II, xiv, 18.
Elegies
Nemo in amore videt.
Elegies
“I love walking in the rain because no one can see me crying”
“What a man sees, Love can make invisible—and what is invisible, that can Love make him see.”
Quel che l'huom vede Amor gli fa invisibile
E l'invisibil fa vedere Amore.
Canto I, stanza 56 (tr. G. Waldman)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.
“What is love? No one knows what love is, exactly. No one can define it. No one can prove it.”
Source: I've Got Your Number
“See no one loves you more than me… and no one ever will”
“They say that loving eyes can never see, but that's a fool's axiom. Sometimes, they see too much”
Source: Full Dark, No Stars
"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: This wild swan of a world is no hunter's game.
Better bullets than yours would miss the white breast
Better mirrors than yours would crack in the flame.
Does it matter whether you hate your... self?
At least Love your eyes that can see, your mind that can
Hear the music, the thunder of the wings. Love the wild swan.
