Character matters; leadership descends from character.
quote by Rush Limbaugh
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Nothing Even Matters
Now the skies could fall
Not even if my boss should call
The world it seems so very small
'Cause nothing even matters at all
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters at all
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters at all
See I don't need no alcohol
Your love makes me feel ten feet tall
Without it I'd go through withdrawal
'Cause nothing even matters at all
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters at all
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters at all
These buildings could drift out to sea
Some natural catastrophe
Still there's no place I'd rather be
'Cause nothing even matters to me
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters to me
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters to me
You're part of my identity
I sometimes have the tendency
To look at you religiously
'Cause nothing even matters to me
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters to me
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters to me
Now you won't find me at no store
I have no time for manicures
With you it's never either or
'Cause nothing even matters no more
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters no more
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters no more
[...] Read more
song performed by Lauryn Hill from The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See quotes about height, quotes about sky, quotes about time, or quotes about love
Disaster In A Halo
Lately I've been thinking about what you said
Time is growing old and I'm getting colder
Hunger's just a pain that won't be fed
I'll be working for the ghost until I'm dead and done
Over and done, over
Disaster in a halo
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Somewhere there's a girl with thoughts of him
She makes wishes in a well then fears them caving in on her, around, on her
Disaster in a halo
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Cause in the well plans will come and plans will go undone
I know, I know
And you can't tell, I will come and I will do I know, I know
But why would I?
But why would I?
Disaster in a halo
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
Nothing even matters
song performed by Ours
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See also quotes about food, quotes about work, quotes about seasons, quotes about dance, quotes about girls, quotes about pain, or quotes about elders
Love Is All That Matters
(diane warren)
Sometimes we make each other cry
Sometimes were locked inside the prisons of our pride
Sometimes we break each others heart with the words we say
Let anger get in the way too many times
But always after all
Love is all that matters
After everything
One thing remains the same
One thing we cannot change
We all have one heart
And one heart needs another
Love, love is all that matters
Love is all that matters
It matters after all
Sometimes we search this world for gold
When all we really need is just a hand to hold
Sometimes we let the greatest treasure just slip away
With words we forget to say too many times
But always after all
Love is all that matters
After everything
One thing remains the same
One thing we cannot change
We, we all have one heart
And one heart needs another
Love, love is all that matters
Love is all that matters
It matters after all
After all that weve been through
It comes down to one simple truth
You need me, I need you
cause love is all that matters
Love is all that matters
Love is all that matters
It matters after all
Love is all that matters
Its the only thing that matters
It matters after all
Love is all that matters
song performed by Diana Ross
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about school, quotes about heart, or quotes about words
Matters Of The Heart
I lose my head
From time to time
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
We should have been holding each other
Instead we talked
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
But I asked before
Your reply was kind and polite
One wants more
When ones denied
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
I wont call it love
But it feels good to have passion in my life
If theres a battle
I hope my head always defers to my heart
In matters of the heart
I guess Im crazy to think
I can give you what you dont want
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
I wish that I had the power
To make these feelings stop
I lose all self control
In matters of the heart
I cant believe
Its so hard to find someone
To give affection to
And from whom you can receive
I guess its just the draw of the cards
In matters of the heart
You caught me off guard
Somehow you reached me
Where I thought I had nothing left inside
Ive learned my lesson Ive been edified
In matters of the heart
Ive spent my nights
Where the sleeping dogs lie
Not by your side
It feels so lonely
Once again Ive left to much to chance
In matters of the heart
Here I sit
Im feeling sorry for myself
Its quite a sight
But I have you to thank
For reminding me
Were all alone in this world
[...] Read more
song performed by Tracy Chapman
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Also see the following:
- quotes about birds
- quotes about injury
- quotes about missing
- quotes about eyes
- quotes about dogs
- quotes about receiving
- quotes about drawing
- quotes about war
Mountain O'Things
I lose my head
From time to time
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
We should have been holding each other
Instead we talked
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
But I asked before
Your reply was kind and polite
One wants more
When one's denied
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
I won't call it love
But it feels good to have passion in my life
If there's a battle
I hope my head always defers to my heart
In matters of the heart
I guess I'm crazy to think
I can give you what you don't want
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
I've made myself sick
I can't think of anything else
I can't sleep at night
I make a fool of myself
In matters of the heart
I wish that I had the power
To make these feelings stop
I lose all self control
In matters of the heart
I can't believe
It's so hard to find someone
To give affection to
And from whom you can receive
I guess it's just the draw of the cards
In matters of the heart
You caught me off guard
Somehow you reached me
Where I thought I had nothing left inside
I've learned a lesson I've been edified
In matters of the heart
I've spent my nights
Where the sleeping dogs lie
Not by your side
It feels so lonely
Once again I've left too much to chance
In matters of the heart
Here I sit
[...] Read more
song performed by Tracy Chapman
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about Thanksgiving, quotes about authority, or quotes about future
Matterings
'All I want' she said' is to matter.'
