92 Quotes Tagged: letters

Virginia wasn’t all cool intellect by any means. She had the warmest and deepest and most human of affections for those she loved. They were few, perhaps, and she applied alarmingly high standards, but her love and humanity were real, once they were given.

You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.

You have the blood of a poet. You have that and always will. You show, in the middle of savage things (that I like), the gentleness of your heart, that is so full of pain and light.

We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that's finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour who's crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it's even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That's enough for me, or it isn't enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.

"[Virginia] is an exquisite companion, and I love her dearly. She has to stay in bed till luncheon, as she is still far from well, and she has lots of lessons to do. Leonard is coming on Saturday [...]
Please don't think that
a) I shall fall in love with Virginia
b) Virginia will fall in love with me
c) Leonard """"""
d) I shall fall """ Leonard
Because it is not so [...]

I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. My heart goes wandering around and calls for Susie...My heart is full of you; none other than you are in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me. If you were here, we need not talk at all for our eyes would whisper for us and, your hand fast in mine, we would not ask for language.

How much sadness there is in life. Still, it won't do to become depressed, one should turn to other things, and the right thing is work, but there are times when one can only find peace of mind in the realization: I, too, shall not be spared by unhappiness.

Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black looked at in the right light and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart.

With me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.

A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write.

To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..

Trying to build myself up with the fact that I have done things right that were even good and have had moments that were excellent but the bad is heavier to carry around and feel have no confidence.

I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

A letter always seemed to me like immortality because it is the mind alone without corporeal friend.

I miss you horribly, and apart from that am permanently infuriated by the thought of what you could make of this country if only you could be got here. You see, you ought to.