#beauty

In the fire of his embrace, all that was her ceased to exist. Only what was God remained. I am. The cloisterbell, the voice of Christ. He spoke again: I am. She tried to obey but was frozen in beauty, like a fly trapped in amber. She could not move. Nothing exists apart from me. Self had been an illusion, a dream. God dreaming. ↗

— Mark Salzman

#self-is-an-illusion #the-voice-of-god #beauty

Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks. ↗

— John Burnham Schwartz

#sorrow #beauty

...good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that family that caused some terrible regret. Still, for years it all seemed to me to be blindingly beautiful. And it was. ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#beauty

Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn? ↗

— Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

#beauty #believes #centuries #considered #does

A plain sock by itself is terribly boring, but it could score points by having a clever stitch pattern, or maybe by being made out of a very beautiful yarn that's an enchantment to work with. (Sadly, it is still infuriatingly true that being beautiful without being clever is almost worth more points than being clever without being beautiful, but such are the rules of life and knitting-they are cruel, but there anyway). ↗

— Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

#beauty

Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever...I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. ↗

— Frederick Douglass

#beauty-in-literature #freedom #freedom-of-expression #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought

Neither of us wanted to say it first. But our two souls had become one in a realm no one else could venture into. The immortal coil of passion had wrapped around us forever. It had begun with lust and attraction and blossomed into so much more. Fear of rejection kept us from declaring it. ↗

— Sherry Soule

#beauty

Beautiful is not something you become. It's something you already are. ↗

— Peter Mis

#inspiration #beauty

Never allow your desires to lead you away from God; allow nothing else to control you other than God and His Word. No matter what you see or pass through, don’t allow them to define you. ↗

— Jaachynma N.E. Agu

#excellence #higher-living #success #beauty

If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#courage #dragons #inspirational #life #beauty