'All I want' said the scientist 'is
to understand matter'.
'The problem of life' the philosopher said
'is figuring out what matters'
'The secret' the muse said 'to life
is figuring out what is to matter more
and to learn what matters less
The Lover said
'All that matters to me
is matters of the heart
and I did not matter to him enough.'
'What does it mean to matter
is an world of billions;
what tracings and scratchings
on the globe
can be identified
as mine engraved? ' said the nihilist.
'What if I matter to me and no one else? '
said the Lonely One
'We could all decide that we all matter
to one another in our community
and that would make mattering matter.'
said the preacher.
'Ideas matter' Plato said
'and they are the only thing real.'
'But alas' the writer said
'imagining is the only matter that matters
and besides what does mattering mean? '
Einstein thought all that mattered lived inside
the daydream and the thought experiment.
'What matters' the man of action said
'depends entirely upon circumstance'
What matters' she said 'is empathy
more even than love because the latter
is only inward looking toward The One:
empathy alone looks out to others.
[...] Read more
poem by Lonnie Hicks
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Also see the following:
- quotes about journalism
- quotes about physics
- quotes about dictionaries
- quotes about science
- quotes about philosophy
- quotes about Albert Einstein
- quotes about luck
- quotes about writers
- quotes about worry
Best Of What's Around
Hey my friend, it seems your eyes are troubled.
Care to share your time with me?
Would you say you're feeling low and so
A good idea would be to get it off your mind?
See you and me have a better time than most can dream
Have it better than the best
So can pull on through
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down
And if nothing can be done
We'll make the best of what's around.
Turns out not where but who you're with that really matters, that really matters
And hurts not much when you're around, when you're around
And if you hold on tight to what you think is your thing
You may find you're missing all the rest.
She ran up into the light, surprised,
Her arms are open. Her minds eye is
Seeing things from a better side than most can dream
On a clearer road I feel, oh you could say she's safe.
Whatever tears at her, whatever holds her down
And if nothing can be done,
She'll make the best of what's around.
Turns out not where but what you think that really matters, that really matters, that really matters, that really matters. Yeah....
See you and me, have a better time than most can dream,
Have it better than the best, so can pull on through.
Whatever tears at us, whatever holds us down,
And if nothing can be done,
We'll make the best of what's around.
Turns out not where but who you're with that really matters, that really matters.
And hurts not much when you're around, when you're around. Hey, la la...
