--- DICTIONARIES (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

--- QUOTES [26 / 26 - 101 / 101] (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

KEYS (10k)

   24 Jorge Luis Borges
   1 Sri Ramana Maharshi
   1 H P Lovecraft

NEW FULL DB (2.4M)

   7 Jorge Luis Borges
   3 Neal Stephenson
   3 J K Rowling
   3 H P Lovecraft
   3 Conrad Potter Aiken
   2 Umberto Eco
   2 Romain Gary
   2 Roberto Bola o
   2 Rebecca Solnit
   2 Mark Z Danielewski
   2 Kristin Cashore
   2 Catherynne M Valente
   2 Abraham Cowley

1:My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. ... I should only have to be immortal to carry it out. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> ,

2:All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

3:There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

4:Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

5:In death we shall rediscover all the instants of our life and we shall freely combine them as in dreams. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

6:With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

7:I cannot lament the loss of a love or a friendship without meditating that one loses only what one really never had. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

8:I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

9:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Garden Of Forking Paths ,

10:Fortunate is the man who does not lose himself in the labyrinths of philosophy, but goes straight to the Source from which they all rise. ~ Sri Ramana Maharshi, Guru Ramana: Memories and Notes Sulman Samuel Cohen,

11:The author of an atrocious undertaking ought to imagine that he has already accomplished it, ought to impose upon himself a future as irrevocable as the past. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

12:The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that sooner or later all men will do and know all things. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Funes the Memorious,

13:Like all those possessing a library, Aurelian was aware that he was guilty of not knowing his in its entirety; this controversy enabled him to fulfill his obligations with many books which seemed to reproach him for his neglect. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> The Theologians,

14:If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

15:God made Himself totally a man but a man to the point of infamy, a man to the point of reprobation and the abyss. To save us, He could have chosen *any* of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

16:This has happened and will happen again,' said Euphorbus. 'You are not lighting a pyre, you are lighting a labyrinth of flames. If all the fires I have seen were gathered together here, they would not fit on earth and the angels would be blinded. I have said this many times.' Then he cried out, because the flames had reached him. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

17:All the objects-organic and inorganic alike-were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate Arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation. ~ H P Lovecraft,

18:Whoever has seen the universe, whoever has beheld the fiery designs of the universe, cannot think in terms of one man, of that man's trivial fortunes or misfortunes, though he be that very man. That man has been he and now matters no more to him. What is the life of that other to him, the nation of that other to him, if he, now, is no one? This is why I do not pronounce the formula, why, lying here in the darkness, I let the days obliterate me. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

19:Tennyson said that if we could understand a single flower we would know who we are and what the world is. Perhaps he meant that there is no deed, however so humble, which does not implicate universal history and the infinite concatenation of causes and effects. Perhaps he meant that the visible world is implicit, in its entirety, in each manifestation, just as, in the same way, will, according to Schopenhauer, is implicit, in its entirety, in each individual. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

20:And yet, and yet... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny ... is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

21:The end of this story can only be related in metaphors since it takes place in the kingdom of heaven, where there is no time. Perhaps it would be correct to say that Aurelian spoke with God and that He was so little interested in religious differences that He took him for John of Pannonia. This, however, would imply a confusion in the divine mind. It is more correct to say that in Paradise, Aurelian learned that, for the unfathomable divinity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the abhorrer and the abhorred, the accuser and the accused) formed one single person. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> The Theologians,

22:At first cautiously, later indifferently, at last desperately, I wandered up the stairs and along the pavement of the inextricable palace. (Afterwards I learned that the width and height of the steps were not constant, a fact which made me understand the singular fatigue they produced). 'This palace is a fabrication of the gods,' I thought at the beginning. I explored the uninhabited interiors and corrected myself: ' The gods who built it have died.' I noted its peculiarities and said: 'The gods who built it were mad.' I said it, I know, with an incomprehensible reprobation which was almost remorse, with more intellectual horror than palpable fear... ...'This City' (I thought) 'is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

23:He told me that in 1886 he had invented an original system of numbering and that in a very few days he had gone beyond the twenty-four-thousand mark. He had not written it down, since anything he thought of once would never be lost to him. His first stimulus was, I think, his discomfort at the fact that the famous thirty-three gauchos of Uruguayan history should require two signs and two words, in place of a single word and a single sign. He then applied this absurd principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen he would say (for example) Maximo Pérez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Railroad; other numbers were Luis Melian Lafinur, Olimar, sulphur, the reins, the whale, the gas, the caldron, Napoleon, Agustin de Vedia. In place of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a kind of mark; the last in the series were very complicated... ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

24:Gradually, the concrete enigma I labored at disturbed me less than the generic enigma of a sentence written by a god. What type of sentence (I asked myself) will an absolute mind construct? I considered that even in the human languages there is no proposition that does not imply the entire universe: to say "the tiger" is to say the tigers that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave birth to the earth. I considered that in the language of a god every word would enunciate that infinite concatenation of facts, and not in an implicit but in an explicit manner, and not progressively but instantaneously. In time, the notion of a divine sentence seemed puerile or blasphemous. A god, I reflected, ought to utter only a single word and in that word absolute fullness. No word uttered by him can be inferior to the universe or less than the sum total of time. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

25:The PalaceThe Palace is not infinite.The walls, the ramparts, the gardens, the labyrinths, the staircases, the terraces, the parapets, the doors, the galleries, the circular or rectangular patios, the cloisters, the intersections, the cisterns, the anterooms, the chambers, the alcoves, the libraries, the attics, the dungeons, the sealed cells and the vaults, are not less in quantity than the grains of sand in the Ganges, but their number has a limit. From the roofs, towards sunset, many people can make out the forges, the workshops, the stables, the boatyards and the huts of the slaves.It is granted to no one to traverse more than an infinitesimal part of the palace. Some know only the cellars. We can take in some faces, some voices, some words, but what we perceive is of the feeblest. Feeble and precious at the same time. The date which the chisel engraves in the tablet, and which is recorded in the parochial registers, is later than our own death; we are already dead when nothing touches us, neither a word nor a yearning nor a memory. I know that I am not dead. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, The Book of Sand ,

26:He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken...He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths./a> Selected Stories and Other Writings,

*** NEWFULLDB 2.4M ***

1:God and chance belonged to art, eternity and labyrinths to science. ~ Roberto Bola o,

2:The more elaborate his labyrinths, the further from the Sun his face. ~ Mikhail Naimy,

3:Old Cairo is itself a story-book and a dream--labyrinths of narrow alleys redolent of aromatic secrets; ~ H P Lovecraft,

4:Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again. ~ Bernhard Schlink,

5:Labyrinths.were old sorcery, and subtle: good for recharging one’s magical resources when they were running low. ~ Lev Grossman,

6:For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths. ~ Roberto Bolano,

7:For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths… ~ Roberto Bola o,

8:This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. ~ Neal Stephenson,

9:What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak. ~ Ian McEwan,

10:What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak. ~ Ian Mcewan,

11:Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths. ~ Umberto Eco,

12:I mean, public libraries like this one were always short of money, so building even the tiniest of labyrinths had to be beyond their means. ~ Haruki Murakami,

13:Answers? Ha, he would say that. More like riddles, mazes, labyrinths. If there's some power trying to show me the way, it should give better directions. ~ Megan Chance,

14:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

15:I know nothing of the land beyond the seven kingdoms, except for tall tales the eastern people tell about rainbow-colored monsters and underground labyrinths. ~ Kristin Cashore,

16:I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.” –Jorge Luis Borges ~ Peter Morville,

17:What doubts, what hypotheses, what labyrinths of amusement, what fields of disputation, what an ocean of false learning, may be avoided by that single notion of immaterialism! ~ George Berkeley,

18:Where do all the labyrinths of error in the world come from [the objector will continue], if not from the fact that when men follow their own minds they land in vanity and lies? So ~ John Calvin,

19:You mentioned . . . one of the two great labyrinths into which the mind is drawn. What . . . is the other?" "The other is the composition of the continuum, or: what is space? ~ Neal Stephenson,

20:How beautiful the world is, and how ugly labyrinths are,' I said, relieved. 'How beautiful the world would be if there was a procedure for moving through labyrinths,' my master replied. ~ Umberto Eco,

21:In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves. ~ Jose Ortega y Gasset,

22:If we learn to love the earth, we will find labyrinths, gardens, fountains and precious jewels! A whole new world will open itself to us. We will discover what it means to be truly alive. ~ Saint Teresa of Avila,

23:You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths. ~ John Wesley Powell,

24:And why wander in these labyrinths? Once more, for aesthetic reasons; because this present infinity, these "vertiginous symmetries," have their tragic beauty. The form is more important than the content. ~ Andr Maurois,

25:Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind. ~ E O Wilson,

26:The lobbies of the new hotels and the Pan American Building exhale a chill as from the unopened Pharaonic tombs... And in their marble labyrinths there is an evil presence that hates warmth and sunlight. ~ Russell Baker,

27:Jungles and grasslands are the logical destinations, and towns and farmland the labyrinths that people have imposed between them sometime in the past. I cherish the green enclaves accidentally left behind. ~ Edward O Wilson,

28:I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future . . . I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

29:He became lost in misty byways, in times reserved for oblivion, in labyrinths of disappointment. He crossed a yellow plain where the echo repeated one's thoughts and where anxiety brought on premonitory mirages. ~ Gabriel Garc a M rquez,

30:Out of abysses of Illiteracy, Through labyrinths of Lies, Across wastelands of Disease . . . We advance Out of dead-ends of Poverty, Through wilderness of Superstition, Across barricades of Jim Crowism . . . We advance. ~ Melvin B Tolson,

31:That sand into which we bury ourselves in order not to see, is formed of words…and it is true that words, their labyrinths, the exhausting immensity of their “possibles”, in short their treachery, have something of quicksand about them. ~ Georges Bataille,

32:Disease Carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud. ~ Romain Gary,

33:Disease-carrying thoughts swarm and multiply in the dark and twisted labyrinths of our minds, and all that is needed is a mob and a good political slogan for the epidemic to be spread once again, with a burst of automatic weapons or a mushroom cloud. ~ Romain Gary,

34:If she lived, doubtless we must have been sometimes in search of each other, at the very same moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London; perhaps, even within a few feet of each other - a barrier no wider in a London street, often amounting in the end to a separation for eternity! ~ Thomas de Quincey,

