Haajarah > Haajarah's Quotes

“I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories

“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”
― Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

“Do I, then, belong to the heavens?
Why, if not so, should the heavens
Fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare,
Luring me on, and my mind, higher
Ever higher, up into the sky,
Drawing me ceaselessly up
To heights far, far above the human?
Why, when balance has been strictly studied
And flight calculated with the best of reason
Till no aberrant element should, by rights, remain-
Why, still, should the lust for ascension
Seem, in itself, so close to madness?
Nothing is that can satify me;
Earthly novelty is too soon dulled;
I am drawn higher and higher, more unstable,
Closer and closer to the sun's effulgence.
Why do these rays of reason destroy me?
Villages below and meandering streams
Grow tolerable as our distance grows.
Why do they plead, approve, lure me
With promise that I may love the human
If only it is seen, thus, from afar-
Although the goal could never have been love,
Nor, had it been, could I ever have
Belonged to the heavens?
I have not envied the bird its freedom
Nor have I longed for the ease of Nature,
Driven by naught save this strange yearning
For the higher, and the closer, to plunge myself
Into the deep sky's blue, so contrary
To all organic joys, so far
From pleasures of superiority
But higher, and higher,
Dazzled, perhaps, by the dizzy incandescence
Of waxen wings.

Or do I then
Belong, after all, to the earth?
Why, if not so, should the earth
Show such swiftness to encompass my fall?
Granting no space to think or feel,
Why did the soft, indolent earth thus
Greet me with the shock of steel plate?
Did the soft earth thus turn to steel
Only to show me my own softness?
That Nature might bring home to me
That to fall, not to fly, is in the order of things,
More natural by far than that improbable passion?
Is the blue of the sky then a dream?
Was it devised by the earth, to which I belonged,
On account of the fleeting, white-hot intoxication
Achieved for a moment by waxen wings?
And did the heavens abet the plan to punish me?
To punish me for not believing in myself
Or for believing too much;
Too earger to know where lay my allegiance
Or vainly assuming that already I knew all;
For wanting to fly off
To the unknown
Or the known:
Both of them a single, blue speck of an idea?”
― Yukio Mishima, Sun & Steel

“Icarus should have waited for nightfall,
the moon would have never let him go.”
― Nina Mouawad

“Icarus flew too close to the sun, but at least he flew.”
― Jeremy Robert Johnson, Skullcrack City

“I feel the familiar pull—I am drawn, Icarus to his sun. I have been burned already, and yet here I am again.

~Anastasia”
― E.L. James, Fifty Shades Darker

“Love is not weakness, father: it is strength. Love is what taught my skin to feel and my eyes to see. Love is not a weapon: it is light.”
― Grace Curley, The Light that Binds Us

“Rare stories traveled of those who rose too high, the ships who sailed like Icarus towards the sun.

And like him, they crashed and burned for their arrogance.”
― Katherine McIntyre, The Airship Also Rises

“Here is what they don’t tell you:

Icarus laughed as he fell.
Threw his head back and
yelled into the winds,
arms spread wide,
teeth bared to the world.

(There is a bitter triumph
in crashing when you should be
soaring.)

The wax scorched his skin,
ran blazing trails down his back,
his thighs, his ankles, his feet.
Feathers floated like prayers
past his fingers,
close enough to snatch back.
Death breathed burning kisses
against his shoulders,
where the wings joined the harness.
The sun painted everything
in shades of gold.

(There is a certain beauty
in setting the world on fire
and watching from the centre
of the flames.)”
― Fiona

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
― Albert Camus

“The Greeks created gods that were in their image; warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate, but vengeful.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

“Of course the Greeks were not the only people to weave a tapestry of legends and lore out of the puzzling fabric of existence.”
― Stephen Fry, Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Jane, be still; don't struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation."
"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you.”
― Charlotte Brontë , Jane Eyre

“That's what literature is. It's the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them!”
― Connie Willis, Passage

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”
― Henry James

“But the heart has its own memory and I have forgotten nothing.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I love well. Here is my proof that I paid the price.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

“Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it. (on the wall of a bedroom at a recovery house for alcoholics and drug addicts)”
― David Foster Wallace

“foolish of me to have built my city of hope around your graveyard of words.”
― khush bakht

“My entire soul is a cry, and all my work is a commentary on that cry.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“The only thing I know is this: I am full of wounds and still standing on my feet.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis

“To be in grief is to be dislodged from the mouth of time.”
― Trivarna Hariharan

“I used up this body longing for one who does not come,”
― Izumi Shikibu

“Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love.

I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. That pain is like an axe that chops at my heart.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Do you still perform autopsies on conversations you had lives ago?”
― Donte Collins

“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. And that's what you've given me. That's what I'd hoped to give you forever”
― Nicholas Sparks

“I will be everywhere you look but nowhere to be found and that will be my revenge.”
― Aurora Raine

“I heard a bird sing in the dark of December. A magical thing. And sweet to remember. We are nearer to Spring than we were in September. I heard a bird sing in the dark of December.”
― Oliver Herford

“Let's swap roles. You wait and I don't come back.”
― Mahmoud Darwish