Our own felicity

Still to ourselves in every place consign'd
Our own felicity we make or find.

Goldsmith - The Traveller:

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport

“And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety, 　　
But rather famish them amid their plenty, 　　
Making them red and pale with fresh variety— 　　
Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty. 　　
A summer’s day will seem an hour but short, 　　
Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.” 　　
~ Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis

The things that are not

O hateful Error, Melancholy’s child, 　　
Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men 　　
The things that are not? 　　
~ Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The poets pen

And as imagination bodies forth 　　
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 　　
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing 　　
A local habitation and a name. 　　
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Since my house burned down

Since my house burned down,
I now own a better view
Of the rising moon

~ Masahide

In a café called Zarathustra

It’s always the same old shit of course,
The eternal return, et cetera,
And here I am eating raspberry mousse
In a café called Zarathustra.

Be calm, my pain

"Be calm, my pain, and venture to be still.
You clamored for the Night; it falls; is here:
The city shrouds itself in blackest chill,
Brings peace to some, to others fear.
’Neath Pleasure’s lash, the grim high executioner,
Mortal souls, that vile and worthless throng,
Reap grim remorse amidst the abject ceremony,
Pain, take my hand; let us now along . . ."

For tomorrow we shall die!

 

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)”

In a sky without light

 

Our life is a journey
Through winter and night,
We look for our way
In a sky without light.
(Song of the Swiss Guards 1793)

Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure!

“Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure-
Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure.
Such pleasures seek, if private be thy end:
If it be public, wide let them extend.
Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view:
If pains must come, let them extend to few."
Jeremy Bentham

When the glow of early thought declines..

There’s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,

When the glow of early thought declines in feeling’s dull decay.

This is our shelter against contemplation!

"We multiply diseases for delight,
Invent a horrid want, a shameful doubt,
Luxuriate in license, feed on night,
Make inward bedlam-and will not come out.
Why should we? Stripped of subtle complications,
Who could regard the sun except with fear?
This is our shelter against contemplation,
Our only refuge from the plain and clear.
Who would crawl out from under the obscure
To stand defenseless in the sunny air?
No terror of obliquity so sure
As the most shining terror of despair
To know how simple is our deepest need,
How sharp, and how impossible to feed."

In the center of my heart!

In the waters of purity, I melted like salt
Neither blasphemy, nor faith, nor conviction, nor doubt remained.
In the center of my heart a star has appeared
And all the seven heavens have become lost in it.

~ Rumi

One day closer to death!

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town, Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain, You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking And racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath and one day closer to death." Pink Floyd - “Time”