35:The Florida peninsula is, in fact, an emerging plateau, honeycombed with voids and vents, caves and underground waterways. Travelers on Interstate Highway I-75 have no idea that, beneath them, are cave labyrinths still being mapped by speleologists - 'cavers,' they prefer to be called. ~ Randy Wayne White,

36:An hour later they were being escorted down a long corridor at the Pentagon. In fact, every corridor at the Pentagon was long. It was a labyrinth beyond all labyrinths. Indeed, it was rumored that employees from the 1960s were somewhere in the bowels of the place still looking for an exit. ~ David Baldacci,

37:I suppose every poet has his own private mythology. Maybe he's unaware of it. People tell me that I have evolved a private mythology of tigers, of blades, of labyrinths, and I"m unaware of the fact this is so. My readers are finding it all the time. But I think perhaps that is the duty of poet. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

38:Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind is an arduous task.... In order to dive into those recesses and lay them open to the reader in a striking and intelligible manner, 'tis necessary to assume a certain freedom in writing, not strictly perhaps within the limits prescribed by rules. ~ Sarah Fielding,

39:Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity. ~ E M Forster,

40:He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity. ~ J K Rowling,

41:Who hasn’t succumbed to a hopeless feeling more powerful than all the strength one might possibly muster, wondering how many first steps will have to be taken, how many actions performed and words spoken, how many labyrinths will have to be negotiated in order, finally, to reach the moment at which reality begins to happen. ~ C sar Aira,

42:The figure in these two phases haunted the lawyer all night: and if at any time he dozed over, it was but to see it glide more stealthily through sleeping houses, or move the more swiftly and still the more swiftly, even to dizziness, through wider labyrinths of lamp-lighted city, and at every street corner crush a child and leave her screaming. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson,

43:Private courts, Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our impatient steps; Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, To privileged regions and inviolate, Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green. ~ William Wordsworth,

44:In the city, human beings celebrated and enjoyed material conditions and comforts, but were caught in the labyrinths and knots of spiritual shallowness and psychological confusion. In the city human beings wrestled with the demands of survival and profit but fled from life’s imperatives of honesty and moderation. In the city man was afraid to confront his own face. ~ Isa Kamari,

45:We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see. ~ Ben Okri,

46:There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in. ~ Gottfried Leibniz,

47:There are still times when he and I fall into our respective labyrinths. I no longer believe that anyone but ourselves can lead us out. The Minotaurs we need to rescue are never our half brothers. They are always those monstrous parts of ourselves. We can never even know for certain that we are free. The best we can offer each other, and ourselves, is a few honest words. ~ Melissa Febos,

48:And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her. Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it. ~ Dorothy Dunnett,

49:Twelve mothers and twelve fathers were stacked into the long, thin house, each with four children, drawing the old cobalt-and-silver curtains down the center of rooms to make labyrinths of twelve dining rooms, twelve stting rooms, twelve bedrooms. It could be said, and was, that Marya Morevna had twelve mothers and twelve fathers, and so did all the children of that long, thin house. ~ Catherynne M Valente,

50:All the objects—organic and inorganic alike—were totally beyond description or even comprehension. Gilman sometimes compared the inorganic masses to prisms, labyrinths, clusters of cubes and planes, and Cyclopean buildings; and the organic things struck him variously as groups of bubbles, octopi, centipedes, living Hindoo idols, and intricate Arabesques roused into a kind of ophidian animation. ~ H P Lovecraft,

51:With films—as with novels, which I devoured with the regularity of a metronome—I gave myself no limits: I fell into every trap the author or director set for me, lost myself with relish in the labyrinths of a fictitious world. I think of that friend of Mary Poppins, the chimney sweep, and the amazing chalk pictures he drew: you could jump into them and become reincarnated. I dreamed of meeting him. ~ Jean Philippe Blondel,

52:List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness 1. Italo Calvino 2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths.br>4. The creator of MySpace 5. Richard Brautigan 6. J.K. Rowling 7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite 8. Ann Sexton 9. David Foster Wallace 10. Gaugin and the Caribbean 11. Charles Schulz 12. Liam Rector ~ Shane Jones,

53:Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptised backwards into ignorance and simplicity. ~ J K Rowling,

54:It was hard for a man and a woman to be fiends with no under thought or glimpsed prospect of sex. They wanted to be friends. It was almost a matter of principle. She was as intelligent as any Fellow of King's - though he thought she did not know it - he was in love with her mind as it followed clues through labyrinths. Love is, among many other things, a response to energy, and Griselda's mind was precise and energetic. He wanted to make love to her too. ~ A S Byatt,

55:And that is why, after four days of bleeding, stumbling, and starving, after four days of Immiker reminding him repeatedly that he was well enough to keep walking, Larch and Immiker stepped out of the tunnel not into the light of the Monsean foothills, but into that of a strange land on the other side of the Monsean peaks. An eastern land neither of them had heard of except for foolish tales told over Monsean dinners—tales of rainbow-colored monsters and underground labyrinths. ~ Kristin Cashore,

56:My coming to New York had been a mistake; for whereas I had looked for poignant wonder and inspiration in the teeming labyrinths of ancient streets that twist endlessly from forgotten courts and squares and waterfronts to courts and squares and waterfronts equally forgotten, and in the Cyclopean modern towers and pinnacles that rise blackly Babylonian under waning moons, I had found instead only a sense of horror and oppression which threatened to master, paralyse, and annihilate me. ~ H P Lovecraft,

57:A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no more questions to ask, since all the answers have been given. But there is no such place. The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the nonhuman realms of the world. ~ Stanis aw Lem,

58:She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation. In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they’d loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? ~ Margaret Atwood,

59:Indisputably we live in a shaped reality, an artificialism. Most people who grasp this are thinking only at a consumer-level, of the "things" they like and need and feel impelled to acquire. But our societal and political arrangements are just as much manipulations of game-pieces and rules as is any Atari or Sega product. The subliminal psychology that drives people to become addicted to games, not to be able to see over the edges of their labyrinths, is transferable to any field whatsoever. ~ Kenny Smith,

60:Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks. ~ Walter Benjamin,

61:When I use a name or place, I want to leave the reader open to the waterfall of determinacy that it may provoke. And I don't know, but I must mention the name Borges. I try to mention it in every one of my works. It's a mark, a stamp, a sort of homage to Argentinidad. But it's an homage that works through pat phrases, those stock images that populate his work: the night, labyrinths, libraries. That is, I don't want simply to pay homage to Borges, but rather the contrary: to recall his commonplaces. ~ Sergio Chejfec,

62:Leibniz raised his eyebrows and spent a few moments staring at the clutter of pots and cups on the table. “This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it—which must have been a great spiritual struggle—and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that very philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination. It is most difficult. ~ Neal Stephenson,

63:I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

64:what did you think you were doing, then, when you went up through one door and down through another, turning this way and that, through the pages of a book and a deep mine and an entire ocean and the hideout of a wise old woman? My dear, labyrinths ensnare and entangle; they draw one inexorably inward-but it wouldn't be much of a labyrinth if you waited in line with a ticket to get it and the door was clearly marked, like some country-harvest hay maze. All underworlds are labyrinths, in the end. Perhaps all the sunlit lands, too. A labyrinth, when it is big enough, is just the world. ~ Catherynne M Valente,

65:Hades allowed himself the faintest smile, but there was nothing cruel in his eyes. ‘I can entertain the possibility that you acted for multiple reasons. My point is this: you and I rose to the aid of Olympus because you convinced me to let go of my anger. I would encourage you to do likewise. My children are so rarely happy. I … I would like to see you be an exception.’ Nico stared at his father. He didn’t know what to do with that statement. He could accept many unreal things – hordes of ghosts, magical labyrinths, travel through shadows, chapels made of bones. But tender words from the Lord of the Underworld? No. That made no sense. ~ Rick Riordan,

66:Alhambra Welcome, the water’s voice To one whom black sand overwhelmed, Welcome, to the curved hand The smooth column of the marble, Welcome, slender labyrinths of water Between the lemon trees, Welcome the melodious zéjel, Welcome is love, welcome the prayer Offered to a God who is One, Welcome the jasmine. Vain the scimitar Against the long lances of the host, Vain to be the best. Good to know, foreknow, grieving king, That your courtesies are farewells, That the key will be denied you, The infidels’ cross eclipse the moon, The afternoon you gaze on prove your last. Granada, 1976. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

67:After over six hundred hours of listening, John knew two more things: That the most profound truth lay in the labyrinths that coiled behind a green door in the interviewee's mind the very second that Alfred Kinsey said, "Tell me about your fantasies"; and, two, that with the proper information and the correct stimuli he could get carefully chosen people to break through those doors and act out their fantasies, past moral strictures and the boundaries of conscience, taking him past his already absolute knowledge of mankind's unutterable stupidity into a new night realm that he as yet was incapable of imagining. Because the night was there to be plundered; and only someone above its laws could exact its bounty and survive. ~ James Ellroy,

68:What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were suppose to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; to a kind of purity. It was curious how often everything was back to front, the inverse of what they told you; Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity. ~ J K Rowling,

69:He stands alone in hollow gloom, with the sound of his own breath whispering down unseen passages ahead and behind and to both sides, wondering how he stumbled into this blackest of all labyrinths. He entered by choice. We all do. Whether we are mapping the heavens or skulking the lanes of the underworld, whether we are hunting the imprisoned fiend or have ourselves become the monster, whether we are searching for what is lost or hiding what must never be found, we all round that first corner by choice - and by then, we are lost. You too. You must decide what is false and what is true, and what is true for me but not for you. We are wandering the mazes, all of us, and we cannot hope to escape until we learn to tell between what is real and what is real for someone else. There lies the madness, and the truth as well. ~ Troy Denning,

70:To write the poem of the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and final epic. The conscience is the chaos of chimeras, of lusts and of temptations, the furnace of dreams, the cave of the ideas which are our shame; it is the pandemonium of sophisms, the battlefield of the passions. At certain hours, penetrate within the livid face of a human being who reflects, and look at what lies behind; look into that soul, look into that obscurity. There, beneath the external silence, there are combats of giants as in Homer, mêlées of dragons and hydras, and clouds of phantoms as in Milton, ghostly labyrinths as in Dante. What a gloom enwraps that infinite which each man bears within himself, and by which he measures in despair the desires of his will, and the actions of his life! ~ Victor Hugo,

