“The circle of an empty day is brutal and at night it tightens around your neck like a noose.”
Source: The Days of Abandonment
“Tighten
to nothing
the circle
that is
the world's things
Then the Naked
circle
can grow wide,
enlarging,
embracing all”
Jane Hirshfield, ed., Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women.
The Mengeldichten (Poems in Couplets) 25-29
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to nothing
the circle
that is
the world's things
Then the Naked
circle
can grow wide,
enlarging,
embra…" by Hadewijch?
Hadewijch 16
13th-century Dutch poet and mystic 1200–1260Related quotes
“So, when a pebble breaks the surface of a motionless pool, in its first movements it forms tiny rings; and next, while the water glints and shimmers under the growing force, it swells the number of the circles over the rounding pond, until at last one extended circle reaches with wide-spreading compass from bank to bank.”
Sic, ubi perrupit stagnantem calculus undam,
exiguos format per prima volumina gyros,
mox tremulum uibrans motu gliscente liquorem
multiplicat crebros sinuati gurgitis orbes,
donec postremo laxatis circulus oris
contingat geminas patulo curuamine ripas.
Book XIII, lines 24–29
Compare:
As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes
The sinking stone at first a circle makes;
The trembling surface, by the motion stirred,
Spreads in a second circle, then a third;
Wide, and more wide, the floating rings advance,
Fill all the watery plain, and to the margin dance.
Alexander Pope, Temple of Fame, lines 436–441
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake:
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. IV, lines 364–367
Punica
“Is revenge a circle inside of a circle inside of a circle?”
Sherman Alexie
book
Flight
Source: Flight
Black Elk
(1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader
Source: Black Elk Speaks (1961), Ch. 17 : The First Cure
Context: Everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the power of the world always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation, and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished.
XIX, 9
The City of God (early 400s)
Context: The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read, sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God’s mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness.
George Moore (novelist)
(1852–1933) Irish novelist, short-story writer, poet, art critic, memoirist and dramatist
Hail and Farewell (1912), vol. 2: Salve, Kessinger Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-417-93272-4, ch. XV (p. 36).
“Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle.”
Black Elk
(1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader
Source: Black Elk Speaks (1961), Ch. 17 : The First Cure
Context: Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop.
Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God