Felix

“The surf was bland and white,
as pine trees are white when,
In Paradise, no wind is blowing.”
― Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

“I can no more; for now it comes again, That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain, That masterful negation and collapse Of all that makes me man; as though I bent Over the dizzy brink Of some sheer infinite descent; Or worse, as though Down, down for ever I was falling through The solid framework of created things, And needs must sink and sink Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still, A fierce and restless fright begins to fill The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse, Some bodily form of ill Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps Its hideous wings, And makes me wild with horror and dismay.”
― Saint John Henry Newman, The Dream of Gerontius & Meditations on the Stations of the Cross: Newman's Meditations on The Last Things: A Newly Combined Work

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World