71:It was under English trees that I meditated on that lost labyrinth: I pictured it perfect and inviolate on the secret summit of a mountain; I pictured its outlines blurred by rice paddies, or underwater; I pictured it as infinite—a labyrinth not of octagonal pavillions and paths that turn back upon themselves, but of rivers and provinces and kingdoms....I imagined a labyrinth of labyrinths, a maze of mazes, a twisting, turning, ever-widening labyrinth that contained both past and future and somehow implied the stars. Absorbed in those illusory imaginings, I forgot that I was a pursued man; I felt myself, for an indefinite while, the abstract perceiver of the world. The vague, living countryside, the moon, the remains of the day did their work in me; so did the gently downward road, which forestalled all possibility of weariness. The evening was near, yet infinite. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

72:Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you. ~ Saadat Hasan Manto,

73:I have no aspiration here to reclaim mystery and paradox from whatever territory they might inhabit, for there is, indeed, often a killing in a kiss, a mercy in the slap that heats your face . . . There is, nevertheless, a particular poverty in those alloplasts who, addressing tragedy, seek to subdistinguish motives beyond those we have best, because nearest, at hand, and so it is with love and hate--emotions upon whose necks, whether wrung or wreathed, may be found the oldest fingerprints of man. A simple truth intrudes: the basic instincts of every man to every man are known. But who knows when or where or how? For the answers to such questions, summon Augurello, your personal jurisconsult and theological wiseacre, to teach you about primal reality and then to dispel those complexities and cabals you crouch behind in this sad, psychiatric century you call your own. It is the anti-labyrinths of the world that scare. Here is a story for you. Your chair. ~ Alexander Theroux,

74:I was seized at once with a profound fascination, a burning thirst to learn, to immerse myself totally, to melt away, to become as one with this foreign universe. To know it as if I had been born and raised there, begun life there. I wanted to learn the language, I wanted to read the books, I wanted to penetrate every nook and cranny. It was a kind of malady, a dangerous weakness, because I also realized that these civilizations are so enormous, so rich, complex, and varied, that getting to know even a fragment of one of them, a mere scrap, would require devoting one's whole life to the enterprise. Cultures are edifices with countless rooms, corridors, balconies, and attics, all arranged, furthermore, into such twisting, turning labyrinths, that if you enter one of them, there is no exit, no retreat, no turning back. To become a Hindu scholar, a Sinologist, an Arabist, or a Hebraist is a lofty all-consuming pursuit, leaving no space or time for anything else. ~ Ryszard Kapu ci ski,

75:We never even kissed or looked into each other's eyes. Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my only tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound. ~ Mark Z Danielewski,

76:To cease, to sleep, to replace this intermittent consciousness with better, more melancholy things uttered in secret to a stranger! … To cease, to flow, fluid as a river, as the ebb and flow of a vast sea along coasts seen in a night in which one could really sleep! … To cease, to be unknown and external, the stirring of branches in remote avenues, the tenuous falling of leaves that one senses without hearing them fall, the subtle sea of distant fountains, and the whole indistinct world of gardens at night, lost in endless complexities, the natural labyrinths of the dark!… To cease, to end once and for all, but yet to survive in another form, as the page of a book, a loose lock of hair, a swaying creeper outside a half-open window, insignificant footsteps on the fine gravel on the curve of a path, the last twist of smoke high above a village as it falls asleep, the idle whip of the waggoner stopped by the road in the morning … Absurdity, confusion, extinction -anything but life … ~ Fernando Pessoa,

77:Woman’s role in creation should be parallel to her role in life. I don’t mean the good earth. I mean the bad earth too, the demon, the instincts, the storms of nature. Tragedies, conflicts, mysteries are personal. Man fabricated a detachment which became fatal. Woman must not fabricate. She must descend into the real womb and expose its secrets and its labyrinths. She must describe it as the city of Fez, with its Arabian Nights gentleness, tranquility and mystery. She must describe the voracious moods, the desires, the worlds contained in each cell of it. For the womb has dreams. It is not as simple as the good earth. I believe at times that man created art out of fear of exploring woman. I believe woman stuttered about herself out of fear of what she had to say. She covered herself with taboos and veils. Man invented a woman to suit his needs. He disposed of her by identifying her with nature and then paraded his contemptuous domination of nature. But woman is not nature only. She is the mermaid with her fish-tail dipped in the unconscious. ~ Ana s Nin,

78:Both Jew and Gentile enjoyed complexities, especially the Greeks with their philosophical systems. They loved mental gymnastics and intellectual labyrinths. They believed the truth was knowable, but only to those with elevated minds. This system later became known as gnosticism, a belief that certain people, by virtue of their enhanced reasoning powers, could move beyond the hoi polloi and ascend to the level of enlightenment. At the time of Paul, we can trace at least fifty different philosophies rattling around in the Roman and Greek world. And the gospel came along and said, “None of it matters. We’ll destroy it all. Take all the wisdom of the wise, get the best, get the elite, the most educated, the most capable, the smartest, the most clever, the best at rhetoric, oratory, logic; get all the wise, all the scribes, the legal experts, the great debaters, and they’re all going to be designated fools.” The gospel says they are all foolish. Paul’s quotation of Isaiah 29:14 in verse 19, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,” had to be an offensive statement to his audience. ~ John F MacArthur Jr,

79:Not to know yourself is dangerous, to that self and to others. Those who destroy, who cause great suffering, kill off some portion of themselves first, or hide from the knowledge of their acts and from their own emotion, and their internal landscape fills with partitions, caves, minefields, blank spots, pit traps, and more, a landscape turned against itself, a landscape that does not know itself, a landscape through which they may not travel. […] You see it too in the small acts of everyday life, of the person who feels perfectly justified, of the person who doesn’t know he’s just committed harm, of the person who says something whose motives are clear to everyone but her, of the person who comes up with intricate rationales or just remains oblivious, of the person we’ve all been at one time or another. Taken to an extreme, it’s the mind-set of murder; enlarged in scale it’s war. Elaborate are the means to hide from yourself, the dissociations, projections, deceptions, forgetting, justifications, and other tools to detour around the obstruction of unbearable reality, the labyrinths in which we hide the minotaurs who have our faces. ~ Rebecca Solnit,

80:Not to know yourself is dangerous, to that self and to others. Those who destroy, who cause great suffering, kill off some portion of themselves first, or hide from the knowledge of their acts and from their own emotion, and their internal landscape fills with partitions, caves, minefields, blank spots, pit traps, and more, a landscape turned against itself, a landscape that does not know itself, a landscape through which they may not travel. […] You see it too in the small acts of everyday life, of the person who feels perfectly justified, of the person who doesn’t know he’s just committed harm, of the person who says something whose motives are clear to everyone but her, of the person who comes up with intricate rationales or just remains oblivious, of the person we’ve all been at one time or another. Taken to an extreme, it’s the mind-set of murder; enlarged in scale it’s war. Elaborate are the means to hide from yourself, the dissociations, projections, deceptions, forgettings, justifications, and other tools to detour around the obstruction of unbearable reality, the labyrinths in which we hide the minotaurs who have our faces. ~ Rebecca Solnit,

81:We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become 'politicians'; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated. ~ T H White,

82:This education startled even a man who had dabbled in fifty educations all over the world; for, if he were obliged to insist on a Universe, he seemed driven to the Church. Modern science guaranteed no unity. The student seemed to feel himself, like all his predecessors, caught, trapped, meshed in this eternal drag-net of religion. In practice the student escapes this dilemma in two ways: the first is that of ignoring it, as one escapes most dilemmas; the second is that the Church rejects pantheism as worse than atheism, and will have nothing to do with the pantheist at any price. In wandering through the forests of ignorance, one necessarily fell upon the famous old bear that scared children at play; but, even had the animal shown more logic than its victim, one had learned from Socrates to distrust, above all other traps, the trap of logic -- the mirror of the mind. Yet the search for a unit of force led into catacombs of thought where hundreds of thousands of educations had found their end. Generation after generation of painful and honest-minded scholars had been content to stay in these labyrinths forever, pursuing ignorance in silence, in company with the most famous teachers of all time. Not one of them had ever found a logical highroad of escape. ~ Henry Adams,

83:This was the southern sea. The colors that fade when coral is drawn out of its element were garishly bright here, intricate and lovely labyrinths on the bottom. Among the coral, fish went darting; and overhead a sea-bat, a devil-fish, flapped slow wings past, its stingaree tail trailing. Morays coiled by, opening their incredible, wolfish mouths at him, and many-limbed crabs scuttled sidewise over the rocks and little sandy plateaus of the bottom. Groves of seaweed and great fans of colored sponges swung with hypnotic motion, and schools of tiny striped fish went flashing in and out among them, moving all together as if with a single mind. Pete swam down. From a cavern among the brown and purple rocks an octopus looked at him out of huge, alien eyes. Its tentacles hung and quivered. Pete swam away, hovering over an expanse of pale sand where the light from above shimmered and ran in rippling waves, his own shadow hanging spread-eagled below him. In and out of it many little creatures went scuttling busily on their underwater errands. Life here was painted in three dimensions, and there was no gravity. There was only beauty and strangeness and a hint of terror that sent pleasurable excitement thrilling through Pete's blood. ("Before I Wake") ~ Henry Kuttner,

84:And all the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired, and compromised solitude, remain indelible within us and precisely because the human being wants them to remain so. He knows instinctively that this space identified with his solitude is creative; that even when it is forever expunged from the present, when, henceforth, it is alien to all the promises of the future, even when we no longer have a garret, when the attic room is lost and gone, there remains the fact that we once loved a garret, once lived in an attic. We return to them in our night dreams. These retreats have the value of a shell. And when we reach the very end of the labyrinths of sleep, when we attain to the regions of deep slumber, we may perhaps experience a type of repose that is pre-human; pre-human, in this case, approaching the immemorial. But in the daydream itself, the recollection of moments of confined, simple, shut-in space are experiences of heartwarming space, of a space that does not seek to become extended, but would like above all still to be possessed. In the past, the attic may have seemed too small, it may have seemed cold in winter and hot in summer. Now, however, in memory recaptured through daydreams, it is hard to say through what syncretism the attic is at once small and large, warm and cool, always comforting. ~ Gaston Bachelard,

