the knee.

vii
Things refused to name themselves;
refused to let him name them.
The wolves hunted outside.
On his beaches, his clearings,
by the surf of under-growth
breaking at his feet,
he foresaw disintegration
and in the end through eyes
made ragged by his effort,
the tension
between subject and object,
the green vision,
the unnamed whale
invaded!

Paul Celan

There Was Earth

There was Earth in them,

and they dug.
They dug and they dug,

and so their Day went by, and their Night.

And they did not praise God,
who, so they heard, wanted all this,
who, so they heard, knew of all this.

They dug and they heard nothing more;
did not grow wise, invented no Song,
thought up for themselves no Language.
They dug.

There came a Silence, there came a Storm,
There came every Ocean.
I dig, you dig, and it digs, the Worm,
and the Singing, there, says: They dig.

O someone, o none, o no one, o you:
Where did it lead to, that nowhere-leading?
O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you,
and on our finger awakens the Ring.

How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?

~John Lennon, 'How?'

Alice in Wonderland!

All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretense
Our wanderings to guide.
Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out —
And now our tale is done
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.
Alice! a childish story take,
And with a gentle hand
Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
Plucked in a far-off land.

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.'Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.''What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. 'Explain yourself!''I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, 'because I'm not myself, you see.''I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
'I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, 'for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'

'You are old Father William,' the young man said,'And your hair has become very white;And yet you incessantly stand on your head —Do you think at your age it is right?'

'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,''I don't know where. . .''Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat. 'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, 'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw, 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.''But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.''How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice'You must be' said the Cat 'or you wouldn't have come here'

'You should learn not to make personal remarks,' Alice said with some severity; 'it's very rude.'The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this; but all he said was, 'Why is a raven like a writing-desk?''Come, we shall have some fun now!' thought Alice. 'I'm glad they've begun asking riddles. — I believe I can guess that,' she added aloud.'Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?' said the March Hare.'Exactly so,' said Alice.'Then you should say what you mean,' the March Hare went on.'I do,' Alice hastily replied; 'at least — at least I mean what I say — that's the same thing, you know.''Not the same thing a bit!' said the Hatter. 'You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"!''You might just as well say,' added the March Hare, 'that "I like what I get" is the same thing as "I get what I like"!''You might just as well say,' added the Dormouse, who seemed to be talking in his sleep, 'that "I breathe when I sleep" is the same thing as "I sleep when I breathe"!''It is the same thing with you,' said the Hatter, and here the conversation dropped, and the party sat silent for a minute, while Alice thought over all she could remember about ravens and writing-desks, which wasn't much.

Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin."I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried."Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...." Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

'I could tell you my adventures — beginning from this morning,' said Alice a little timidly: 'but it's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.''Explain all that,' said the Mock Turtle.'No, no! The adventures first,' said the Gryphon in an impatient tone: 'explanations take such a dreadful time.'
'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?''Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'

He sent them word I had not gone

(We know it to be true):

If she should push the matter on,

What would become of you?

My notion was that you had been

(Before she had this fit)

An obstacle that came between

Him, and ourselves, and it.

Don't let him know she liked them best,

For this must ever be

A secret, kept from all the rest,

Between yourself and me.

Czeslaw Milosz

We were permitted to shriek in the tongue of dwarfs and demons

But pure and generous words were forbidden

Under so stiff a penalty that whoever dared to pronounce one

Considered himself as a lost man.

There was a time when only wise books were read

helping us to bear our pain and misery.

This, after all, is not quite the same

as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be

and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

Love means to learn to look at yourself

The way one looks at distant things

For you are only one thing among many.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,

Without knowing it, from various ills

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things

So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

It doesnt matter whether he knows what he serves:

Who serves best doesnt always understand.

Thomas Hardy

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor,

Footworn and hollowed and thin,

Here was the former door

Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,

Smiling into the fire;

He who played stood there,

Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;

Blessings emblazoned that day;

Everything glowed with a gleam;

Yet we were looking away!

The Mad man Versus the Ascetic

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

Crime and Punishment:
Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.
Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.
"You're a gentleman," they used to say to him. "You shouldn't have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that's no occupation for a gentleman."
Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery. Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it — that is what you must do.
If it were not for Christ's Church, indeed there would be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing, and no punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a mechanical one such as has just been mentioned, which only chafes the heart in most cases, but a real punishment, the only real, the only frightening and appeasing punishment, which lies in the acknowledgement of one's own conscience.

The Idiot:
A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.
I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyone afterwards who had deceived him, and that was why I grew to love him.
Humiliate the reason and distort the soul Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we cant start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand... and not understand... so much. I'm not afraid for you now;
Who consciously throws himself into the water or onto the knife?

