Avril

“As the Libyan engagement has shown, “Western” air power can be a most appropriate and useful instrument in the context of so-called asymmetric conflicts. Yet it succeeded (and even then only after six months) only because NATO nations decided to arm the insurgents and sent in special forces to teach the untrained rebels how to become a skilled military force that could exploit favorable air situations on the ground.”
― John Andreas Olsen, European Air Power: Challenges and Opportunities

“But love truly becomes love only when, no longer an embryo developing painfully in the darkness of the body, it ventures to confess itself with lips and breath. However hard it tries to remain a chrysalis, a time comes when the intricate tissue of the cocoon tears, and out it falls, dropping from the heights to the farthest depths, falling with redoubled force into the startled heart.”
― Stefan Zweig, Journey into the Past

“Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp'd no more -
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam

“My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is;


This round of green, this orb of flame,
Fantastic beauty such as lurks
In some wild Poet, when he works
Without a conscience or an aim.


What then were God to such as I?
'Twere hardly worth my while to choose
Of things all mortal, or to use
A tattle patience ere I die;


'Twere best at once to sink to peace,
Like birds the charming serpent draws,
To drop head-foremost in the jaws
Of vacant darkness and to cease.”
― Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam