#absence

What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood—and the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here—now, I say—this very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and swear—if you're honestly able to—that you can't smell the rose in my hair! ↗

— Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

#letter #love-letter #love

You’re lost in your own world, in the things that happen there, and you’ve locked all the doors. Sometimes I look at you sleeping. I wake up and look at you and I feel closer to you when you’re like that, unguarded, than when you’re awake. When you’re awake you’re like someone with her eyes closed, watching a movie on the inside of your eyelids. I can’t reach you anymore. Once upon a time I could, but not now, and not for a long time. ↗

— Nicole Krauss

#great-house #loneliness #nicole-krauss #movies

Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God. ↗

— Peter Kreeft

#catholicism #christianity #deism #deist #god

The war on terror, if this is a war on terror, can only be won by a sincere regional and international cooperation. All have to believe they have something at stake and work together. In the absence of this it will become political and interest-oriented. ↗

— Hamid Karzai

#become #believe #cooperation #international #international cooperation

That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter. ↗

— Edward Everett

#apparent #battle #could #doubt #encounter

White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. ↗

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

#affirmative #almost #black #colour #colours

Absence - that common cure of love. ↗

— Lord Byron

#absence #common #cure

My dear, the duty that devolved wholly on you in my absence of guiding and expanding the minds of our dear children is a laborious one and a responsible one. ↗

— Ezra Cornell

#children #dear #devolved #duty #expanding

The appalling crackdown that we witnessed in Hama and other Syrian cities on 30 and 31 July only erode the regime's legitimacy and increase resentment. In the absence of an end to the senseless violence and a genuine process of political reform, we will continue to pursue further EU sanctions. ↗

— William Hague

#appalling #cities #continue #end #erode

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#could #death #i #me #said