Scout > Scout's Quotes

“My child, I know you're not a child
But I still see you running wild
Between those flowering trees.
Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh
Your wishes to the stars above
Are just my memories.

And in your eyes the ocean
And in your eyes the sea
The waters frozen over
With your longing to be free.

Yesterday you'd awoken
To a world incredibly old.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

You had to kill this child, I know.
To break the arrows and the bow
To shed your skin and change.
The trees are flowering no more
There's blood upon the tiles floor
This place is dark and strange.

I see you standing in the storm
Holding the curse of youth
Each of you with your story
Each of you with your truth.

Some words will never be spoken
Some stories will never be told.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

I didn't say the world was good.
I hoped by now you understood
Why I could never lie.
I didn't promise you a thing.
Don't ask my wintervoice for spring
Just spread your wings and fly.

Though in the hidden garden
Down by the green green lane
The plant of love grows next to
The tree of hate and pain.

So take my tears as a token.
They'll keep you warm in the cold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.

You've lived too long among us
To leave without a trace
You've lived too short to understand
A thing about this place.

Some of you just sit there smoking
And some are already sold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.”
― Antonia Michaelis, The Storyteller

“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.”
― e.e. cummings, 100 Selected Poems

“Lovers alone wear sunlight.”
― E.E. Cummings

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

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”
― E.E. Cummings, Selected Poems

“Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

“The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.”
― George Edward Moore

“Tis now the summer of your youth: time has not cropped the roses from your cheek, though sorrow long has washed them.”
― Edward Moore

“I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunnéd it with smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.”
― William Blake, Songs of Experience

“My son, you are just an infant now, but on that day when the world disrobes of its alluring cloak, it is then that I pray this letter is in your hands.

Listen closely, my dear child, for I am more than that old man in the dusty portrait beside your bed. I was once a little boy in my mother’s arms and a babbling toddler on my father's lap.

I played till the sun would set and climbed trees with ease and skill. Then I grew into a fine young man with shoulders broad and strong. My bones were firm and my limbs were straight; my hair was blacker than a raven's beak. I had a spring in my step and a lion's roar. I travelled the world, found love and married. Then off to war I bled in battle and danced with death.

But today, vigor and grace have forsaken me and left me crippled.

Listen closely, then, as I have lived not only all the years you have existed, but another forty more of my own.

My son, We take this world for a permanent place; we assume our gains and triumphs will always be; that all that is dear to us will last forever.

But my child, time is a patient hunter and a treacherous thief: it robs us of our loved ones and snatches up our glory. It crumbles mountains and turns stone to sand. So who are we to impede its path?

No, everything and everyone we love will vanish, one day.

So take time to appreciate the wee hours and seconds you have in this world. Your life is nothing but a sum of days so why take any day for granted? Don't despise evil people, they are here for a reason, too, for just as the gift salt offers to food, so do the worst of men allow us to savor the sweet, hidden flavor of true friendship.

Dear boy, treat your elders with respect and shower them with gratitude; they are the keepers of hidden treasures and bridges to our past. Give meaning to your every goodbye and hold on to that parting embrace just a moment longer--you never know if it will be your last.

Beware the temptation of riches and fame for both will abandon you faster than our own shadow deserts us at the approach of the setting sun. Cultivate seeds of knowledge in your soul and reap the harvest of good character.

Above all, know why you have been placed on this floating blue sphere, swimming through space, for there is nothing more worthy of regret than a life lived void of this knowing.

My son, dark days are upon you. This world will not leave you with tears unshed. It will squeeze you in its talons and lift you high, then drop you to plummet and shatter to bits . But when you lay there in pieces scattered and broken, gather yourself together and be whole once more. That is the secret of those who know.

So let not my graying hairs and wrinkled skin deceive you that I do not understand this modern world. My life was filled with a thousand sacrifices that only I will ever know and a hundred gulps of poison I drank to be the father I wanted you to have.

But, alas, such is the nature of this life that we will never truly know the struggles of our parents--not until that time arrives when a little hand--resembling our own--gently clutches our finger from its crib.

My dear child, I fear that day when you will call hopelessly upon my lifeless corpse and no response shall come from me. I will be of no use to you then but I hope these words I leave behind will echo in your ears that day when I am no more. This life is but a blink in the eye of time, so cherish each moment dearly, my son.”
― Shakieb Orgunwall

“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

“Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”
― Hans Christian Anderson, The Complete Fairy Tales

“Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.”
― Rick Yancey The 5th Wave

“Until an hour before the Devil fell, God thought him beautiful in Heaven.”
― Arthur Miller, The Crucible

“I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.”
― Allen Ginsberg, The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems, 1937-1952

“She give me honey to make my voice sweet, but there never were a sweetness in me. I prefer a taste of rot.”
― Susann Cokal, The Kingdom of Little Wounds

“Go, then! Go to the moon-you selfish dreamer!”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“I'm starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside-well, I'm boiling! Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing!”
― Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“I used to think as I looked out on the Hollywood night — there must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.”
― Marilyn Monroe

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
― Salvador Dali

“A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.”
― Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Meditations

“I aim to be
lionhearted,
but my
hands still
shake
and my voice
isn’t quite
loud
enough.”
― Michelle K.

“In case you never get a second chance: don't be afraid!" "And what if you do get a second chance?" "You take it!”
― C. JoyBell C.

“But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves."

"It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.”
― Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Yuyeh sesh. Despise your heart. Ni weh sesh. I have no heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising

“I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours. ”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“I'm like you,' he said. 'I remember everything.'

I stopped for a second. If you remember everything, I wanted to say, and if you are really like me, then before you leave tomorrow, or when you’re just ready to shut the door of the taxi and have already said goodbye to everyone else and there’s not a thing left to say in this life, then, just this once, turn to me, even in jest, or as an afterthought, which would have meant everything to me when we were together, and, as you did back then, look me in the face, hold my gaze, and call me by your name”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name