“I exist not to be loved and admired, but to love and act. It is not the duty of those around me to love me. Rather, it is my duty to be concerned about the world, about man.”
— Janusz Korczak
“We met, we recognized each other, we abandoned ourselves one to the other.
We have lived a love of burning, pure crystal.
Do you realize what happiness we have, and what has been given to us?”
// María Casares, a letter to Albert Camus written c. March 1952
“I want to love and be loved more than anything else in the world.”
— Marilyn Monroe
“Remember this …I moved the earth and the water for you.”
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Letters To Milena - Franz Kafka
George Herbert, "Affliction (IV)," from A Mind Apart: Poems of Melancholy, Madness, and Addiction
— Joey de Jesus, from "Ancha (Redux)," published in Roadmap
Know yourself, love yourself
Bianca Stone, from What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “Other Wound”
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
— Emily Bronte
“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
if you have to beg for it it’s not for you.
Theres someone out there that can match everything you ask for and give you more.
Charlotte Green, 'You say you do not want a boyfriend, but you know that's not true.'
Miguel Hernández, tr. by Timothy Baland, from The Selected Poems; "The Last Corner,"