85:Matthew XV:30” The first bridge, Constitution Station. At my feet the shunting trains trace iron labyrinths. Steam hisses up and up into the night, which becomes at a stroke the night of the Last Judgment. From the unseen horizon and from the very center of my being, an infinite voice pronounced these things— things, not words. This is my feeble translation, time-bound, of what was a single limitless Word: “Stars, bread, libraries of East and West, playing-cards, chessboards, galleries, skylights, cellars, a human body to walk with on the earth, fingernails, growing at nighttime and in death, shadows for forgetting, mirrors busily multiplying, cascades in music, gentlest of all time's shapes. Borders of Brazil, Uruguay, horses and mornings, a bronze weight, a copy of the Grettir Saga, algebra and fire, the charge at Junín in your blood, days more crowded than Balzac, scent of the honeysuckle, love and the imminence of love and intolerable remembering, dreams like buried treasure, generous luck, and memory itself, where a glance can make men dizzy— all this was given to you, and with it the ancient nourishment of heroes— treachery, defeat, humiliation. In vain have oceans been squandered on you, in vain the sun, wonderfully seen through Whitman’s eyes. You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem. ~ Jorge Luis Borges,

86:Get a move on, Perico, and go ask him for the battery charger," and the apprentice hurried out, but everything was like a dream and what was the point of any of it: battery chargers, wrenches, mechanics, and he felt sorry for the terrified little boy because, he thought, all of us are dreaming and why punish kids and why fix cars and have crushes on nice boys and then get married and have children who also dream that they're alive, who have to suffer, go off to war or fight or give up hope all on account of mere dreams. He was simply drifting along now, like a boat without a crew swept along by shifting currents, and moving mechanically like those invalids who have lost almost all will and consciousness and yet allow themselves to be moved by the nurses and obey the instructions they are given with the obscure remains of that will and that consciousness without knowing why. The 493, he thought, I go as far as Chacarita and then I take the subway to Florida and then I walk from there to the hotel. So he got on the 493 and mechanically asked for a ticket, and for half an hour continued to see ghosts dreaming of things that kept them very busy; at the Florida stop he went out the exit on the Calle San Martin, walked along the Corrientes to Reconquista and from there headed for the Warszawa rooming house, Accommodations for Gentlemen, went up dirty, dilapidated stairs to the fourth floor, and threw himself on the wretched bed as though he had been wandering through labyrinths for centuries. ~ Ernesto Sabato,

87: Then Was My Neophyte Then was my neophyte, Child in white blood bent on its knees Under the bell of rocks, Ducked in the twelve, disciple seas The winder of the water-clocks Calls a green day and night. My sea hermaphrodite, Snail of man in His ship of fires That burn the bitten decks, Knew all His horrible desires The climber of the water sex Calls the green rock of light. Who in these labyrinths, This tidethread and the lane of scales, Twine in a moon-blown shell, Escapes to the flat cities' sails Furled on the fishes' house and hell, Nor falls to His green myths? Stretch the salt photographs, The landscape grief, love in His oils Mirror from man to whale That the green child see like a grail Through veil and fin and fire and coil Time on the canvas paths. He films my vanity. Shot in the wind, by tilted arcs, Over the water come Children from homes and children's parks Who speak on a finger and thumb, And the masked, headless boy. His reels and mystery The winder of the clockwise scene Wound like a ball of lakes Then threw on that tide-hoisted screen Love's image till my heartbone breaks By a dramatic sea. 150 Who kills my history? The year-hedged row is lame with flint, Blunt scythe and water blade. 'Who could snap off the shapeless print From your to-morrow-treading shade With oracle for eye?' Time kills me terribly. 'Time shall not murder you,' He said, 'Nor the green nought be hurt; Who could hack out your unsucked heart, O green and unborn and undead?' I saw time murder me. ~ Dylan Thomas,

88: Ballade Of The Voyage To Cythera I know Cythera long is desolate; I know the winds have stripp'd the gardens green. Alas, my friends! beneath the fierce sun's weight A barren reef lies where Love's flowers have been, Nor ever lover on that coast is seen! So be it, but we seek a fabled shore, To lull our vague desires with mystic lore, To wander where Love's labyrinths beguile; There let us land, there dream for evermore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' The sea may be our sepulchre. If Fate, If tempests wreak their wrath on us, serene We watch the bolt of heaven, and scorn the hate Of angry gods that smite us in their spleen. Perchance the jealous mists are but the screen That veils the fairy coast we would explore. Come, though the sea be vex'd, and breakers roar, Come, for the air of this old world is vile, Haste we, and toil, and faint not at the oar; 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle.' Grey serpents trail in temples desecrate Where Cypris smiled, the golden maid, the queen, And ruined is the palace of our state; But happy Loves flit round the mast, and keen The shrill wind sings the silken cords between. Heroes are we, with wearied hearts and sore, Whose flower is faded and whose locks are hoar, Yet haste, light skiffs, where myrtle thickets smile; Love's panthers sleep 'mid roses, as of yore: 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle!' ENVOY. Sad eyes! the blue sea laughs, as heretofore. Ah, singing birds your happy music pour! Ah, poets, leave the sordid earth awhile; Flit to these ancient gods we still adore: 47 'It may be we shall touch the happy isle!' ~ Andrew Lang,

89: Haunted Chambers The lamp-lit page is turned, the dream forgotten; The music changes tone, you wake, remember Deep worlds you lived before, deep worlds hereafter Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music, Rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter. Helen was late, and Miriam came too soon; Joseph was dead, his wife and children starving; Elaine was married and soon to have a child. You dreamed last night of fiddler crabs with fiddles. They played a buzzing melody, and you smiled. Tomorrow—what ? And what of yesterday ? Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass, Through many doors to the one door of all. Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music: Or see a skeleton fall. We walk with you. Where is it that you lead us ? We climbed the muffled stairs beneath high lanterns. We descend again. We grope through darkened cells. You say: 'This darkness, here, 'will slowly kill me— It creeps and weighs upon me .... is full of bells. 'This is the thing remembered I would forget: No matter where I go, how soft I tread, This windy gesture menaces me with death. 'Fatigue!' it says—and points its finger at me; Touches my throat and stops my breath. 'My fans, my jewels, the portrait of my husband, The torn certificate for my daughter's grave— These are but mortal seconds in immortal time. They brush me, fade away—like drops of water. They signify no crime. 'Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you! Nothing is here I could not frankly tell you— No hint of guilt, or faithlessness, or threat. 48 Dreams—they are madness; staring eyes—illusion. Let us return, hear music, and forget.' ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

90: The House Of Dust: Part 03: 03: Haunted Chambers The lamplit page is turned, the dream forgotten; The music changes tone, you wake, remember Deep worlds you lived before,—deep worlds hereafter Of leaf on falling leaf, music on music, Rain and sorrow and wind and dust and laughter. Helen was late and Miriam came too soon. Joseph was dead, his wife and children starving. Elaine was married and soon to have a child. You dreamed last night of fiddler-crabs with fiddles; They played a buzzing melody, and you smiled. To-morrow—what? And what of yesterday? Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass, Through many doors to the one door of all. Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music: Or see a skeleton fall . . . We walk with you. Where is it that you lead us? We climb the muffled stairs beneath high lanterns. We descend again. We grope through darkened cells. You say: this darkness, here, will slowly kill me. It creeps and weighs upon me . . . Is full of bells. This is the thing remembered I would forget— No matter where I go, how soft I tread, This windy gesture menaces me with death. Fatigue! it says, and points its finger at me; Touches my throat and stops my breath. My fans—my jewels—the portrait of my husband— The torn certificate for my daughter's grave— These are but mortal seconds in immortal time. They brush me, fade away: like drops of water. They signify no crime. Let us retrace our steps: I have deceived you: Nothing is here I could not frankly tell you: No hint of guilt, or faithlessness, or threat. 250 Dreams—they are madness. Staring eyes—illusion. Let us return, hear music, and forget . . . ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

91: Against Hope HOPE, whose weak Being ruin'd is, Alike if it succeed, and if it miss ; Whom Good or Ill does equally confound, And both the Horns of Fates Dilemma wound. Vain shadow! which dost vanish quite, Both at full Noon, and perfect Night ! The Stars have not a possibility Of blessing Thee ; If things then from their End we happy call, 'Tis Hope is the most Hopeless thing of all. Hope, thou bold Taster of Delight, Who whilst thou shouldst but tast, devour'st it quite ! Thou bringst us an Estate, yet leav'st us Poor, By clogging it with Legacies before ! The Joys which we entire should wed, Come deflowr'd Virgins to our bed ; Good fortunes without gain imported be, Such mighty Custom's paid to Thee. For Joy, like Wine, kept close does better tast ; If it take air before, its spirits wast. Hope, Fortunes cheating Lottery ! Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be ; Fond Archer, Hope, who tak'st thy aim so far, That still or short, or wide thine arrows are ! Thin, empty Cloud, which th' eye deceives With shapes that our own Fancy gives ! A Cloud, which gilt and painted now appears, But must drop presently in tears ! When thy false beams o'er Reasons light prevail, By Ignes fatui for North-Stars we sail. Brother of Fear, more gaily clad ! The merr'ier Fool o' th' two, yet quite as Mad : Sire of Repentance, Child of fond Desire ! That blow'st the Chymicks, and the Lovers fire ! Leading them still insensibly'on By the strange witchcraft of Anon ! By Thee the one does changing Nature through Her endless Labyrinths.pursue, And th' other chases Woman, whilst She goes More ways and turns than hunted Nature knows. ~ Abraham Cowley,

92:that, instead of being fused to the skull, hangs loosely beneath the brain case. This enables the upper jaw to push forward and hyperextend open—wide enough to engulf, and crush, an adult bull elephant. As if the size and voraciousness of its feeding orifice were not enough, nature has endowed this monster with a predatory intelligence, honed by 400 million years of evolution. Six distinct senses expose every geological feature, every current, every temperature gradient … and every creature occupying its domain. The predator’s eyes contain a reflective layer of tissue situated behind the retina. When moving through the darkness of the depths, light is reflected off this layer, allowing the creature to see. In sunlight, the reflective plate is covered by a layer of pigment, which functions like a built-in pair of sunglasses. While black in normally pigmented members of the species, this particular male’s eyes are a cataract-blue—a trait found in albinos. As large as basketballs, the sight organs reflexively roll back into the skull as the creature launches its attack on its prey, protecting the eyeball from being damaged. Forward of the eyes, just beneath the snout, are a pair of directional nostrils so sensitive that they can detect one drop of blood or urine in a million gallons of water. The tongue and snout provide a sense of taste and touch, while two labyrinths within the skull function as ears. But it is two other receptor organs that make this predator the master of its liquid domain. The first of these mid-to-long-range detection systems is the lateral line, a hollow tube that runs along either flank just beneath the skin. Microscopic pores open these tubes to the sea. When another animal creates a vibration or turbulence in the water, the reverberations stimulate tiny hairs within these sensory cells that alert the predator to the source of the disturbance—miles away! Even more sensitive are the hunter’s long-range receptor cells, located along the top and underside ~ Steve Alten,

