Franz Kafka, From “Diaries, 1910-1923”

“I bloom within myself, inwardly,”

— Gabriela Mistral, from Selected Prose & Prose Poems; “The Fig,”

Adonis, from “Persons”, Selected Poems

“He does not know how to love anyone but himself, and when he wants to love others he always has first to transform them into himself. In that he is ingenious.”

—Daybreak, §412 (edited).

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.”

—

Anton Chekhov (b. 29 January 1860)

“—I want to change: I want to stop fear’s subtle / guidance of my life—”

— Frank Bidart, from Half-light: Collected Poems; “California Plush”

Adonis, from Selected Poems; “This Is My Name” (tr. Khaled Mattawa)

“She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.”

— Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (via drearydoll)

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

or·phic

/ˈôrfik/

adjective mysterious and entrancing; beyond ordinary understanding.

“…One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

— Hamlet (Hamlet, Act I scene v)