In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. And every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.
And as there are Pascals and Mozarts, Newtons and Raffaelles, in whom the innate faculty for science or art seems to need but a touch to spring into full vigour, and through whom the human race obtains new possibilities of knowledge and new conceptions of beauty: so there have been men of moral genius, to whom we owe ideals of duty and visions of moral perfection, which ordinary mankind could never have attained: though, happily for them, they can feel the beauty of a vision, which lay beyond the reach of their dull imaginations, and count life well spent in shaping some faint image of it in the actual world.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
The examples of the noble deaths of the Lacedæmonians and others scarce touch us, for what good do they to us? But the example of the death of the martyrs touches us, for they are our members. We have a common tie with them, their resolution can form ours, not only by example, but because it has perhaps merited ours. There is nothing of this in the examples of the heathen; there is no bond between us. As we do not become rich by seeing a rich stranger, but by seeing a father or a husband who is so.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.
He can touch me, is what ill never tell him. Please touch me is what I want to tell him
If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.
Sans le gout, le genie n'est qu'une sublime folie. Ce toucher sur par qui la lyre ne rend que le son qu'elle doit rendre, est encore plus rare que la faculte qui cree=--Without taste genius is only a sublime kind of folly. That sure touch by which the lyre gives back the right note and nothing more, is even a rarer gift than the creative faculty itself.
He either fears his fate too much, / Or his deserts are small, / Who dares not put it to the touch / To win or lose it all.
The experience of suffering has been declared on the highest authority to be necessary to every poet who would touch the hearts of his fellow-creatures.
All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.
If thou, O musician, sayest that painting is mechanical because it is wrought by the work of the hands, music is wrought by the mouth, but {88} not by the tasting faculties of the mouth; just and as the hand is employed indeed in the case of painting, but not for its faculties of touch. Words are less worthy than actions. But thou, writer of science, dost thou not copy with thy hand, and write what is in thy mind, as the painter does? And if thou wast to say that music is formed of proportion, by proportion have I wrought painting, as thou shalt see.
Thyself and thy belongings Are not thine own so proper as to waste Thyself upon thy virtues, they on thee. Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, Not light them for themselves; for if our virtues Did not go forth of us, 't were all alike As if we had them not. Spirits are not finely touch'd But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But, like a thrifty goddess, she determines Herself the glory of a creditor, Both thanks and use.
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles whom we knew.
The best name by which we can think of God is Father. It is a loving, deep, sweet, heart-touching name, for the name of father is in its nature full of inborn sweetness and comfort. Therefore, also, we must confess ourselves children of God, for by this name we deeply touch our God, since there is not a sweeter sound to the father than the voice of the child.--_Martin Luther._
The experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: Take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. This experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived.
What joy a self-sufficing fortune yields, / Such modest livelihood is dear to me. The wise old maxim, "Not too much," / Too much has power my heart to touch.
Since we have concluded that the utmost extent of the comprehension of poetry is for the blind, and that of painting for the deaf, we will say that the value of painting exceeds that of poetry in proportion as painting gratifies a nobler sense than poetry does, and this nobility has been proved to be equal to that of three other senses, because we elect to lose our sense of hearing, smell and touch rather than our eyesight. For he who loses his sight is deprived of the beauty of the universe, and is like to one who is confined during his lifetime in a tomb, in which he enjoys life and motion.
Remember that the sinew never shrinks save beneath the touch of the angel hand--the touch of tender love.--_F. B. Meyer._
I have found my way, step by step, proceeding from touch points that have emerged, some through conscious choice and some through dream state discovery.
Yes,” he says, he swallows, “I did. I do. I do want to be your friend.” He nods and I register the slight movement in the air between us. “I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,” he says. “The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body, Juliette—” “No,” I gasp. “Don’t—don’t s-say that—” I don’t know what I’ll do if he keeps talking I don’t know what I’ll do and I don’t trust myself “I want to know where to touch you,” he says. “I want to know how to touch you. I want to know how to convince you to design a smile just for me.” I feel his chest rising, falling, up and down and up and down and “Yes,” he says. “I do want to be your friend.” He says “I want to be your best friend in the entire world.” I can’t think. I can’t breathe “I want so many things,” he whispers. “I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time.” His fingers graze the hem of my top and he says “I want this up.” He tugs on the waist of my pants and says “I want these down.” He touches the tips of his fingers to the sides of my body and says, “I want to feel your skin on fire. I want to feel your heart racing next to mine and I want to know it’s racing because of me, because you want me. Because you never,” he says, he breathes, “never want me to stop. I want every second. Every inch of you. I want all of it.” And I drop dead, all over the floor.