93: Science Alone I climb the steep ascending path Which leads to knowledge. In the babbling throngs That hurry after, shouting to the world Small fragments of large truths, there is not one Who comprehends my purpose, or who sees The ultimate great goal. Why, even she, My heaven intended Spouse, my other self, Religion, turns her beauteous face on me With hatred in the eyes, where love should dwell. While those who call me Master blindly run, Wounding the ear of Faith with blasphemies, And making useless slaughter in my name. Mine is the difficult slow task to blaze A road of Facts, through labyrinths of dreams To tear down Maybe and establish IS: And substitute I Know for I Believe. I follow closely where the Seers have led: But that intangible dim path of theirs, Which may be trodden but by other Seers, I seek to render solid for the feet Of all mankind. With reverent hands I lift The mask from Mystery: and show the face Of Reason, smiling bravely on the world. The visions of the prophets, one by one, Grew visible beneath my tireless touch: And the white secrets of elusive stars I tell aloud, to listening multitudes. To fit the better world my toil ensures, Time will impregnate with a better race The Future's womb: and when the hour is ripe, To ready eyes of men, the alien spheres Shall seem as friendly neighbours: and my skill Shall make their music audible to ears Which will be tuned to those high harmonies. 498 Mine is the work to fashion, step by step, The shining Way that leads from man to God. Though I demolish obstacles of creeds And blast tradition, from the face of earth, My hand shall open wide the door of Truth, Whose other name is Faith: and at the end Of this most holy labour, I shall turn To see Religion, with enlightened eyes, Seeking the welcome of my outstretched arms. While all the world stands hushed and awed before The proven splendour of the Fact Supreme. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox,

94:Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my own tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine – I didn’t hear mine – only hears, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tear it all apart, yet tempting enough to hold onto for even one second more, to extend it all, if we can, as if by getting that much closer to the heat, that much more enveloped, would prove … - which when we did clutch, hold, postpone, did in fact prove too much after all, seconds too much, and impossible to refuse, so blowing all of everything apart, shivers and shakes and deep in her throat a thousand letters crashing in a long unmodulated fall, resonating deep within my cochlea and down the cochlear nerve, a last fit of fury describing in lasting detail the shape of things already come. Too bad dark languages rarely survive. ~ Mark Z Danielewski,

95:Adelia began to get cross. Why was it women who were to blame for everything—everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges? “We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly. “Where are we, then?” “It’s a maze.” “Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.” “No, it isn’t. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. Labyrinths.twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.” Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Rather beautiful, really.” “I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. What’s a maze when it’s at home?” “It’s a trick. A trick to confuse. To amaze.” “And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?” “I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat. “Then in the name of Christ, do it.” “Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. “You’re bellowing.” She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile; he always had good teeth. Still did. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. How will you do it?” “My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “I’ll have to take the lead.” She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left. As she went, she chuntered to herself. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. How disregarded all women are. ... Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had; the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men—even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade. Adelia trudged on. Hag’s hole. Grendel’s mother’s entrails. Why was this dreadful place feminine to the men lost in it? Because it was tunneled? Womb-like? Is this woman’s magic? The great womb? Is that why the Church hates me, hates all women? Because we are the source of all true power? Of life? She supposed that by leading them out of it, she was only confirming that a woman knew its secrets and they did not. Great God, she thought, it isn't a question of hatred. It’s fear. They are frightened of us. And Adelia laughed quietly, sending a suggestion of sound reverberating backward along the tunnel, as if a small pebble was skipping on water, making each man start when it passed him. “What in hell was that?” Walt called back stolidly, “Reckon someone’s laughing at us, master.” “Dear God. ~ Ariana Franklin,

96: The Last Giustianini O WIFE, wife, wife! As if the sacred name Could weary one with saying! Once again Laying against my brow your lips' soft flame, Join with me, Sweetest, in love's new refrain, Since the whole music of my late-found life Is that we call each other 'husband -- wife.' And yet, stand back, and let your cloth of gold Straighten its sumptuous lines from waist to knee, And, flowing firmly outward, fold on fold, Invest your slim young form with majesty As when, in those calm bridal robes arrayed, You stood beside me, and I was afraid. I was afraid -- O sweetness, whiteness, youth, Best gift of God, I feared you! I, indeed, For whom all womanhood has been, forsooth, Summed up in the sole Virgin of the Creed, I thought that day our Lady's self stood there And bound herself to me with vow and prayer. Ah, yes, that day. I sat, remember well, Half-crook'd above a missal, and laid in The gold-leaf slowly; silence in my cell; The picture, Satan tempting Christ to sin Upon the mount's blue, pointed pinnacle, The world outspread beneath as fair as hell -When suddenly they summoned me. I stood Abashed before the Abbot, who reclined Full-bellied in his chair beneath the rood, And roseate with having lately dined; And then -- I standing there abashed -- he said: 'The house of Giustiniani all lie dead.' It scarcely seemed to touch me (I had led A grated life so long) that oversea My kinsmen in their knighthood should lie dead, Nor that this sudden death should set me free, 71 Me, the last Giustiniani -- well, what then? A monk! -- The Giustiniani had been men. So when the Abbot said: 'The state decrees That you, the latest scion of the house Which died in vain for Venice overseas, Should be exempted from your sacred vows, And straightway, when you leave this cloistered place, Take wife, and add new honors to the race,' I hardly heard him -- would have crept again To the warped missal -- but he snatched a sword And girded me, and all the heart of men Rushed through me, as he laughed and hailed me lord, And, with my hand upon the hilt, I cried, 'Viva San Marco!' like my kin who died. But, straightway, when, a new-made knight, I stood Beneath the bridal arch, and saw you come, A certain monkish warping of the blood Ran up and struck the man's heart in me dumb; I breathed an Ave to our Lady's grace, And did not dare to look upon your face. And when we swept the waters side by side, With timbrelled gladness clashing on the air, I trembled at your image in the tide, And warded off the devil with a prayer, Still seeming in a golden dream to move Through fiendish labyrinths of forbidden love. But when they left us, and we stood alone, I, the last Giustiniani, face to face With your unvisioned beauty, made my own In this, the last strange bridal of our race, And, looking up at last to meet your eyes, Saw in their depths the star of love arise, Ah, then the monk's garb shrivelled from my heart, And left me man to face your womanhood. Without a prayer to keep our lips apart I turned about and kissed you where you stood, 72 And gathering all the gladness of my life Into a new-found word, I called you 'wife!' ~ Edith Wharton,

97: To The Royal Society (Excerpts) Philosophy the great and only heir Of all that human knowledge which has bin Unforfeited by man's rebellious sin, Though full of years he do appear, (Philosophy, I say, and call it, he, For whatso'ere the painter's fancy be, It a male-virtue seems to me) Has still been kept in nonage till of late, Nor manag'd or enjoy'd his vast estate: Three or four thousand years one would have thought, To ripeness and perfection might have brought A science so well bred and nurst, And of such hopeful parts too at the first. But, oh, the guardians and the tutors then, (Some negligent, and some ambitious men) Would ne'er consent to set him free, Or his own natural powers to let him see, Lest that should put an end to their authority. That his own business he might quite forget, They' amus'd him with the sports of wanton wit, With the desserts of poetry they fed him, Instead of solid meats t' encrease his force; Instead of vigorous exercise they led him Into the pleasant labyrinths of ever-fresh discourse: Instead of carrying him to see The riches which do hoarded for him lie In Nature's endless treasury, They chose his eye to entertain (His curious but not covetous eye) With painted scenes, and pageants of the brain. Some few exalted spirits this latter age has shown, That labour'd to assert the liberty (From guardians, who were now usurpers grown) Of this old minor still, captiv'd Philosophy; But 'twas rebellion call'd to fight For such a long oppressed right. Bacon at last, a mighty man, arose Whom a wise King and Nature chose 88 Lord Chancellor of both their laws, And boldly undertook the injur'd pupil's cause. Authority, which did a body boast, Though 'twas but air condens'd, and stalk'd about, Like some old giant's more gigantic ghost, To terrify the learned rout With the plain magic of true reason's light, He chas'd out of our sight, Nor suffer'd living men to be misled By the vain shadows of the dead: To graves, from whence it rose, the conquer'd phantom fled; He broke that monstrous god which stood In midst of th' orchard, and the whole did claim, Which with a useless scythe of wood, And something else not worth a name, (Both vast for show, yet neither fit Or to defend, or to beget; Ridiculous and senseless terrors!) made Children and superstitious men afraid. The orchard's open now, and free; Bacon has broke that scarecrow deity; Come, enter, all that will, Behold the ripen'd fruit, come gather now your fill. Yet still, methinks, we fain would be Catching at the forbidden tree, We would be like the Deity, When truth and falshood, good and evil, we Without the senses aid within our selves would see; For 'tis God only who can find All Nature in his mind. From words, which are but pictures of the thought, Though we our thoughts from them perversely drew To things, the mind's right object, he it brought, Like foolish birds to painted grapes we flew; He sought and gather'd for our use the true; And when on heaps the chosen bunches lay, He press'd them wisely the mechanic way, Till all their juice did in one vessel join, Ferment into a nourishment divine, The thirsty soul's refreshing wine. 89 Who to the life an exact piece would make, Must not from other's work a copy take; No, not from Rubens or Vandyke; Much less content himself to make it like Th' ideas and the images which lie In his own fancy, or his memory. No, he before his sight must place The natural and living face; The real object must command Each judgment of his eye, and motion of his hand. From these and all long errors of the way, In which our wand'ring predecessors went, And like th' old Hebrews many years did stray In deserts but of small extent; Bacon, like Moses, led us forth at last, The barren wilderness he past, Did on the very border stand Of the blest promis'd land, And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit, Saw it himself, and shew'd us it. But life did never to one man allow Time to discover worlds, and conquer too; Nor can so short a line sufficient be To fathom the vast depths of Nature's sea: The work he did we ought t' admire, And were unjust if we should more require From his few years, divided 'twixt th' excess Of low affliction, and high happiness. For who on things remote can fix his sight, That's always in a triumph, or a fight? From you, great champions, we expect to get These spacious countries but discover'd yet; Countries where yet in stead of Nature, we Her images and idols worshipp'd see: These large and wealthy regions to subdue, Though learning has whole armies at command, Quarter'd about in every land, A better troop she ne're together drew. Methinks, like Gideon's little band, God with design has pick'd out you, To do these noble wonders by a few: 90 When the whole host he saw, they are (said he) Too many to o'ercome for me; And now he chooses out his men, Much in the way that he did then: Not those many whom he found Idly extended on the ground, To drink with their dejected head The stream just so as by their mouths it fled: No, but those few who took the waters up, And made of their laborious hands the cup. ... With courage and success you the bold work begin; Your cradle has not idle bin: None e're but Hercules and you could be At five years age worthy a history. And ne're did fortune better yet Th' historian to the story fit: As you from all old errors free And purge the body of philosophy; So from all modern follies he Has vindicated eloquence and wit. His candid style like a clean stream does slide, And his bright fancy all the way Does like the sun-shine in it play; It does like Thames, the best of rivers, glide, Where the god does not rudely overturn, But gently pour the crystal urn, And with judicious hand does the whole current guide. 'T has all the beauties Nature can impart, And all the comely dress without the paint of art. ~ Abraham Cowley,

