“Some say an army of horsemen, or infantry, A fleet of ships is the fairest thing On the face of the black earth, but I say It’s what one loves.”

Raise high the roof-beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.

Death must be an evil and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever?

Love – bittersweet, irrepressible – loosens my limbs and I tremble.

Death is an evil; the gods have so judged; had it been good, they would die.

With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down

He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.

How love the limb-loosener sweeps me away.

Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear.

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.

Hesperus bringing together All that the morning star scattered.

The moon is setand the Pleiades; Middle ofthe night, time passes by,I lie alone.

Builders, raise the ceiling high, Raise the dome into the sky, Hear the wedding song! For the happy groom is near, Tall as Mars, and statelier, Hear the wedding song!

Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak Love shakes my heart.

The evening star Is the most beautiful of all stars.

From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious.

I took my lyre and said: come now, my heavenly tortoise shell: become a speaking instrument.

The infant breaks his toy, bites his nurse’s breast, strangles his canary long before he is able to reason; cruelty is stamped in animals, in whom, as I think I have said, Nature’s laws are more emphatically to be read than in ourselves; cruelty exists amongst savages.

I can’t read in a car, because I’ll get sick. It’s almost instant.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

A wanderer is man from his birth. He was born in a ship On the breast of the river of Time.

Nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant.

The person who is certain, and who claims divine warrant for his certainty, belongs now to the infancy of our species.

Stop giving your infant heart/ wrapped in blind vows/ white lies/ and a haunted past/ stop asking for love/ if you don’t know how to give any/ stop hurting others/ stop it/ stop it/ just fucking stop it.