"Noble be man, merciful and good."— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Divine.
In a courtyard in 1945, a soldier asked a question no one had asked her in six years. She answered him with Goethe.
"Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away." — Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994
Every morning, someone kisses someone goodbye at the door, certain there will be another goodbye tomorrow to trade for it. Most days, they're right. That's exactly the problem.
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
Every morning, someone kisses someone goodbye at the door, certain there will be another goodbye tomorrow to trade for it. Most days, they're right. That's exactly the problem.
“We've had that over and over. But we always survived. We're still here.”— Waubgeshig Rice — Moon of the Crusted Snow, 2018
The younger characters call it an apocalypse. One of the elders corrects them, gently. Apocalypse, she says — there isn't even a word for that in her language.
“The art of losing isn't hard to master” — Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art" (poem), 1976
There's a poem almost anyone can relate to — because everyone has lost something. Elizabeth Bishop spent five stanzas convincing herself losing was easy. Then one line gave her away.
On Staying True — Vince Guaraldi
A respected jazz musician found himself scoring music for a children's Christmas cartoon — and instead of feeling diminished, he felt like he'd bought into something worth giving himself to.