Hold on... We'll make the best of what's around
song performed by Dave Matthews Band
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about dreaming, quotes about intellect, quotes about friendship, or quotes about beauty
When Saturday Comes
Wind me up and see what I can do for you
Switch me on, I'd do anything you want me to
Let me go and I come ticking like a timebomb
Just call my name and I come running like a marathon
The magic and the mystery
Out here on this field of dreams
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart on your sleeve
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
The winner takes it all
So don't let me down, don't you let me down
Sweat and blood, You know I couldn't give y'any of this
Pain and pride, there ain't no room for second best
Clock strikes three and it's time to be the hero
D'you want to be a Blade, it's a feeling that you'll never know
You've got to fight it tooth and nail
Out here on this Battlefield
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart on your sleeve
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
The winner takes it all
So don't let me down, don't you let me down
The magic and the mystery
Out here on this field of dreams
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart on your sleeve
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart
You got to wear your heart
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart on your sleeve
When Saturday comes
Nothing else matters to me
When Saturday comes
You got to wear your heart
You got to wear your heart
[...] Read more
song performed by Def Leppard
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about wind, quotes about blood, or quotes about peace
All For Love
(eric carmen)
Love was in her heart
But I had dreams to find before I could see
I asked her if shed wait for me
But I was gone too long
Tears were in her eyes
She said I took our love and threw it away
And nothin I could do or say
Could bring it back again
I was tryin to be somethin more
Than the man I had come to be
I never meant to leave her sad and lonely
If only she could see
I did it all for love
All for love
cause nothin really matters if its strong enough
All for love
All for love
No, nothin really matters if youve got enough
She walked out that door
And all my dreams went with her into the night
I wondered how a love so right
Could ever slip away
Love was in her heart
But I had dreams to find before I could see
That somewhere deep inside of me
Shell always be the one
I was tryin to be somethin more
Than the man I had come to be
Never meant to leave her sad and lonely
If only she could see
I did it all for love
All for love
cause nothin really matters if its strong enough
All for love
All for love
No, nothin really matters if youve got enough
I did it all for love
All for love
cause nothin really matters if its strong enough
All for love
All for love
No, nothin really matters but I want her by my side
I did it all for love
All for love
cause nothin really matters if its strong enough
All for love
All for love
No, nothin really matters but I want her
song performed by Eric Carmen
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about strength, quotes about sadness, quotes about walking, or quotes about men
Doesnt Really Matter
Doesnt really matter
Hmm, he-he
Oh, hey
Doesnt matter (it doesnt matter)
Doesnt matter at all
Doesnt matter what your friends are telling you
Doesnt matter what my familys saying too
It just matters that Im in love with you
It only matters that you love me too
It doesnt matter if they wont accept you
Im accepting of you and the things you do
Just as long as its you
Nobody but you, baby, baby
My love for you, unconditional love too
Gotta get up, get up
Get up, get up, get up and show you that it
Doesnt really matter what the eye is seeing
Cause Im in love with the inner being
And it doesnt really matter what they believe
What matters to me is youre in love with me
Doesnt really matter what the eye is seeing
Cause Im in love with the inner being
And it doesnt really matter what they believe
What matters to me is youre nutty-nutty-nutty for me
(youre so kind)
Just what I asked for, youre so loving and kind
(and youre mine)
And I cant believe youre mine
Doesnt matter if youre feeling insecure
Doesnt matter if youre feeling so unsure
Cause Ill take away the doubt within your heart
And show that my love will never hurt or harm
Doesnt matter what the pain we go through
Doesnt matter if the moneys gone too
Just as long as Im with you
Nobody but you, baby, baby
Youre love for me, unconditional I see
Gotta get up, get up
Get up, get up, get up and show you that it
Doesnt really matter what the eye is seeing
Cause Im in love with the inner being
And it doesnt really matter what they believe
What matters to me is youre in love with me
Doesnt really matter what the eye is seeing
Cause Im in love with the inner being
And it doesnt really matter what they believe
What matters to me is youre nutty-nutty-nutty for me
(youre so kind)
Just what I asked for, youre so loving and kind
(and youre mine)
[...] Read more
song performed by Janet Jackson
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about money, quotes about childhood, or quotes about illness
All That Really Matters
See the headlines
Have you heard the news
They're tryin' to turn the world upside down
We sit and watch it on TV
Programmed prophets trying to bring us down
Give us a break now
We know it can't all be bad news
Let's get away now
Cause when I'm holding on to you
We're all, we're all that really matters
The time is now
For taking our own chances
We're all, all that really matters
More brain power
Just to keep alive
Some computer trying to shut you down
The world powers watchin' the way you live
On a mission pushing us around
Give us a break now
No way we're gonna lose
We'll find a way now
Cause when I'm making love to you
We're all, we're all that really matters
The time is now
For taking our own chances
We're all, all that really matters
I wanna love you
I'm gonna try to make it right
Nothing can touch you
We'll make a dream come true tonight
We're all, we're all that really matters
The time is now
For taking our own chances
We're all, all that really matters
We're all, we're all that really matters
We're all, all that really matters
song performed by Journey
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about news, quotes about computers, or quotes about life
Its Money That Matters
Of all of the people that I used to know
Most never adjusted to the great big world
I see them lurking in book stores
Working for the public radio
Carrying their babies around in a sack on their back
Moving careful and slow
(chorus)
Its money that matters
Hear what I say
Its money that matters
In the usa
All of these people are much brighter than i
In any fair system they would flourish and thrive
But they barely survive
They eke out a living and they barely survive
When I was a young boy, maybe thirteen
I took a hard look around me and asked what does it mean?
