On loss

We all suffer loss;  it’s how you deal with it that counts.

The French say that to part is to die a little.  To be forgotten too is to die a little.  It is to lose some of the links that anchor us to the rest of humanity.

Aung San Suu Kyi . 1945-  . Burmese social activist . acceptance speech, Nobel peace prize (2012)

If you lose your curiosity, you die a little [and your food dies a little].

Raymond Blanc . 1949-  . French chef

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.

Clarence Darrow . 1857-1938 . US lawyer and libertarian

Since she whom I lov’d hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.

John Donne . 1572-1631 . English poet . Holy sonnet XVII

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours: 
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.

TS Eliot . 1888-1965 . US poet, dramatist and publisher . La figlia che piange

Heart be kind and sign the release
As the trees their loss approve.
Learn as leaves must learn to fall
Out of danger, out of love.

James Fenton . 1949-  . English poet and literary critic . Out of danger

There is a lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleas’d my mind;
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.

Thomas Ford . c1580-1648 . English composer, lutenist and poet

Things that lose by being painted:  Pinks, cherry blossoms, yellow roses.  Men or women who are praised in romances as being beautiful. 

Sei Shōnagon . 965-1010s? . Japanese author and court lady . The pillow book

The English are always degrading truths into facts. When a truth becomes a fact it loses all its intellectual value.

Oscar Wilde . 1854-1900 . Irish essayist, novelist, playwright, poet

She takes him in her arms and then, lying at full length, she kisses his face and lips and clasps him tightly to her.  Then, straining body to body, mouth to mouth, she at once renders up her spirit and of sorrow for her lover dies thus at his side.

Thomas of Britain . C12 . British poet . Tristan

selection copyright © 2016 Jeremy Marchant . uploaded 4 october 2016 . image www.freeimages.com