This lingering for forty days is the crowning proof of Christ's tender regard for His little flock. He who had laid down His life for them is loath to leave them. Though they had forsaken Him, and doubted Him, they had not wearied, much less had they worn out, His love. He stays to look again, and yet again, and yet again, upon them, as if turning back and lingering to bless them. It is all of a piece with His life of love. Everywhere He meets them without a touch of upbraiding, without recalling a single memory of all His bitter suffering, revealing Himself to the disciples with a tenderness and blessedness indescribably beautiful.
Time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of sight; which after it has attained its purpose does not prevent the reason from considering the divine beauty. And in this case the picture copied from the living beauty acts for the greater part as a substitute; and the {75} description of the poet cannot accomplish this.--the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. And on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to transmit by the ear that which should be transmitted by the eye.
“The secret is not to dream … The secret is to wake up. Waking up is harder. I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me anymore. Or touch me. Or anything that is mine.” I'll never be like this again, she thought, as she saw the terror in the Queen's face. I'll never again feel as tall as the sky and as old as the hills and as strong as the sea. I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back. And the reward is giving it back, too. No human could live like this. You could spend a day looking at a flower to see how wonderful it is, and that wouldn't get the milking done. No wonder we dream our way through our lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really is … no one could stand that for long.
Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too... If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings — nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And — which is more — you'll be a Man, my son!
(_Translation by Mrs. Henry Roscoe._) As when, O lady mine! With chiselled touch The stone unhewn and cold Becomes a living mould. The more the marble wastes, The more the statue grows.
You think that a wall as solid as the earth separates civilization from barbarism. I tell you the division is a thread, a sheet of glass. A touch here, a push there, and you bring back the reign of Saturn.
The string that jars / When rudely touch'd, ungrateful to the sense, / With pleasure feels the master's flying fingers, / Swells into harmony and charms the hearers.
Satire should, like a polished razor keen, / Wound with a touch that is scarcely seen.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel, nor poison, / Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing / Can touch him further.
All argument will vanish before one touch of Nature.
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity a total embrace of the entire Kosmos a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
When the heart is heavy and low, / The beauty that on earth we find, / Or strain of music on the wind, / Shall touch it like an utter woe!
Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.
He touch'd the tender stops of various quills, With eager thought warbling his Doric lay.
If you look at the stars, warding off the rays (as may be done by looking through a small hole made by the extreme point of a fine needle placed so as almost to touch the eye), they will appear so small as to seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is owing to their great distance that they appear so small, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with its water. Now reflect what appearance this our star must have from so great a distance, and then consider how many stars might be placed--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are sown in the dark space. I can never refrain from blaming many of the ancients who said that the size of the sun was no greater than {153} it appears; among whom was Epicurus. I believe he founded his reasoning on a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth, which, to any one looking at it, never appears to diminish in size from whatever distance it is seen.
Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas=--Let me skim the water with one oar, and with the other touch the sands, _i.e._, so as not to go out of my depth.
I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face,I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.
Therefore, the great business of the scientific teacher is, to imprint the fundamental, irrefragable facts of his science, not only by words upon the mind, but by sensible impressions upon tne eye, and ear, and touch of the student, in so complete a manner, that every term used, or law enunciated, should afterwards call up vivid images of the particular structural, or other, facts which furnished the demonstration of the law, or the illustration of the term.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, That I might touch that cheek!
Reform, like charity, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light by incalculable contagion; spreading, in geometric ratio, far and wide; doing good only, wherever it spreads, and not evil.
Justice and truth are two points of such exquisite delicacy, that our coarse and blunted instruments will not touch them accurately.
Her father loved me; oft invited me; Still question'd me the story of my life, From year to year, the battles, sieges, fortunes, That I have passed. I ran it through, even from my boyish days, To the very moment that he bade me tell it: Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery, of my redemption thence And portance in my travels' history; Wherein of antres vast and deserts idle, Rough quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven, It was my hint to speak,--such was the process; And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear Would Desdemona seriously incline.
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I cannot know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me — that I understand. And these two certainties — my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle — I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?
La justice et la verite sont deux pointes si subtiles, que nos instrumens sont trop emousses pour y toucher exactement=--Justice and truth are two points so fine that our instruments are too blunt to touch them exactly.