The Brothers Karamazov:
Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?
I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.
The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave, but stupidity is honest and straightforward.
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
"Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them."
((Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea— he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… ))
Do get up from your knees and sit down, I beg you, these posturings are false, too.
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
The more i detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.
What terrible tragedies realism inflicts on people.
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
There are only two books written: Someone goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.
There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.
Trust no one in whom the desire to punish is strong

Notes from the underground:
I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. I think my liver is diseased. However,...
I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever. But that does not make me angry any more. They are all dear to me now even while they laugh at me — yes, even then they are for some reason particularly dear to me. I shouldn't have minded laughing with them — not at myself, of course, but because I love them — had I not felt so sad as I looked at them. I feel sad because they do not know the truth, whereas I know it. Oh, how hard it is to be the only many to know the truth! But they won't understand that. No, the will not understand.
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.
Two plus two equals five is not without its attractions.
Yes — you, you alone must pay for everything because you turned up like this, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the nastiest, most ridiculous, pettiest, stupidest, and most envious worm of all those living on earth who're no better than me in any way, but who, the devil knows why, never get embarrassed, while all my life I have to endure insults from every louse — that's my fate. What do I care that you do not understand any of this?
It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.
Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
...To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.
The dreams of a ridiculous man..Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end......but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature...And to found that edifice on its unavenged tears: would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell me the truth!
There is no virtue if there is no immortality.
Gentlemen, we're all cruel, we're all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all that I am the lowest reptile! I've sworn to amend, and every day I've done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! but the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame; I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen?"
If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
When . . . in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?
For what is man without desires, without free will, and without the power of choice but a stop in an organ pipe?
At home, to begin with, I mainly used to read. I wished to stifle with external sensations all that was ceaselessly boiling up inside me. And among external sensations the only one possible for me was reading. Reading was, of course, a great help- it stirred, delighted, and tormented me. But at times it bored me terribly. I still wanted to move about, and so I'd suddenly sink into some murky, subterranean, vile debauch- not a great, but a measly little debauch. There were measly little passions in me, sharp, burning, because of my permanent, morbid irritability. I was given to hysterical outbursts, with tears and convulsions. Apart from reading I had nowhere to turn- that is, there was nothing I could then respect in my surroundings, nothing I would be drawn to. What's more, anguish kept boiling up; a hysterical thrist for contradictions, contrasts, would appear, and so I'd set out on debauchery. It is not at all to justify myself that I've been doing all this talking... But no! that's a lie! I precisely wanted to justify myself. I make this little note for myself, gentlemen. I don't want to lie. I've given my word.
My debauchery I undertook solitarily, by night, covertly, fearfully, filthily, with a shame that would not abandon me... I was then already bearing the underground in my soul.
Every man has some reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone, but only to his friends. He has others which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. But finally there are still others which a man is even afraid to tell himself, and every decent man has a considerable number of such things stored away. That is, one can even say that the more decent he is, the greater the number of such things in his mind.
It's a burden for us even to be men- men with real, our own bodies and blood; we're ashamed of it, we consider it a disgrace, and keep trying to be some unprecendented omni-men. We're stillborn, and have long ceased to be born of living fathers, and we like this more and more. We're acquiring a taste for it. Soon we'll contrive to be born somehow from an idea. But enough; I don't want to write any more "from Underground"

The Adolescent:
Perhaps I'm being unfair to you," he said, still not sounding like himself." My feeling must be of the species they call passion. . . One thing I know for sure: without you it's the end of me, and with you it's also the end. It makes no difference where you are: far or near, you're always present. I also know that I could hate you a good deal more than I could love you. .. I'm sorry that I had to fall in love with someone like you.

The Possessed (Demons):

Life is pain, life is fear, and man is unhappy. Now all is pain and fear. Now man loves life because he loves pain and fear. That's how they've made it. Life now is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that is the whole deceit. Man now is not yet the right man. There will be a new man, happy and proud. He for whom it will make no difference whether he lives or does not live, he will be the new man. He who overcomes pain and fear will himself be God.
But do you understand, I cry to him, do you understand that along with happiness, in the exact same way and in perfectly equal proportion, man also needs unhappiness!"

