. . . in all fairness I should say one more thing about making love stay.
When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It’s that simple. This suggests that it isn’t love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstasy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it’s always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror . . . , a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still.
The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know:
- Everything is part of it.
- It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
The truth which makes us free is not an absolute ideal but truthfulness.
Gentle and giving — all the rest is treason.
Man becomes great exactly in the degree to which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
Love thy neighbor, even when he plays the trombone.
. . . woe unto those who don’t believe in the unbelievable sweetness of sex love . . .
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
All energy is sexual energy. Therefore, when we use the word sex we should mean all energy. The Divine lust that attracts the world is the sexual attraction between all forms: sex is electro-magnetism.
Don’t admire wavy hair when your date wears a crew-cut.
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
How charming was, and is, the chanciness of being a girl. One has a kind of honey. But not for bees. You walk into a drawing-room and a dark man or a light man or a red man may change your life for no reason. . . .
You might think that a woman of seventy-eight, glancing at a house where she was once in love, would be full of regrets. The extraordinary thing about age is that you don’t regret love.
Even in the looking glass there’s nothing to be done. The golden veil has blown off the face.
It isn’t that I was what’s called, rather unhandsomely, “highly sexed.” But it was such a surprise that one could attract. It was like a stream finding out that it could move a rock. The pleasure of one’s effect on other people still exists in age — what’s called making a hit. But the hit is much rarer and made of different stuff.
In the evening of our lives we shall be examined in love.
Conduct is more convincing than language.
I learned to trust my obsessions. It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions.
Oh, for the wonder
that bubbles into my soul.
We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known: we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.
All I really want to do
Is baby be friends with you.
