Quotes

"The things we truly love are locked in our hearts as long as life remains"

Josephine Baker

Quotes

"I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find my banks full of roses under my cypresses."

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

(Live Oak engraving by the incomparable Barry Moser)

Quotes

“I cannot break myself any longer for you... If you can love me for what I am, we shall be happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I must be myself. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. "

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays (emphasis mine)

“And the end of all our exploring, will be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.” -T.S. Eliot

"Raw experience is empty, just as empty as the forecastle of a whaler, as in the chamber of a counting house; it is not what one does, but in a manifold sense, what one realizes that keeps existence from being vain and trivial. Mankind moves about in worlds not realized... It is the artist, the knower, the sayer, who realizes human experience, who takes the raw lump of ore we find in nature, smelts it, refines it, assays it, and stamps it into coins that can pass from hand to hand and make every man who touches them the richer." -Lewis Mumford

(found here)