Beauty is not beauty without love.
Thomas CampionRead
Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers. From their own Music when they stray.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the beauty of kind words contrasted with the fleeting nature of actions and time.
In this quote, Thomas Campion contrasts the gentleness and kindness of a person's words with the inconsistency of their actions, much like dancers who may stray from the music they were meant to follow. It highlights the theme that while kind words can be beautiful and comforting, they can sometimes lack the permanence of meaningful actions, suggesting that true connection lies in a harmony between what we say and what we do.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the importance of matching words with actions in relationships.
Like a river flows surely to the sea/Darling so it goes/Some things are meant to be/Take my hand, take my whole life too/For I can't help falling in love with you.
As a matter of fact she does not know to this day if those words were spoken, or if he only caught her, wound his arms around her, held her so tightly, with such continual, changing pressures that it seemed more than two arms were needed, that she was surrounded by him, his body strong and light, demanding and renouncing all at once, as if he was telling her she was wrong to give up on him, everything was possible, but then again that she was not wrong, he meant to stam himself on her and go.
He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.
Hell, madame, is to love no longer.
My mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it.... I never felt my mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment- upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses
As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, So deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So dark when I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee.
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