Tag: love

Love, Quotes

Traffic Accident Of The Heart

by JustinLeave a Comment on Traffic Accident Of The Heart

“What a small word we use for an idea so immense and powerful it has altered the flow of history, calmed monsters, kindled works of art, cheered the forlorn, turned tough guys to mush, consoled the enslaved, driven strong women mad, glorified the humble, fuelled national scandals, bankrupted robber barons, and made mincemeat of kings. How can love’s spaciousness be conveyed in the narrow confines of one syllable? If we search for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching back to the Sanskrit lubhyati (“he desires”). I’m sure the etymology rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a heartbeat. Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilisation, with taproots stretching deep into dark and mysterious days.”

“We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?”

– Diane Ackerman

Love, Poetry

Thursday

by Justin1 Comment on Thursday

The not-happening was so sudden
that I stayed there for ever,
without knowing, without their knowing me,
as if I was under a chair,
as if I was lost in the night –
so was that which was not,
and so I have stayed since.

I asked the others after,
the women and the men,
what they were doing with such confidence
and how they had learned their living;
they did not actually answer,
they went on dancing and living,

It is what has not happened to one
that determines the silence,
and I don’t want to go on speaking
because I stayed there waiting;
in that place and on that day
I have no idea what happened
but now I am not the same.

– Pablo Neruda