We write to tell a story, to describe an event, to imagine or explain what has been or will happen, to warn or touch or inspire. We write to express our most profound emotions—love and hatred, joy and sorrow, humor and sadness.
I believe neither in what I touch nor what I see. I only believe in what I do not see, and solely in what I feel.
Sunlight dances through the leaves Soft winds stir the sighing trees Lying in the warm grass Feel the sun upon your face Elven songs and endless nights Sweet wine and soft relaxing lights Time will never touch you Here in this enchanted place You feel there's something calling you You're wanting to return To where the misty mountains rise and friendly fires burn A place you can escape the world Where the dark lord cannot go Peace of mind and sanctuary by loud water's flow I've traveled now for many miles It feels so good to see the smiles of Friends who never left your mind When you were far away From the golden light of coming dawn Till the twilight where the sun is gone We treasure every season And every passing day We feel the coming of a new day Darkness gives way to light a new way Stop here for a while until the world, The world calls you away Yet you know I've had the feeling Standing with my senses reeling This is the place to grow old 'til I reach my final day.
My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupation which is his alone and isolates him from mankind; and in this respect at least the function of a play is to reveal him to himself so that he may touch others by virtue of the revelation of his mutuality with them. If only for this reason I regard the theater as a serious business, one that makes or should make man more human, which is to say, less alone.
All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
Moving stranger, Does it really matter, As long as you're not afraid to feel? Touch me, hold me. How my open arms ache! Try to fall for me.
The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has gone, and the first of that which is coming: so it is with time present.
"Most people would like to be delivered from
Rejoice in joyous things--nor overmuch / Let grief thy bosom touch / Midst evil, and still bear in mind / How changeful are the ways of humankind.
Tempore ducetur longo fortasse cicatrix; / Horrent admotas vulnera cruda manus=--A wound may, perhaps, through time be closed, but, when fresh, it shrinks from the touch.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.
No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity.
Small thanks to the man for keeping his hands clean who would not touch the work but with gloves on.
Mystery: Time and Tide shall pass, I am the Wisdom Looking-Glass. This is the Ruby none can touch: Many have loved it overmuch; Its fathomless fires flutter and sigh, Being as images of the flame That shall make earth and heaven the same When the fire of the end reddens the sky, And the world consumes like a burning pall, Till where there is nothing, there is all.
As self-government was secured through a struggle for mastery over the public purse, so must it be maintained through the exercise by the people of complete control over public expenditure. Money is the vital principle of the body politic; the public treasury is the heart of the state; control over public supplies means control over public affairs. Any method of procedure, therefore, by which a public servant can veil the true meaning of his acts, or which allows the government to enter upon any great enterprise without bringing the fact fairly to the knowledge of the public, must work against the realization of the constitutional idea. This is exactly the state of affairs introduced by a free use of public credit. Under ordinary circumstances, popular attention can not be drawn to public acts, except they touch the pocket of the voters through an increase in taxes; and it follows that a government whose expenditures are met by resort to loans may, for a time, administer affairs independently of those who must finally settle the account. [ Public Debts, An Essay in the Science of Finance . New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898, pp. 22-23.]
It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,--glittering like the morning star full of life and splendour and joy. . . . Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men,--in a nation of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded.
There are chords in the human heart, strange, varying strings, which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch. In the most insensible or childish minds there is some train of reflection which art can seldom lead, or skill assist, but which will reveal itself, as great truths have done, by chance, and when the discoverer has the plainest and simplest end in view.--_Dickens._
Whatever it is that enables a soul, whom God designs to bless, to stand out against Him, God will touch. It may be the pride of wealth, or of influence, or of affection; but it will not be spared--God will touch it. It may be something as _natural_ as a sinew; but if it robs a man of spiritual blessing God will touch it. It may be as _small_ a thing as a sinew; but its influence in making a man strong in his resistance of blessing will be enough to condemn it--and God will touch it. And beneath that touch it will shrink and shrivel, and you will limp to the end of life.
~Mother.~--Children, look in those eyes, listen to that dear voice, notice the feeling of even a single touch that is bestowed upon you by that gentle hand! Make much of it while yet you have that most precious of all good gifts, a loving mother. Read the unfathomable love of those eyes; the kind anxiety of that tone and look, however slight your pain. In after life you may have friends, fond, dear friends, but never will you have again the inexpressible love and gentleness lavished upon you which none but a mother bestows.--_Macaulay._