W. Hewer tells me that upon enquiry, he doth find that Sir W. Penn hath a hamper more than his own, which he took for a hamper of bottles of wine, and are books in it. I was impatient to see it, but they were carried into a wine cellar, and the boy is abroad with him at the House, where the Parliament meet today, and the King to be with them. At noon, after dinner, I sent for Harry, and he tells me it is so, and brought me by and by my hamper of books, to my great joy, with the same books I missed, and three more great ones and no more — I did give him 5s for his pains; and so home with great joy, and to the setting some of them right.

— Samuel Pepys, diary entry 21st September 1666

I always with to tell someone (I don’t know who) “Don’t be sad.” And it seems to me that this is so trusting a confession that I must express it softly and delicately and in the dimness of twilight.

— Rilke, Early Journals

Last September
in the hospital,
as my fellow
ruminants slept
in the shadows,
their jaws furiously
chewing the cud
of their dreams,
I wondered: If nothing
is where I come from,
return to, and
am entitled to,
what was I
so afraid
of losing?

— Philip Schultz, “The Wandering Wingless,” Four, 5

And thus my booke, hath bene so moch my pleasure, and bringeth dayly to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures, in very deede, be but trifles and troubles vnto me.

— Lady Jane Grey, quoted by Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster (1571)

How small is what we wrestle with,
and what wrestles with us, how immense.

If we could be overcome, as things are,
in a great storm,
we would grow vast and need no names.

— Rilke, Book of Images

But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.

— W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

A thousand theologians were immersed
in the ancient night
of your name.
Virgins awoke to you
and lads in silver shimmered
in you, you battleground.

In your cloistered walkways
poets would meet.
Gentle, deep, and masterful,
they were kings and queens of sound.

You are the tender evening hour
that all poets equally love.
You are the darkness pressing within them
and the treasure each discovers,
in surrounding you with endless praise.

A hundred thousand harps lift
and swing you out of silence.
And your primordial winds are bringing
to all things and needs
the breath of your majesty.

— Rilke, The Book of Hours I, 54

After great pain, a formal feeling comes —
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs —
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round —
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought —
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone —

This is the Hour of Lead —
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow —
First — Chill — then Stupor — then the letting go —

— Emily Dickinson

I think, consciously or not, what we readers do each time we open a book is to set off on a search for authenticity. We want to get closer to the heart of things, and sometimes even a few good sentences contained in an otherwise unexceptional book can crystallize vague feelings, fleeting physical sensations, or, sometimes, profound epiphanies.

— Maureen Corrigan, Leave Me Alone: I’m Reading

I hate the idea of being asked
to bow down before
something in whose name
millions have been sacrificed.
I want nothing to do
with a soul. I hate
its crenulated edges
and bottomless pockets,
its guileless, eyeless stare.
I hate the idea of paradise,
where the souls of Socrates
and Machiavelli are made
to live side by side. If
I have to believe in something,
I believe in despair. In its
antique teeth and sour breath
and long memory. To it
I bequeath the masterpiece
of my conscience, the most
useless government of all.
The truth gets the table scraps
of my dignity. It can do
what it likes with the madman
of my desire and the conjurer
of my impotence. I prefer
to see myself as an anomaly
involuntarily joined to
an already obsolete
and transitory consciousness
that must constantly save
itself from itself,
as a peculiar instinct
for happiness that
sustained me for a brief
but interesting time.

— Philip Schultz, Failure

I turned sixty in Paris last year.
We stayed at the Lutetia,
where the Gestapo headquartered
during the war, my wife, two boys, and me,
and several old Vietnamese ladies
carrying poodles with diamond collars.

Once my father caught a man
stealing cigarettes out of one
of his vending machines.
He didn’t stop choking him
until the pool hall stunk of excrement
and the body dropped to the floor
like a judgment.

When I was last in Paris
I was dirt poor, hiding
from the Vietnam War.
One night, in an old chuch,
I considered taking my life.
I didn’t know how to be so young
and not belong anywhere, stuck
among so many perplexing melodies.

I loved the low white buildings,
the ingratiating colors, the ancient light.
We couldn’t afford such luxury.
It was a matter of pride.
My father died bankrupt one week
before his sixtieth birthday.
I didn’t expect to have a family;
I didn’t expect happiness.

At the Lutetia everyone
dressed themselves like specimens
they’d loved all their lives.
Everyone floated down
red velvet hallways
like scintillating music
you hear only once or twice.

Driving home, my father said,
“Let anyone steal from you
and you’re not fit to live.”
I sat there, sliced by traffic lights,
not belonging to what he said.
I belonged to a scintillating
and perplexing music
I didn’t expect to hear.

— Philip Schultz, Failure

None of our dads ever came to a game.
We swiped equipment, slid through mud and glass,
cajoled, cussed, and bullied our way through four seasons,
fleeing the darkness inside to the darkness outside,
until the park became a supermarket and all that yelling
a framed photo that said: “Outstanding Members of
the Community.” We got Brownie Automatics and learned
a few things: winning hurts less, nothing about yourself
has to be loved; never want anything out loud, or end up
out in left field where everyone is the son of a failure.

— Philip Schultz, from “Kodak Park Athletic Association, 1954,” Failure

It’s a beautiful January Sunday morning,
the first morning of the new year,
and my old dogs limp behind me up the beach
as my sons scour the ocher sand like archivists
seeking the days quota of mystery.
To them it’s all a magical kingdom,
their minds tiny oceans of good and evil strategies,
the hard traffic of dreams
enclosed by a flourishing expectation.

We came here for the ripening light,
the silence of the enormous sky; to exult
in the shy jewels of sea glass
polished by the tides of the wind,
in the forlorn shrieks and chortling cries of gulls
rising and falling between their world and ours.
To be where it was lush,
lonely and secret enough.

At the edge of things,
in the shimmering spray
and flawless sparkle of seashells,
under the lonely momentum of clouds
lugging their mysterious cargoes all the way
to the horizon and back,
each a wish, a gift
that must be returned.

I never thought I’d have so much to give up;
that the view from this side of my life
would be so precious. Bless
these filaments of sea grass,
this chorus of piping plovers
and bickering wrens, each mile
these arthritic animals tag behind,
sniffing tire ruts, frothy craters of rotting driftwood,
lacy seaweed and scuttling crabs,
after something deliciously foul . . .

Bless the plenitude of the suffering mind . . .
its endless parade of disgrace
and spider’s web of fear, the hunger
of the soul that expects to be despised
and cast out, the unforgiving ghosts
I visit late at night when only God is awake . . .

Bless this ice-glazed garden of bleached stones
strewn like tiny pieces of moonlight
in sand puddles,
the wind’s grievous sigh,
the singing light,
the salt, the salt!

Most of all bless these boys
shivering in the chill light ,
their fragile smallness and strange intransigence,
so curious and shining. Bless
their believing happiness will make them happy;
that the ocean is magical, a kingdom
where we go to be human,
and grateful.

— Philip Schultz, Failure

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrow and songs.

— Rilke, From The Book of Hours I, 5

A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man!

— Jebediah Springfield.