So I talked to my father, and he didnt know
And I talked to my friend and he didnt know
And I talked to my brother and he didnt know
And I talked to everybody that I knew
(chorus)
Its money that matters
Now you know that its true
Its money that matters
Whatever you do
Then I talked to a man lived up on the county line
I was washing his car with a friend of mine
He was a little fat guy in a red jumpsuit
I said you look kind of funny
He said I know that I do
But I got a great big house on the hill here
And a great big blonde wife inside it
And a great big pool in my backyard and another great big pool
Beside it
Sonny its money that matters, hear what I say
Its money that matters in the usa
Its money that matters
Now you know that its true
Its money that matters whatever you do
song performed by Randy Newman
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about United States of America, quotes about blonde hair, quotes about radio, quotes about books, or quotes about boys
With Each Memory Drained
With each memory drained
I feel better
I write another letter
But never the same
Not as I once was
If only because
The loss of love matters not that much
I keep telling myself
What was her name
I think I already forgot.
A remembrance that matters not
Is it really the now that you got?
Grab hold
Squeeze till it never stops
Like a heart dieing
I must try harder, harder
With each memory drained
I feel better
I write another letter
But never the same
Not as I once was
If only because
The loss of love matters not that much
I keep telling myself
What did her face look like
Another one erased
I am walking backwards
Picking myself apart
Digging and searching
So maybe these feelings
Will just fade
With each memory drained
I feel better
I write another letter
But never the same
Not as I once was
If only because
The loss of love matters not that much
I keep telling myself
As I touched her only the way a man could ever know
What were the sounds
The moans, the whispers
In the dark
I must make it blank
Wipe the slate clean
[...] Read more
poem by Ace Of Black Hearts
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about sound, quotes about screams, quotes about cleaning, quotes about summer, or quotes about kiss
Nature
Weather constantly changes.
No character, only dynamic.
Dull and dreary,
Or bitter and cold,
Or bright and shiny.
This is mother nature.
She is of this world.
She dictates the mood.
She affects mine.
Emotions, constantly changing.
Personality has dynamic,
But lacks character.
It is constantly changing.
Bitter and resentful,
Frustrated and annoyed
Happy & joyous.
This is human nature.
It is of this world.
It dictates our mood.
It affects another.
Mother nature cannot be controlled.
For she is not ours.
Yet mother nature controls me,
Though I am not hers.
Together, we must exist.
We must accept each as we both are.
Though one affects the other.
Based on emotion, not character.
During the storm,
The sky is still the sky,
The ground, is still the ground
The sun is still the sun.
This is the character of mother nature.
The snow may cover the ground,
But the ground remains.
The clouds may cover the sun,
But the sun remains.
Character is always constant.
Nature affects character.
Character is patience, kindness,
Compassion, empathy, forgiving.
Plain and simple,
Our character is love.
Human nature covers human character,
Although it might not be seen,
It still remains.
[...] Read more
poem by Ryan Lee Morris
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about nature, quotes about Sun, quotes about forgiveness, quotes about weather, quotes about happiness, quotes about snow, or quotes about Earth
The Four Seasons : Winter
See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad, with all his rising train;
Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme,
These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought,
And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms,
Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot,
Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life,
When nursed by careless Solitude I lived,
And sung of Nature with unceasing joy,
Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain;
Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure;
Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst;
Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd,
In the grim evening sky. Thus pass'd the time,
Till through the lucid chambers of the south
Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled.