The House of the Dead:
Indeed, in our country, and in all classes, there are, and always will be, strange easy-going people whose destiny it is to remain always beggars. They are poor devils all their lives; quite broken down, they remain under the domination or guardianship of some one, generally a prodigal, or a man who has suddenly made his fortune. All initiative is for them an insupportable burden. They only exist on condition of undertaking nothing for themselves, and by serving, always living under the will of another. They are destined to act by and through others. Under no circumstances, even of the most unexpected kind, can they get rich; they are always beggars. I have met these persons in all classes of society, in all coteries, in all associations, including the literary world.
Every one is astounded at the cause of this unexpected explosion on the part of a man thought incapable of such a thing. It is the convulsive manifestation of his personality, an instinctive melancholia, an uncontrollable desire for self-assertion, all of which obscures his reason. It is a sort of epileptic attack, a spasm. A man buried alive who suddenly wakes up must strike in a similar manner against the lid of his coffin. He tries to rise up, to push it from him, although his reason must convince him of the uselessness of his efforts. Reason, however, has nothing to do with this convulsion. It must not be forgotten that almost every voluntary manifestation on the part of the convict is looked upon as a crime. Accordingly, it is a perfect matter of indifference to them whether this manifestation be important or insignificant, debauch for debauch, danger for danger. It is just as well to go to the end, even as far as murder. The only difficulty is the first step.
The criminal who has revolted against society, hates it, and considers himself in the right; society was wrong, not he. Has he not, moreover, undergone his punishment? Accordingly he is absolved, acquitted in his own eyes.

Dream of a Ridiculous Man:
I am a ridiculous man. They call me a madman now. That would be a distinct rise in my social position were it not that they still regard me as being as ridiculous as ever.
Is there suffering on this new earth? On our earth we can truly love only with suffering and through suffering! We know not how to love otherwise. We know no other love. I want suffering in order to love.

LEO TOLSTOY

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
Martin's soul grew glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him. Where Love Is, God Is!
I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.
Six feet of land was all that he needed.

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.

God is the infinite ALL. Man is only a finite manifestation of Him.Or better yet:God is that infinite All of which man knows himself to be a finite part.God alone exists truly. Man manifests Him in time, space and matter. The more God's manifestation in man (life) unites with the manifestations (lives) of other beings, the more man exists. This union with the lives of other beings is accomplished through love.God is not love, but the more there is of love, the more man manifests God, and the more he truly exists...We acknowledge God only when we are conscious of His manifestation in us. All conclusions and guidelines based on this consciousness should fully satisfy both our desire to know God as such as well as our desire to live a life based on this recognition. (Entry in Tolstoy's Diary)

War and Peace:
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
In historical events great men — so-called — are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.
Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait. The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience.
At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal force in the heart of man: one very reasonably tells the man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of avoiding it; the other even more reasonable says that it is too painful and harassing to think of the danger, since it is not a man's power to provide for everything and escape from the general march of events; and that it is therefore better to turn aside from the painful subject till it has come, and to think of what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally yields to the first voice; in society to the second.
Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....
For us, with the rule of right and wrong given to us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
You will die - and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything - or cease asking.
To love life is to love God. Harder and more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings, in undeserved sufferings.

Anna Karenina:
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
Vronsky, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general, of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love--and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires--longing. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object.
There is one evident, indubitable manifestation of the Divinity, and that is the laws of right which are made known to the world through Revelation

What Men Live By:
Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven. I thought: "I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God. Then I remembered the first lesson God had set me: "Learn what dwells in man." And I understood that in man dwells Love! I was glad that God had already begun to show me what He had promised, and I smiled for the first time. The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man."'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs. When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.
And the angel's body was bared, and he was clothed in light so that eye could not look on him; and his voice grew louder, as though it came not from him but from heaven above. And the angel said:I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love.It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed. Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when evening comes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse.
I remained alive when I was a man, not by care of myself, but because love was present in a passer-by, and because he and his wife pitied and loved me. The orphans remained alive, not because of their mother's care, but because there was love in the heart of a woman a stranger to them, who pitied and loved them. And all men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understood more than that.
I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, and therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

Confession:
Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.
Several times I asked myself, "Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?" And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.
A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.
And all people live, not by reason of any care they have for themselves, but by the love for them that is in other people.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself
If I were told that what I shall write will be read in twenty years by the children of today and that they will weep and smile over it and will fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strengths to it.
If so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.
If we would only testify to the truth as we see it, it would turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, even millions of other people just as we are, who see the truth as we do... and are only waiting, again as we are, for someone to proclaim it. The Kingdom of God is within you.
In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable — he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated.
Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
Life consists in penetrating the unknown, and fashioning our actions in accord with the new knowledge thus acquired.
Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.

Only those live who do good
The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.
The only thing that we know is that we know nothing — and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
The simplest and shortest ethical precept is to be served by others as little as possible, and to serve others as much as possible.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.
There is only one time that is important — NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time that we have any power.
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.
Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

William Butler Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false and true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face....

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ignorant before the heavens of my life,
I stand and gaze in wonder.
Oh the vastness of the stars.
Their rising and descent.
How still.
As if I didn't exist.
Do I have any share in this?
Have I somehow dispensed with their pure effect?
Does my blood's ebb and flow change with their changes?
Let me put aside every desire, every relationship except this one,
so that my heart grows used to its farthest spaces.
Better that it live fully aware, in the terror of its stars,
than as if protected, soothed by what is near.