“My external sensations are no less private to myself than are my thoughts or my feelings. In either case my experience falls within my own circle, a circle closed on the outside; and, with all its elements alike, every sphere is opaque to the others which surround it. . . . In brief, regarded as an existence which appears in a soul, the whole world for each is peculiar and private to that soul.”
“To whom I owe the leaping delightThat quickens my senses in our wakingtimeAnd the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,the breathing in unison.Of lovers whose bodies smell of each otherWho think the same thoughts without need of speech,And babble the same speech without need of meaning...No peevish winter wind shall chillNo sullen tropic sun shall witherThe roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours onlyBut this dedication is for others to read:These are private words addressed to you in public.”
“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
“There's no vocabulary For love within a family, love that's lived in But not looked at, love within the light of which All else is seen, the love within which All other love finds speech. This love is silent.”
“What have we given?My friend, blood shaking my heartThe awful daring of a moment's surrenderWhich an age of prudence can never retractBy this, and this only, we have existed.”
“In my beginning is my end.”
“In my end is my beginning.”