To thee, the patron of her first essay,
The Muse, O Wilmington! renews her song.
Since has she rounded the revolving year:
Skimm'd the gay Spring; on eagle-pinions borne,
Attempted through the Summer-blaze to rise;
Then swept o'er Autumn with the shadowy gale;
And now among the wintry clouds again,
Roll'd in the doubling storm, she tries to soar;
To swell her note with all the rushing winds;
To suit her sounding cadence to the floods;
As is her theme, her numbers wildly great:
Thrice happy could she fill thy judging ear
With bold description, and with manly thought.
Nor art thou skill'd in awful schemes alone,
And how to make a mighty people thrive;
But equal goodness, sound integrity,
A firm, unshaken, uncorrupted soul,
Amid a sliding age, and burning strong,
Not vainly blazing for thy country's weal,
A steady spirit regularly free;
These, each exalting each, the statesman light
Into the patriot; these, the public hope
And eye to thee converting, bid the Muse
Record what envy dares not flattery call.
Now when the cheerless empire of the sky
To Capricorn the Centaur Archer yields,
And fierce Aquarius stains the inverted year;
Hung o'er the farthest verge of Heaven, the sun
Scarce spreads through ether the dejected day.
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays, in horizontal lines,
Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And, soon-descending, to the long dark night,
[...] Read more
poem by James Thomson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about frost, quotes about mountains, quotes about winter, quotes about thaw, quotes about violence, quotes about melancholy, or quotes about wisdom
Watson at the British Open
The aging champion kissed its stones
and waved to all his fans.
At Swilcan bridge across the burn,
As twilight fast descends.
No claret Jug for Tom this day.
His Open at its end
Just this final hole to play
As twilight fast descends.
Five times past champion and beloved
He'll not play here again.
He'll cross this bridge for one last time
As twilight fast descends.
His ball arcs up into the sky
And settles on the green
Near Swilcan bridge across the burn
As twilight fast descends
A simple putt for birdie, Tom,
Yours was a fitting end
You went out like a champion
As twilight fast descends.
Tom Watson, a five time winner of the British open played his final round at the old course at St. Andrews this year. While former champions are permitted to play the open until age 65, the Open is not scheduled for St. Andrews again until 2015, when Watson would be 67. The Claret jug is the trophy awarded for winning the British Open. In Scottish, a Burn is a small running creek. Tom Watson failed to make the cut this year but he did Birdie his final hole.
poem by John F. McCullagh
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about bridges, quotes about United Kingdom, quotes about Scotland, quotes about billiards, or quotes about green
All That Matters
I believe that this world was made for everyone
I can see all that wealth wont make a champion
All that matters in my world (life)
All that matters to me is you
Only you, only you
All that matters, only you
I dont care what people say, what people do
(let em talk)
I dont share that state of mind, that point of view
(let em sue)
(chorus)
From the top of my head to the tip of my toes
From the sole of my shoes through every stitch in my clothes
Each beat of my heart, each molecule
All that matters to me is you
All that matters to me is you
All that matters to me is you
Believe me its true
(youre all that matters)
Now I wish youd believe it too
Only you, only you
song performed by Abc
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Love Is All That Matters
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
Got this beautiful situation
Ive finally found out
What lifes about
Want to talk about it
In my conversation
Going to tell the world
Going to sing it
From the highest mountain top
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
Every person pledge allegiance
All our efforts
To one common cause
Take a minute to improve a life
Form a legion
Thats united for a love cause
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
March
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
Love forgiving
Love for good
Love to keep us faithful
After all is said and done
Love is all that matters
song performed by Human League
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Berenice by edgar allan poe
MISERY is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, -as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness? -from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many striking particulars -in the character of the family mansion -in the frescos of the chief saloon -in the tapestries of the dormitories -in the chiselling of some buttresses in the armory -but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings -in the fashion of the library chamber -and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes -of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before -that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it? -let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of aerial forms -of spiritual and meaning eyes -of sounds, musical yet sad -a remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy-land -into a palace of imagination -into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition -it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye -that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers -it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life -wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, -not the material of my every-day existence-but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.
Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grew -I ill of health, and buried in gloom -she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the hill-side -mine the studies of the cloister -I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation -she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice! -I call upon her name -Berenice! -and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! -Oh! Naiad among its fountains! -and then -then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease -a fatal disease -fell like the simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept, over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim -where was she, I knew her not -or knew her no longer as Berenice.
Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in trance itself -trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease -for I have been told that I should call it by no other appelation -my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form -hourly and momently gaining vigor -and at length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the topography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in; -such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. -The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day dream often replete with luxury, he finds the incitamentum or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer, the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio 'de Amplitudine Beati Regni dei'; St. Austin's great work, the 'City of God'; and Tertullian 'de Carne Christi, ' in which the paradoxical sentence 'Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est' occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fall to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the physical frame of Berenice -in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.
During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings with me, had never been of the heart, and my passions always were of the mind. Through the gray of the early morning -among the trellised shadows of the forest at noonday -and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her -not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream -not as a being of the earth, earthy, but as the abstraction of such a being-not as a thing to admire, but to analyze -not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now -now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.
And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, -one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon*, -I sat, (and sat, as I thought, alone,) in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.
*For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon -Simonides.
Was it my own excited imagination -or the misty influence of the atmosphere -or the uncertain twilight of the chamber -or the gray draperies which fell around her figure -that caused in it so vacillating and indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, I -not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being, lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.
The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and Jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and seemingly pupil-less, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!
The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly spectrum of the teeth. Not a speck on their surface -not a shade on their enamel -not an indenture in their edges -but what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them now even more unequivocally than I beheld them then. The teeth! -the teeth! -they were here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my monomania, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They -they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature. I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, 'que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments, ' and of Berenice I more seriously believed que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des idees! -ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! Des idees! -ah therefore it was that I coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to reason.
And the evening closed in upon me thus-and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went -and the day again dawned -and the mists of a second night were now gathering around -and still I sat motionless in that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the phantasma of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice was -no more. She had been seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.
I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positive -at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horror -horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain; while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed -what was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of the chamber answered me, 'what was it? '
On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it there, upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, 'Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas.' Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?
There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he? -some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the night -of the gathering together of the household-of a search in the direction of the sound; -and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated grave -of a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!
He pointed to garments; -they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand; -it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall; -I looked at it for some minutes; -it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with thirty-two small, white and ivory-looking substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.
poem by Erie Morganmaples
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about libraries, quotes about wedding, quotes about grey, or quotes about tomb
Eight Easy Steps
How to stay paralyzed by fear of abandonment
How to defer to men in solve-able predicaments
How to control someone to be a carbon copy of you
How to have that not work and have them run away from you
How to keep people at arm's length and never get too close
How to mistrust the ones you supposedly love the most
How to pretend you're fine and don't need help from anyone
How to feel worthless unless you're serving or helping someone
I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps
A course of a lifetime you'll never forget
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
How to hate women when you're supposed to be a feminist
How to play all pious when you're really a hypocrite
How to hate god when you're a pray-er and a spiritualist
How to sabotage your fantasies by fears of success
I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps
A course of a lifetime you'll never forget
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
I've been doing research for years
I've been practicing my ass off
I've been training my whole life for this moment I swear to you
Culminating just to be this well-versed leader before you
I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps
A course of a lifetime you'll never forget
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
How to lie to yourself and thereby to everyone else
How to keep smiling when you're thinking of killing yourself
How to numb a la holic to avoid going within
How to stay stuck in blue by blaming them for everything
I'll teach you all this in eight easy steps
A course of a lifetime you'll never forget
I'll show you how to in eight easy steps
I'll show you how leadership looks when taught by the best
song performed by Alanis Morissette
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
See more quotes about hate, quotes about abilities, quotes about women, or quotes about blue