“Who can escape when in your grip,
When your dark eyes confront one?
I do not wish to flee when you seize me,
I never shall believe that you only destroy.
I know that you must course through everyone's life
and nothing earthbound stays untouched by you,
Though life without you would be beautiful!
And yet, it is worthwhile to experience you.
Indeed, you are not a night's phantom;
You come to remind the spirit of its strength:
It's the battle that has made the greatest persons great
-on rugged roads towards the goal.
For that, and happiness and joy,
give me only one thing;
pain which lends true greatness.
So, come and let us wrestle breast to breast;
do come, even if it means life or death.
Do come and lip into the heart's deepest interior
and rummage through the depths of life.
Take away dream's illusion and joy;
take away things not worth one's unlimited strivings.
You are not mankind's final conqueror.
Although we expose our breast to your blows
and although we collapse in death,
you are the pedestal for our soul's greatness.”
―
When your dark eyes confront one?
I do not wish to flee when you seize me,
I never shall believe that you only destroy.
I know that you must course through everyone's life
and nothing earthbound stays untouched by you,
Though life without you would be beautiful!
And yet, it is worthwhile to experience you.
Indeed, you are not a night's phantom;
You come to remind the spirit of its strength:
It's the battle that has made the greatest persons great
-on rugged roads towards the goal.
For that, and happiness and joy,
give me only one thing;
pain which lends true greatness.
So, come and let us wrestle breast to breast;
do come, even if it means life or death.
Do come and lip into the heart's deepest interior
and rummage through the depths of life.
Take away dream's illusion and joy;
take away things not worth one's unlimited strivings.
You are not mankind's final conqueror.
Although we expose our breast to your blows
and although we collapse in death,
you are the pedestal for our soul's greatness.”
―
“The worst grotesque situations: believing one knows oneself, believing one knows everything about some topic, believing one has judged with absolute impartiality, believing one will love and be loved forever. In conversation, people think one thing and, in trying to communicate it, say something else. The interlocutor hears one thing, but understands something different. When answering, one does not respond to what the other person initially thought, nor to what the other person said, but to what one has understood. The final result: a conversation between deaf people who do not even know how to listen to themselves.”
― The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography
― The Dance of Reality: A Psychomagical Autobiography
“Life cannot go on without a great deal of forgetting.”
― Cousin Bette
― Cousin Bette
“That certainly seems a satisfactory explanation, does it not?
– Yes dear, if you can believe him.
– I don't. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer.”
― The Importance of Being Earnest
– Yes dear, if you can believe him.
– I don't. But that does not affect the wonderful beauty of his answer.”
― The Importance of Being Earnest
İzlem’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at İzlem’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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