98: The Rape Of The Lock: Canto 2 Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames. Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone, But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone. On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those: Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck. Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains, And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. With hairy springes we the birds betray, Slight lines of hair surprise the finney prey, Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair. Th' advent'rous baron the bright locks admir'd; He saw, he wish'd, and to the prize aspir'd. Resolv'd to win, he meditates the way, By force to ravish, or by fraud betray; For when success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends. For this, ere Phœbus rose, he had implor'd Propitious Heav'n, and ev'ry pow'r ador'd, But chiefly love--to love an altar built, Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. There lay three garters, half a pair of gloves; 225 And all the trophies of his former loves; With tender billet-doux he lights the pyre, And breathes three am'rous sighs to raise the fire. Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent eyes Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize: The pow'rs gave ear, and granted half his pray'r, The rest, the winds dispers'd in empty air. But now secure the painted vessel glides, The sun-beams trembling on the floating tides, While melting music steals upon the sky, And soften'd sounds along the waters die. Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, Belinda smil'd, and all the world was gay. All but the Sylph--with careful thoughts opprest, Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast. He summons strait his denizens of air; The lucid squadrons round the sails repair: Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, That seem'd but zephyrs to the train beneath. Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold, Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold. Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, Their fluid bodies half dissolv'd in light, Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, Thin glitt'ring textures of the filmy dew; Dipp'd in the richest tincture of the skies, Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, While ev'ry beam new transient colours flings, Colours that change whene'er they wave their wings. Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, Superior by the head, was Ariel plac'd; His purple pinions op'ning to the sun, He rais'd his azure wand, and thus begun. "Ye Sylphs and Sylphids, to your chief give ear! Fays, Fairies, Genii, Elves, and Dæmons, hear! Ye know the spheres and various tasks assign'd By laws eternal to th' aerial kind. Some in the fields of purest æther play, And bask and whiten in the blaze of day. Some guide the course of wand'ring orbs on high, 226 Or roll the planets through the boundless sky. Some less refin'd, beneath the moon's pale light Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night, Or suck the mists in grosser air below, Or dip their pinions in the painted bow, Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main, Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain. Others on earth o'er human race preside, Watch all their ways, and all their actions guide: Of these the chief the care of nations own, And guard with arms divine the British throne. "Our humbler province is to tend the fair, Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care. To save the powder from too rude a gale, Nor let th' imprison'd essences exhale, To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs, To steal from rainbows e'er they drop in show'rs A brighter wash; to curl their waving hairs, Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs; Nay oft, in dreams, invention we bestow, To change a flounce, or add a furbelow. "This day, black omens threat the brightest fair That e'er deserv'd a watchful spirit's care; Some dire disaster, or by force, or slight, But what, or where, the fates have wrapt in night. Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour, or her new brocade, Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball; Or whether Heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall. Haste, then, ye spirits! to your charge repair: The flutt'ring fan be Zephyretta's care; The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign; And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine; Do thou, Crispissa, tend her fav'rite lock; Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock. "To fifty chosen Sylphs, of special note, We trust th' important charge, the petticoat: 227 Oft have we known that sev'n-fold fence to fail, Though stiff with hoops, and arm'd with ribs of whale. Form a strong line about the silver bound, And guard the wide circumference around. "Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large, Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his sins, Be stopp'd in vials, or transfix'd with pins; Or plung'd in lakes of bitter washes lie, Or wedg'd whole ages in a bodkin's eye: Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain, While clogg'd he beats his silken wings in vain; Or alum styptics with contracting pow'r Shrink his thin essence like a rivell'd flow'r. Or, as Ixion fix'd, the wretch shall feel The giddy motion of the whirling mill, In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow, And tremble at the sea that froths below!" He spoke; the spirits from the sails descend; Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend, Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair, Some hang upon the pendants of her ear; With beating hearts the dire event they wait, Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate. ~ Alexander Pope,

99: The House Of Dust: Part 03: 10: Letter From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees The soft blue starlight through the one small window, The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,— And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly. It is so long, indeed, since I have written,— Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,— That these first words I write seem cold and strange. Are you the man I knew, or have you altered? Altered, of course—just as I too have altered— And whether towards each other, or more apart, We cannot say . . . I've just re-read your letter— Not through forgetfulness, but more for pleasure— Pondering much on all you say in it Of mystic consciousness—divine conversion— The sense of oneness with the infinite,— Faith in the world, its beauty, and its purpose . . . Well, you believe one must have faith, in some sort, If one's to talk through this dark world contented. But is the world so dark? Or is it rather Our own brute minds,—in which we hurry, trembling, Through streets as yet unlighted? This, I think. You have been always, let me say, "romantic,"— Eager for color, for beauty, soon discontented With a world of dust and stones and flesh too ailing: Even before the question grew to problem And drove you bickering into metaphysics, You met on lower planes the same great dragon, Seeking release, some fleeting satisfaction, In strange aesthetics . . . You tried, as I remember, One after one, strange cults, and some, too, morbid, The cruder first, more violent sensations, Gorgeously carnal things, conceived and acted With splendid animal thirst . . . Then, by degrees,— Savoring all more delicate gradations In all that hue and tone may play on flesh, 265 Or thought on brain,—you passed, if I may say so, From red and scarlet through morbid greens to mauve. Let us regard ourselves, you used to say, As instruments of music, whereon our lives Will play as we desire: and let us yield These subtle bodies and subtler brains and nerves To all experience plays . . . And so you went From subtle tune to subtler, each heard once, Twice or thrice at the most, tiring of each; And closing one by one your doors, drew in Slowly, through darkening labyrinths of feeling, Towards the central chamber . . . Which now you've reached. What, then's, the secret of this ultimate chamber— Or innermost, rather? If I see it clearly It is the last, and cunningest, resort Of one who has found this world of dust and flesh,— This world of lamentations, death, injustice, Sickness, humiliation, slow defeat, Bareness, and ugliness, and iteration,— Too meaningless; or, if it has a meaning, Too tiresomely insistent on one meaning: Futility . . . This world, I hear you saying,— With lifted chin, and arm in outflung gesture, Coldly imperious,—this transient world, What has it then to give, if not containing Deep hints of nobler worlds? We know its beauties,— Momentary and trivial for the most part, Perceived through flesh, passing like flesh away,— And know how much outweighed they are by darkness. We are like searchers in a house of darkness, A house of dust; we creep with little lanterns, Throwing our tremulous arcs of light at random, Now here, now there, seeing a plane, an angle, An edge, a curve, a wall, a broken stairway Leading to who knows what; but never seeing The whole at once . . . We grope our way a little, And then grow tired. No matter what we touch, Dust is the answer—dust: dust everywhere. If this were all—what were the use, you ask? But this is not: for why should we be seeking, 266 Why should we bring this need to seek for beauty, To lift our minds, if there were only dust? This is the central chamber you have come to: Turning your back to the world, until you came To this deep room, and looked through rose-stained windows, And saw the hues of the world so sweetly changed. Well, in a measure, so only do we all. I am not sure that you can be refuted. At the very last we all put faith in something,— You in this ghost that animates your world, This ethical ghost,—and I, you'll say, in reason,— Or sensuous beauty,—or in my secret self . . . Though as for that you put your faith in these, As much as I do—and then, forsaking reason,— Ascending, you would say, to intuition,— You predicate this ghost of yours, as well. Of course, you might have argued,—and you should have,— That no such deep appearance of design Could shape our world without entailing purpose: For can design exist without a purpose? Without conceiving mind? . . . We are like children Who find, upon the sands, beside a sea, Strange patterns drawn,—circles, arcs, ellipses, Moulded in sand . . . Who put them there, we wonder? Did someone draw them here before we came? Or was it just the sea?—We pore upon them, But find no answer—only suppositions. And if these perfect shapes are evidence Of immanent mind, it is but circumstantial: We never come upon him at his work, He never troubles us. He stands aloof— Well, if he stands at all: is not concerned With what we are or do. You, if you like, May think he broods upon us, loves us, hates us, Conceives some purpose of us. In so doing You see, without much reason, will in law. I am content to say, 'this world is ordered, Happily so for us, by accident: We go our ways untroubled save by laws Of natural things.' Who makes the more assumption? 267 If we were wise—which God knows we are not— (Notice I call on God!) we'd plumb this riddle Not in the world we see, but in ourselves. These brains of ours—these delicate spinal clusters— Have limits: why not learn them, learn their cravings? Which of the two minds, yours or mine, is sound? Yours, which scorned the world that gave it freedom, Until you managed to see that world as omen,— Or mine, which likes the world, takes all for granted, Sorrow as much as joy, and death as life?— You lean on dreams, and take more credit for it. I stand alone . . . Well, I take credit, too. You find your pleasure in being at one with all things— Fusing in lambent dream, rising and falling As all things rise and fall . . . I do that too— With reservations. I find more varied pleasure In understanding: and so find beauty even In this strange dream of yours you call the truth. Well, I have bored you. And it's growing late. For household news—what have you heard, I wonder? You must have heard that Paul was dead, by this time— Of spinal cancer. Nothing could be done— We found it out too late. His death has changed me, Deflected much of me that lived as he lived, Saddened me, slowed me down. Such things will happen, Life is composed of them; and it seems wisdom To see them clearly, meditate upon them, And understand what things flow out of them. Otherwise, all goes on here much as always. Why won't you come and see us, in the spring, And bring old times with you?—If you could see me Sitting here by the window, watching Venus Go down behind my neighbor's poplar branches,— Just where you used to sit,—I'm sure you'd come. This year, they say, the springtime will be early. ~ Conrad Potter Aiken,

