“the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry -- loud and long -- but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”
Source: Sula
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Toni Morrison 184
American writer 1931–2019Related quotes
Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things
Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 21-29, p. 139
February 16, 1802
This incident was the subject of Wordsworth's "Alice Fell" http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww190.html.
Diaries
“That change didn't happen from the top down, but it happened from the bottom up.”
2017, Farewell to Staff Members (January 2017)
Context: That change didn't happen from the top down, but it happened from the bottom up. It was met sometimes with skepticism and doubt. Some folks didn't think we could pull it off. There were those that felt that the institutions of power and privilege in this country were too deeply entrenched. And yet, all of you came together in small towns and big cities, a whole bunch of you really young, and you decided to believe and you knocked on doors and you made phone calls and you talked to your parents who didn't know how to pronounce Barack Obama. And you got to know each other. And you went into communities that maybe you had never even thought about visiting and met people that on the surface seemed completely different than you -- didn't look like you or talk like you or watch the same TV programs as you. And yet, once you started talking to them, it turned out that you had something in common. And it grew and it built. And people took notice. And throughout, it was infused with a sense of hope. As I said in 2004, it wasn't blind optimism that drove you to do all of this work. It wasn't naiveté. It wasn't willful ignorance to all the challenges that America faces. It was hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. You proved the power of hope.
[NewsBank, 3, Sarah Whitman, Age-old feud: In the beginning, Tampa Bay Times, Florida, February 7, 2014]
“Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.”
St. 14
Thyrsis (1866)
Context: Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life’s headlong train; —
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush’d, less quick to spring again.
Bodhi Tree lecture (1999)
Context: We join together to earth the power of the season and to slip between the worlds, the voices saying to every one of us, "Wake up, you are it, you are a part of the circle of the wise. There is no mystery that has not already been revealed to you. There is no power you do not already have. You share in all the love there is. The goddess awakens in infinite forms and a thousand disguises. She is found where she is least expected, appears out of nowhere and everywhere to illumine the open heart. She is singing, crying, moaning, wailing, shrieking, crooning to us, to be awake, to commit ourselves to life, to be a lover in the world and of the world, to join our voices in the single song of constant change and creation. For her law is to love all beings, and she is the cup of the drink of life. The circle is ever open, ever unbroken.