#romanticism

Oliver liked to keep the windows and shutters wide open in the afternoon, with just the swelling sheer curtains between us and life beyond, because it was a 'crime' to block away so much sunlight and keep such a landscape from view, especially when you didn't have it all life long, he said. Then the rolling fields of the valley leading up to the hills seemed to sit in a rising mist of olive green: sunflowers, grapevines, swatches of lavender, and those squat and humble olive trees stooping like gnarled, aged scarecrows gawking through our window as we lay naked on my bed, the smell of his sweat, which was the smell of my sweat, and next to me my man-woman whose man-woman I was, and all around us Mafalda's chamomile-scented laundry detergent, which was the torrid afternoon world of our house. ↗

— André Aciman

#age

Cependant mon père fut atteint d'une maladie qui le conduisit en peu de jours au tombeau. II expira dans mes bras. J'appris à connaître la mort sur les lèvres de celui qui m'avait donné la vie. Cette impression fut grande; elle dure encore. C'est la première fois que l'immortalité de l'âme s'est présentée clairement à mes yeux. Je ne pus croire que ce corps inanimé était en moi l'auteur de la pensée: je sentis qu'elle me devait venir d'une autre source; et dans une sainte douleur qui approchait de la joie, j'espérai me rejoindre un jour à l'esprit de mon père. ↗

— François-René de Chateaubriand

#death #philosophy #romanticism #death

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last! ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#kiss #poetry #romantic #romanticism #romantic

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#begin #else #grandiose #man #politics

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics! ↗

— Arthur Rimbaud

#critics #judge #judged #never #properly

Love is a two-way street constantly under construction. ↗

— Carroll Bryant

#humor-relationships #love #romantic-comedy #romanticism #humor

This was the first time I thought of S— that day. Her music was beautiful, her voice was beautiful, her body was beautiful. Even the dirty little pads of her feet were beautiful. I cursed myself then. For once, heaven had sent me Beauty in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down. How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death? ↗

— Roman Payne

#barcelona #beauty #beauty-is-truth #feminity #girls

Freedom is the dream you dream While putting thought in chains again -- ↗

— Giacomo Leopardi

#romanticism #dreams

I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it's consummated, the tension's over. ↗

— Jane Campion

#builds #consummated #i #i think #moment

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil") ↗

— Mary Ann Evans

#decadence #despair #hopelessness #romanticism #death