100: Circe The sun drops luridly into the west; darkness has raised her arms to draw him down before the time, not waiting as of wont till he has come to her behind the sea; and the smooth waves grow sullen in the gloom and wear their threatening purple; more and more the plain of waters sways and seems to rise convexly from its level of the shores; and low dull thunder rolls along the beach: there will be storm at last, storm, glorious storm. Oh welcome, welcome, though it rend my bowers, scattering my blossomed roses like the dust, splitting the shrieking branches, tossing down my riotous vines with their young half-tinged grapes like small round amethysts or beryls strung tumultuously in clusters, though it sate its ravenous spite among my goodliest pines standing there round and still against the sky that makes blue lakes between their sombre tufts, or harry from my silvery olive slopes some hoary king whose gnarled fantastic limbs wear crooked armour of a thousand years; though it will hurl high on my flowery shores the hostile wave that rives at the poor sward and drags it down the slants, that swirls its foam over my terraces, shakes their firm blocks of great bright marbles into tumbled heaps, and makes my preached and mossy labyrinths, where the small odorous blossoms grow like stars strewn in the milky way, a briny marsh. What matter? let it come and bring me change, breaking the sickly sweet monotony. I am too weary of this long bright calm; always the same blue sky, always the sea the same blue perfect likeness of the sky, one rose to match the other that has waned, to-morrow's dawn the twin of yesterday's; 57 and every night the ceaseless crickets chirp the same long joy and the late strain of birds repeats their strain of all the even month; and changelessly the petty plashing surfs bubble their chiming burden round the stones; dusk after dusk brings the same languid trance upon the shadowy hills, and in the fields the waves of fireflies come and go the same, making the very flash of light and stir vex one like dronings of the spinning wheel. Give me some change. Must life be only sweet, all honey-pap as babes would have their food? And, if my heart must always be adrowse in a hush of stagnant sunshine, give me then something outside me stirring; let the storm break up the sluggish beauty, let it fall beaten below the feet of passionate winds, and then to-morrow waken jubilant in a new birth: let me see subtle joy of anguish and of hopes, of change and growth. What fate is mine who, far apart from pains and fears and turmoils of the cross-grained world, dwell, like a lonely god, in a charmed isle where I am first and only, and, like one who should love poisonous savours more than mead, long for a tempest on me and grow sick of resting, and divine free carelessness! Oh me, I am a woman, not a god; yea, those who tend me even are more than I, my nymphs who have the souls of flowers and birds singing and blossoming immortally. Ah me! these love a day and laugh again, and loving, laughing, find a full content; but I know nought of peace, and have not loved. Where is my love? Does some one cry for me, not knowing whom he calls? does his soul cry for mine to grow beside it, grow in it? does he beseech the gods to give him me, 58 the one unknown rare woman by whose side no other woman, thrice as beautiful, should once seem fair to him; to whose voice heard in any common tones no sweetest sound of love made melody on silver lutes, or singing like Apollo's when the gods grow pale with happy listening, might be peered for making music to him; whom once found there will be no more seeking anything? Oh love, oh love, oh love, art not yet come out of the waiting shadows into life? art not yet come after so many years that I have longed for thee? Come! I am here. Not yet. For surely I should feel a sound of his far answering, if now in the world he sought me who will seek me--Oh ye gods will he not seek me? Is it all a dream? will there be never never such a man? will there be only these, these bestial things who wallow in my styes, or mop and mow among the trees, or munch in pens and byres, or snarl and filch behind their wattled coops; these things who had believed that they were men? Nay but he will come. Why am I so fair, and marvellously minded, and with sight which flashes suddenly on hidden things, as the gods see who do not need to look? why wear I in my eyes that stronger power than basilisks, whose gaze can only kill, to draw men's souls to me to live or die as I would have them? why am I given pride which yet longs to be broken, and this scorn cruel and vengeful for the lesser men who meet the smiles I waste for lack of him and grow too glad? why am I who I am, but for the sake of him whom fate will send one day to be my master utterly, that he should take me, the desire of all, whom only he in the world could bow to him? 59 Oh sunlike glory of pale glittering hairs, bright as the filmy wires my weavers take to make me golden gauzes; oh deep eyes, darker and softer than the bluest dusk of August violets, darker and deep like crystal fathomless lakes in summer noons; oh sad sweet longing smile; oh lips that tempt my very self to kisses; oh round cheeks, tenderly radiant with the even flush of pale smoothed coral; perfect lovely face answering my gaze from out this fleckless pool; wonder of glossy shoulders, chiselled limbs; should I be so your lover as I am, drinking an exquisite joy to watch you thus in all a hundred changes through the day, but that I love you for him till he comes, but that my beauty means his loving it? Oh, look! a speck on this side of the sun, coming--yes, coming with the rising wind that frays the darkening cloud-wrack on the verge and in a little while will leap abroad, spattering the sky with rushing blacknesses, dashing the hissing mountainous waves at the stars. 'Twill drive me that black speck a shuddering hulk caught in the buffeting waves, dashed impotent from ridge to ridge, will drive it in the night with that dull jarring crash upon the beach, and the cries for help and the cries of fear and hope. And then to-morrow they will thoughtfully, with grave low voices, count their perils up, and thank the gods for having let them live, and tell of wives or mothers in their homes, and children, who would have such loss in them that they must weep, and may be I weep too, with fancy of the weepings had they died. And the next morrow they will feel their ease and sigh with sleek content, or laugh elate, tasting delights of rest and revelling, music and perfumes, joyaunce for the eyes 60 of rosy faces and luxurious pomps, the savour of the banquet and the glow and fragrance of the wine-cup; and they'll talk how good it is to house in palaces out of the storms and struggles, and what luck strewed their good ship on our accessless coast. Then the next day the beast in them will wake, and one will strike and bicker, and one swell with puffed up greatness, and one gibe and strut in apish pranks, and one will line his sleeve with pilfered booties, and one snatch the gems out of the carven goblets as they pass, one will grow mad with fever of the wine, and one will sluggishly besot himself, and one be lewd, and one be gluttonous; and I shall sickly look, and loathe them all. Oh my rare cup! my pure and crystal cup, with not one speck of colour to make false the passing lights, or flaw to make them swerve! My cup of Truth! How the lost fools will laugh and thank me for my boon, as if I gave some momentary flash of the gods' joy, to drink where I have drunk and touch the touch of my lips with their own! Aye, let them touch. Too cruel am I? And the silly beasts, crowding around me when I pass their way, glower on me and, although they love me still, (with their poor sorts of love such as they could,) call wrath and vengeance to their humid eyes to scare me into mercy, or creep near with piteous fawnings, supplicating bleats. Too cruel? Did I choose them what they are? or change them from themselves by poisonous charms? But any draught, pure water, natural wine, out of my cup, revealed them to themselves and to each other. Change? there was no change; only disguise gone from them unawares: and had there been one right true man of them he would have drunk the draught as I had drunk, and stood unchanged, and looked me in the eyes, 61 abashing me before him. But these things-why, which of them has even shown the kind of some one nobler beast? Pah, yapping wolves and pitiless stealthy wild-cats, curs and apes and gorging swine and slinking venomous snakes all false and ravenous and sensual brutes that shame the Earth that bore them, these they are. Lo, lo! the shivering blueness darting forth on half the heavens, and the forked thin fire strikes to the sea: and hark, the sudden voice that rushes through the trees before the storm, and shuddering of the branches. Yet the sky is blue against them still, and early stars glimmer above the pine-tops; and the air clings faint and motionless around me here. Another burst of flame--and the black speck shows in the glare, lashed onwards. It were well I bade make ready for our guests to-night. ~ Augusta Davies Webster,

