Life In A Love

Escape me?
Never---
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And, baffled, get up and begin again,---
So the chace takes up one's life ' that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope goes to ground
Than a new one, straight to the self-same mark,
I shape me---
Ever
Removed!

Robert Browning

Quotations

That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

Ernest Hemingway

Friendship

What's friendship? The hangover's faction,
The gratis talk of outrage,
Exchange by vanity, inaction,
Or bitter shame of patronage.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin

This Week's Birthdays

Charlotte Bronte -- April 21, 1816
English writer and one of the Bronte sisters, best known for her novel Jane Eyre.
In Bronte's words, "Let your performance do the thinking."

Henry Fielding -- April 22, 1707
British playwright and writer, famous for his novel Tom Jones.
In Fielding's words, "I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species."

Vladimir Nabokov -- April 23, 1899
Russian-born critic and novelist, best known for the controversial Lolita.
In Nabokov's words, "A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist."

Love, What Is Love

LOVE - what is love?
A great and aching heart;
Wrung hands;
and silence;
and a long despair.
Life - what is life?
Upon a moorland bare
To see love coming and see love depart.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Quotations: Ernest Hemingway

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Books: Sherlock Holmes

I had text version of this book. It was so messy! So I changed it into a neat e-book (PDF format) after lots of efforts! Enjoy!
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This Week's Birthdays

Elizabeth Bishop -- February 8, 1911
American poet and winner of the Pulitzer, National Book Award, and many others.
In Bishop's words, "The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster."

Bertolt Brecht -- February 10, 1898
German poet, playwright, and theatrical innovator of the 20th century.
In Brecht's words, "From the cradle to the coffin, underwear comes first."

Charles Darwin -- February 12, 1809
British naturalist and author of the famous work "On the Origin of the Species."
In Darwin's words, "A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life."

Mattins

I cannot ope mine eyes,
But thou art ready there to catch
My morning-soul and sacrifice:
Then we must needs for that day make a match.

My God, what is a heart?
Silver, or gold, or precious stone,
Or star, or rainbow, or a part
Of all these things or all of them in one?

My God, what is a heart?
That thou should'st it so eye, and woo,
Pouring upon it all thy art,
As if that thou hadst nothing else to do?

Indeed man's whole estate
Amounts (and richly) to serve thee:
He did not heav'n and earth create,
Yet studies them, not him by whom they be.

Teach me thy love to know;
That this new light, which now I see,
May both the work and workman show:
Then by a sun-beam I will climb to thee.


George Herbert

Magazines: Reader's Digest - February 2009

Reader's Digest - February 2009