The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.

The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved.

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love -- any love -- reveals us in read more

One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love -- any love -- reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

Women have no sympathy and my experience of women is almost as large as Europe.

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking read more

What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.

To make pleasures pleasant shorten them.

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may read more

The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.

Busy bees chased
the bloom chaste
Though
they crawled on her
clothes
her petals unfolded
and those held close
read more

Busy bees chased
the bloom chaste
Though
they crawled on her
clothes
her petals unfolded
and those held close
still ever faithful
to the sun
is the everpure rose
Whether her hue
is violet or rose
Whether she grows
in freedom or rows
ever to God
in waves arose
the love perfume
from the heart of the rose.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.