The Ethereal, part five.

The Ethereal.  If you missed the others, go down and click the tab labled "The Ethereal." These are a collection of quotes and images I find to be heart-wrenchingly gorgeous that touch the heart of being universally human.

Have a wonderful night. :) 

"I live my life in growing orbits

which move out over the things of the world.

Perhaps I can never achieve the last,

but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God,
 around the ancient tower,

and I have been circling for a thousand years,

and I still don't know if I am

a falcon, or a storm,

or a great song."

-Rainer Maria Rilke

"I heard what you said.

I'm not the silly romantic you think.

I don't want the heavens or the shooting stars.

I don't want gemstones or gold. 
 I have those things already. 
 I want....

a steady hand.

A kind soul.

I want to fall asleep, and wake, 
knowing my heart is safe.

I want to love, and be loved."

-Shame Abe

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling.  What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow."

-Theodore Roethke

"If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, 

you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. 

 You need to know things that others don't know. 

 It's what no one knows about you 

that allows you to know yourself."

Don Delillo

"Important lessons:

look carefully;

record what you see.

Find a way to make beauty necessary;

find a way to make necessity beautiful."

-Anne Michaels

"I once had a thousand desires.

But in my desire to know you,

all else melted away."

-Rumi

"A jaded traveler with an invisible passport,
I am home with this heaven of the unforeseen
waiting for the next woosh of sudden departure
when, with no advance warning, to tiny augery,
the unpredictable plummets into our lives
from somewhere that looks like sky."
Bill Collins

"We talk of sunshine and moonshine, 
which is yet one of the illumination of our skies.
A shining cloud is one of the most majestic 
of all secondary lights."
-Alice Meynell

"It's so many miles and so long since I've met you
Don't even know what I'll find when I get to you
But suddenly now, I know where I belong
It's many hundred miles and it won't be long."
-Feist

"I guess that's what saying goodbye is always like-

like jumping off a cliff edge.

The worst part is making the choice to do it.

Once you're in the air, there's nothing you can do

but let go."

-Lauren Oliver

"She must find a boat and sail it.

No guarantee of shore.

Only a conviction that what she wanted would exist

if she dare find it."

-Jeanette Winterson

"Passing that fiery tree- if only she could

Be making love,

Be making poetry,

Be exploding, 

Be speeding through the Universe,

like a photon,

like a shower

of yellow blazes."

-Alicia Ostiker

"I experience a period of frightening clarity 

in those moments when nature is so beautiful.

  I am no longer sure of myself,

 and the paintings appear 

as in a dream."

-Vincent Van Gough

"If I lose light of the sun,

I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light.

If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood

on forgotten walls.

I will always write.

I will capture nights all over the world

and bring them to you."

-Henry Rollins

"Never love a wild thing.

You can't give your heart to a wild thing:

the more you do, the stronger they get.

Until they're strong enough to run into the woods.

Or fly into a tree.  Then into a taller tree.

Then into the sky. That's how you'll end up

if you love a wild thing.  You'll end up

looking at the sky."

=Truman Capote

"I am a forest, and a night of dark trees:

but he who is not afraid of my darkness,

will find roses under my cypresses."

-Nietzsche

Photo source: here, here here and here