101: Les Phares (The Beacons) Rubens, fleuve d'oubli, jardin de la paresse, Oreiller de chair fraîche où l'on ne peut aimer, Mais où la vie afflue et s'agite sans cesse, Comme l'air dans le ciel et la mer dans la mer; Léonard de Vinci, miroir profond et sombre, Où des anges charmants, avec un doux souris Tout chargé de mystère, apparaissent à l'ombre Des glaciers et des pins qui ferment leur pays; Rembrandt, triste hôpital tout rempli de murmures, Et d'un grand crucifix décoré seulement, Où la prière en pleurs s'exhale des ordures, Et d'un rayon d'hiver traversé brusquement; Michel-Ange, lieu vague où l'on voit des Hercules Se mêler à des Christs, et se lever tout droits Des fantômes puissants qui dans les crépuscules Déchirent leur suaire en étirant leurs doigts; Colères de boxeur, impudences de faune, Toi qui sus ramasser la beauté des goujats, Grand coeur gonflé d'orgueil, homme débile et jaune, Puget, mélancolique empereur des forçats; Watteau, ce carnaval où bien des coeurs illustres, Comme des papillons, errent en flamboyant, Décors frais et légers éclairés par des lustres Qui versent la folie à ce bal tournoyant; Goya, cauchemar plein de choses inconnues, De foetus qu'on fait cuire au milieu des sabbats, De vieilles au miroir et d'enfants toutes nues, Pour tenter les démons ajustant bien leurs bas; Delacroix, lac de sang hanté des mauvais anges, Ombragé par un bois de sapins toujours vert, Où, sous un ciel chagrin, des fanfares étranges Passent, comme un soupir étouffé de Weber; 345 Ces malédictions, ces blasphèmes, ces plaintes, Ces extases, ces cris, ces pleurs, ces Te Deum, Sont un écho redit par mille labyrinthes; C'est pour les coeurs mortels un divin opium! C'est un cri répété par mille sentinelles, Un ordre renvoyé par mille porte-voix; C'est un phare allumé sur mille citadelles, Un appel de chasseurs perdus dans les grands bois! Car c'est vraiment, Seigneur, le meilleur témoignage Que nous puissions donner de notre dignité Que cet ardent sanglot qui roule d'âge en âge Et vient mourir au bord de votre éternité! The Beacons Rubens, river of oblivion, garden of indolence, Pillow of cool flesh where one cannot love, But where life moves and whirls incessantly Like the air in the sky and the tide in the sea; Leonardo, dark, unfathomable mirror, In which charming angels, with sweet smiles Full of mystery, appear in the shadow Of the glaciers and pines that enclose their country; Rembrandt, gloomy hospital filled with murmuring, Ornamented only with a large crucifix, Lit for a moment by a wintry sun, Where from rot and ordure rise tearful prayers; Angelo, shadowy place where Hercules' are seen Mingling with Christs, and rising straight up, Powerful phantoms, which in the twilights Rend their winding-sheets with outstretched fingers; Boxer's wrath, shamelessness of Fauns, you whose genius Showed to us the beauty in a villain, Great heart filled with pride, sickly, yellow man, Puget, melancholy emperor of galley slaves; 346 Watteau, carnival where the loves of many famous hearts Flutter capriciously like butterflies with gaudy wings; Cool, airy settings where the candelabras' light Touches with madness the couples whirling in the dance Goya, nightmare full of unknown things, Of fetuses roasted in the midst of witches' sabbaths, Of old women at the mirror and of nude children, Tightening their hose to tempt the demons; Delacroix, lake of blood haunted by bad angels, Shaded by a wood of fir-trees, ever green, Where, under a gloomy sky, strange fanfares Pass, like a stifled sigh from Weber; These curses, these blasphemies, these lamentations, These Te Deums, these ecstasies, these cries, these tears, Are an echo repeated by a thousand labyrinths; They are for mortal hearts a divine opium. They are a cry passed on by a thousand sentinels, An order re-echoed through a thousand megaphones; They are a beacon lighted on a thousand citadels, A call from hunters lost deep in the woods! For truly, Lord, the clearest proofs That we can give of our nobility, Are these impassioned sobs that through the ages roll, And die away upon the shore of your Eternity. — Translated by William Aggeler The Beacons Rubens, the grove of case, Nepenthe's river Couch of cool flesh, where Love may never be, But where life ever flows and seems to quiver As air in heaven, or, in the sea, the sea. Da Vinci, dusky mirror and profound, 347 Where angels, smiling mystery, appear, Shaded by pines and glaciers, that surround And seem to shut their country in the rear. Rembrandt, sad hospital of murmurs, where Adorned alone by one great crucifix, From offal-heaps exhales the weeping prayer That winter shoots a sunbeam to transfix. Vague region, Michelangelo, where Titans Are mixed with Christs: and strong ghosts rise, in crowds To stand bolt upright in the gloom that lightens, With gristly talons tearing through their shrouds. Rage of the boxer, mischief of the faun, Extracting beauty out of blackguards' looks — The heart how proud, the man how pinched and drawn — Puget the mournful emperor of crooks! Watteau, the carnival, where famous hearts Go flitting by like butterflies that burn, While through gay scenes each chandelier imparts A madness to the dancers as they turn. Goya's a nightmare full of things unguessed, Of foeti stewed on nights of witches' revels. Crones ogle mirrors; children scarcely dressed, Adjust their hose to tantalise the devils. A lake of gore where fallen angels dwell Is Delacroix, by firwoods ever fair, Where under fretful skies strange fanfares swell Like Weber's sighs and heartbeats in the air. These curses, blasphemies, and lamentations, These ecstasies, tears, cries and soaring psalms — Through endless mazes, their reverberations Bring, to our mortal hearts, divinest balms. A thousand sentinels repeat the cry. A thousand trumpets echo. Beacon-tossed A thousand summits flare it through the sky, 348 A call of hunters in the jungle lost. And certainly this is the most sublime Proof of our worth and value, Oh Divinity, That this great sob rolls on through ageless time To die upon the shores of your infinity. — Translated by Roy Campbell Les Phares Rubens, great river of oblivion, garden of ease, cool flesh no lovers crave, but where the floods of life unceasing run, like wind on wind or wave on ocean wave; Da Vinci — deep and sombre looking-glass enchanting angels haunt, with subtle smile all mystery-charged, while shadows dark amass and pines and ice-cliffs bound their prison-isle; Rembrandt — a piteous murmuring hospital where ordure streams in tears and orisons, stripped to the crucifix on one bare wall illumed by one chill dart from wintry suns; vast desert void, — o Michael Angelo! — where TItans mix with Christs, and twilight clouds where mighty spectres rise up stark and slow — whose opening fingers rend their mouldered shrouds; the rage of boxers and the satyrs' lust — thou who hast found a grace in toiling knaves, great heart, in a poor bilious body thrust — Puget, the gloomy king of galley-slaves; Watteau — bright carnival, where courtly pairs, like butterflies in satin, flit about; flaming in misty groves 'neath resin-flares which pour their madness on the whirling rout; 349 Goya, who in a nightmare-horde unfurls hags boiling foetuses in witches' milk, beldames before the glass and naked girls for demon-lovers tightening hose of silk; and Delacroix — dark lake of blood forlorn 'mid fadeless firs, where evil angels fare, a sullen sky wherefrom a faery horn floats, faint as Oberon's horn through muffling air; these curses, blasphemies and these laments, these ecstasies, cries, tears, hossanas from a thousand caverns, form one echo, whence — death-doomed, we draw a heavenly opium! theirs is a blast a thousand sentinels pass on with their trumpets in a thousand moods; a torch upon a thousand citadels, a hail from hunters lost in pathless woods! for truly, 'tis the mightiest voice our souls command, o Lord, to prove their worth to Thee: this ardent sob which down the ages rolls and dies against Thy verge, Eternity! — Translated by Lewis Piaget Shanks The Beacons Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth, Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love, But where life throngs and seethes without cease Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea. Leonardo da Vinci, sinister mirror, Where these charming angels with sweet smiles Charged with mystery, appear in shadows Of glaciers and pines that close off the country. Rembrandt, sad hospital full of murmurs 350 Decorated only with a crucifix, Where tearful prayers arise from filth And a ray of winter light crosses brusquely. Michelangelo, a wasteland where one sees Hercules Mingling with Christ, and rising in a straight line Powerful phantoms that in the twilight Tear their shrouds with stretching fingers. Rage of a boxer, impudence of a faun, You who gather together the beauty of the boor, Your big heart swelling with pride at man defective and yellow, Puget, melancholy emperor of the poor. Watteau, this carnival of illustrious hearts Like butterflies, errant and flamboyant, In the cool decor, with delicate lightning in the chandeliers Crossing the madness of the twirling ball. Goya, nightmare of unknown things, Fetuses roasting on the spit, Harridans in the mirror and naked children Tempting demons by loosening their stockings. Delacroix, haunted lake of blood and evil angels, Shaded by evergreen forests of dark firs, Where, under a grieving sky, strange fanfares Pass, like a gasping breath of Weber. These curses, these blasphemies, these moans, These ecstasies, these tears, these cries of 'Te Deum' Are an echo reiterated in a thousand mazes; It is for mortal hearts a divine opium! It is a cry repeated by a thousand sentinels, An order returned by a thousand megaphones, A beacon lighting a thousand citadels A summons to hunters lost in the wide woods. For truly, O Lord, what better testimony Can we give to our dignity Than this burning sob that rolls from age to age 351 And comes to die on the shore of Your eternity? Translated by William A. Sigler ~ Charles Baudelaire,

--- IN CHAPTERS (in Dictionaries, in Quotes, in Chapters)

5

   2 Integral Yoga
   1 Poetry
   1 Mythology
   1 Alchemy


   3 Jorge Luis Borges
   2 The Mother
   2 Jorge Luis Borges


   2 Selected Fictions

1.04_-_BOOK_THE_FOURTH, #Metamorphoses, #Ovid, #unset   In arches meet, and lend a baleful shade,   Thro' silent Labyrinths.a passage lies   To mournful regions, and infernal skies.

1.12_-_The_Sociology_of_Superman, #On the Way to Supermanhood, #Satprem, #Integral Yoga      The first wave of this new consciousness is quite visible. It is perfectly chaotic. It has caught human beings unawares. Its ebb and flow can be seen everywhere: men have been seized with errantry, or aberrancy. They have set out in search of something they did not understand, but which pushed and prodded them inside; they have taken to the road to anywhere, knocked on every door, the good as well as the bad, broken through walls and windmills, or, suddenly seized with laughter, they have left bag and baggage and said goodbye to the old establishment. It is natural that the first reaction is aberrant, since by definition it leaves the old circuit, as the primate suddenly left the instinctive wisdom of the herd. Each transition to a higher equilibrium is at first a dis-equilibrium and total disruption of the old equilibrium. Therefore, these apprentice supermen, who do not even know each other, will more likely be found among the unorthodox elements of society, the so-called misfits, the bastards, the recalcitrants of the general prison, the rebels against they don't know what except they have had enough of it. They are the new crusaders without a crusade, the partisans without a party, the “antis” who are so much against that they no longer want any against or for; they want something else altogether, without plus or minus, offensive or defensive, without black, good, yes or no, something completely different and completely free from all the twists and turns of the Machine, which still would like to catch them in the nets of its negations as in the nets of its affirmations. Or else, at the opposite end of the spectrum, these apprentice supermen will perhaps be found among those who have traveled the long road of the mind, its Labyrinths. its endless grind, its answers that answer nothing, that raise another question and still another, its solutions that solve nothing, and its whole painful round – its sudden futility at the end of the road, after a thousand questions and a thousand triumphs ever ruined, that little cry, at the end, of a man gaping at nothing and suddenly becoming like a helpless child again, as if all those days and years and labor had never been, as if nothing had happened, not a single real second in thirty years! These too, then, set out on the road. There, too, there is a crack for the Possible.

1955-10-19_-_The_rhythms_of_time_-_The_lotus_of_knowledge_and_perfection_-_Potential_knowledge_-_The_teguments_of_the_soul_-_Shastra_and_the_Gurus_direct_teaching_-_He_who_chooses_the_Infinite..., #Questions And Answers 1955, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga      So there are some who follow a very straight path and arrive very quickly; there are others who love Labyrinths. it takes longer. But the end is there, the goal is there. I know by experience that there isnt one being who, were it only once in his life, has had a great urge towards it doesnt matter how he calls itlet us say the Divine for facility of speech, who is not sure to arrive; even if he turns his back on Him at a certain time, its of no importancehe is sure to arrive. He will have to struggle more or less, will have more or less difficulty, but he is sure to succeed one day. Its a soul that has been chosen, it has become conscious because its hour has comeonce the hour has come, well, the result will follow more or less quickly. You can do this in a few months; you can do it in some years; you can do it in some livesbut you will do it.

Agenda_Vol_3, #The Mothers Agenda, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga   The other being doesn't yet have the power to direct (how shall I put it?)... to openly and consciously   direct your destiny. That's why you might still find yourself wandering in Labyrinths.   For the moment I am in a seemingly neutral state - all I can say is, "We'll see." There is no definite

BOOK_I._--_PART_I._COSMIC_EVOLUTION, #The Secret Doctrine, #H P Blavatsky, #Theosophy   it is not so. The learned Oxford philologist himself confesses the truth by saying that "Though . . . we   see still standing the Pyramids, and the ruins of temples and Labyrinths. their walls   [[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------