"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. / These, our bodies, possessed by light. / Tell me we'll never get used to it."
— Richard Siken (Crush)

"Goodbye, said the fox. And now here is my secret, a very simple secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"People where you live," the little prince said, "grow five thousand roses in one garden... yet they don't find what they're looking for...

"They don't find it," I answered.

"And yet what they're looking for could be found in a single rose, or a little water..."

"Of course," I answered.

And the little prince added, "But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart." "
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"'I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?'

'It is an act too often neglected,' said the fox. 'It means to establish ties.'

'To establish ties?'

'Just that,' said the fox. 'To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...'"
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Le Petit Prince)

"The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings." -from the Fox-"
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"'You are not at all like my rose,' he said. 'As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.'

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

'You are beautiful, but you are empty,' he went on. 'One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you — the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.'"
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Le Petit Prince)

""I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me...""
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"You become responsible forever for what you have tamed."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince)

"It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are."
— e.e. cummings

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"
— e.e. cummings

"To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting."
— e.e. cummings

"the earth laughs in flowers."
— e.e. cummings

"nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

-excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems"
— e.e. cummings

"...life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis"
— e.e. cummings

"since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis"
— e.e. cummings

"I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more."
— e.e. cummings

"may i feel said he
(i'll squeal said she
just once said he)
it's fun said she

(may i touch said he
how much said she
a lot said he)
why not said she

(let's go said he
not too far said she
what's too far said he
where you are said she)

may i stay said he
(which way said she
like this said he
if you kiss said she

may i move said he
is it love said she)
if you're willing said he
(but you're killing said she

but it's life said he
but your wife said she
now said he)
ow said she

(tiptop said he
don't stop said she
oh no said he)
go slow said she

(cccome?said he
ummm said she)
you're divine!said he
(you are Mine said she)"
— e.e. cummings

"Such was a poet and shall be and is
-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand."
— e.e. cummings

"Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question."
— e.e. cummings

"most people are perfectly afraid of silence"
— e.e. cummings

"Now the ears of my ears are awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened."
— e.e. cummings

"Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death"
— e.e. cummings

"Here's to opening and upward...
and to yourself and up with you and up with and up with laughing."
— e.e. cummings

"i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
--i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
--i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)"
— e.e. cummings

"I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air."
— e.e. cummings

"Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness."
— Allen Ginsberg

"Everybody's serious but me."
— Allen Ginsberg

"I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. "
— Allen Ginsberg

"Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening."
— Allen Ginsberg

"A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die."
— Franz Kafka

"I am free and that is why I am lost."
— Franz Kafka

"Paths are made by walking"
— Franz Kafka

"Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life."
— Franz Kafka

"I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy."
— Franz Kafka

"I do not speak as I think, I do not think as I should, and so it all goes on in helpless darkness."
— Franz Kafka

"We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."
— Franz Kafka

"It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go."
— Franz Kafka

"Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."
— Franz Kafka (Diaries of Franz Kafka 1914-1923)

"Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."
— Franz Kafka

"First impressions are always unreliable."
— Franz Kafka

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."
— Franz Kafka (The Trial)

"You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life."
— Albert Camus

"You can't create experience, you undergo it."
— Albert Camus

"I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world."
— Albert Camus (L'etranger)

"Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of."
— Markus Zusak (I Am the Messenger)

"I think, therefore I'll think."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche