“How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.”
"This Cruel Age has deflected me..." (1944)
Context: This cruel age has deflected me,
like a river from this course.
Strayed from its familiar shores,
my changeling life has flowed
into a sister channel.
How many spectacles I've missed:
the curtain rising without me,
and falling too. How many friends
I never had the chance to meet.
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Anna Akhmatova 99
Russian modernist poet 1889–1966Related quotes
“One can never had too many librarian friends.”
Source: The Wedding Quilt
Noah Calhoun, Chapter 1, p. 25
2000s, The Wedding (2003)
“How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?”
"Blackstar"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)
Context: Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)
Tumblr postings
Context: Then of course I recall the incident which I think had some form of deep, psychological impact on me. The time where I was compelled to read out the most insincere, hypocritical ‘apology’ out loud to my fellow peers, that was written by teachers, for a video that should be more abhorred for its stupidity than for its supposed racism, that was absolutely non-existent. I witnessed firsthand, things that were completely beyond my level of comprehension at that time, that was completely beyond my preconceptions of how a school worked, where rules of an official institution was dictated by the unreliable stupidity of the public, and where punishment was dictated not by logic, or by an understanding of a scenario, but because, a book says so. That ‘apology’ given two years ago, and the subsequent deletion of my first Youtube account was not a sign that I knew my ‘mistakes’ and wanted to ‘change for the better’, it was a sign that other people effectively made me say so. Never have I felt so much anger, unjust, and indignation for how things are, how people are and how it affected me and probably many others too. Before that I was passive, soft-spoken and enjoyed the supposed goodness of the world. Never again would I be the same.
Girl, Interrupted (1994)
“Let the thick curtain fall;
I better know than all
How little I have gained,
How vast the unattained.”
My Triumph, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself
“Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall!”
Canto 8, stanza 1
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I