Relationships and Family

Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were. W. H.

Love is know the pain of too much tenderness.

Do you know what friendship is... it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.

O generations of men, how I count you as equal with those who live not at all!

Surely your gladness need not be the less for the thought that you will one day see a brighter dawn than this - when lovelier sights will meet your eyes than any waving trees or rippling waters - when angel-hands shall undrawn your curtains, and sweeter tones than ever loving Mother breathed shall wake you to a new and glorious day - and when all the sadness, and the sin, that darkened life on this little earth, shall be forgotten like the dreams of a night that is past!

I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And if I die no soul will pity me: And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself?

Nay, tempt me not to love again: There was a time when love was sweet; Dear Nea! had I known thee then, our souls had not been slow to meet! But oh! this weary heart hath run So many a time the rounds of pain, Not even for thee, thou lovely one! Would I endure such pangs again?

Lady you bereft me of all words, Only my blood speaks to you in my veins, and there is such confusion in my powers.

O tyrant love, to what do you not drive the hearts of men.

The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in life.

But love is blind and lovers cannot see The pretty follies that themselves commit for if they could, Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformed to a boy.

The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

Your travel life has the aspect of a dream. It is something outside the normal, yet you are in it. It is peopled with characters you have never seen before and in all probability will never see again. It brings occasional homesickness, and loneliness, and pangs of longing... But you are like the Vikings who have gone into a world of adventure, and home is not home until you return.

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer. W.

I thought I told you to wait in the car.

The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities, but to know that there is someone who, though distant, thinks and feels with us -- this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.

I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

What did my hands do before they held you?

I dote on his very absence.

It is a familiar beast to man, and signifies love.