Bertram (first staged May 9, 1816), Act IV, scene 2.
“It is no longer a passion hidden in my heart:
It is Venus herself fastened to her prey.”
Ce n'est plus une ardeur dans mes veines cachée:
C'est Vénus tout entière à sa proie attachée.
Phèdre, act I, scene III.
Phèdre (1677)
Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)
Light (1919), Ch. XVI - De Profundis Clamavi
Context: The spectacle of to-morrow is one of agony. Wise men make laughable efforts to determine what may be, in the ages to come, the cause of the inhabited world's end. Will it be a comet, the rarefaction of water, or the extinction of the sun, that will destroy mankind? They have forgotten the likeliest and nearest cause — Suicide.
They who say, "There will always be war," do not know what they are saying. They are preyed upon by the common internal malady of shortsight. They think themselves full of common-sense as they think themselves full of honesty. In reality, they are revealing the clumsy and limited mentality of the assassins themselves.
The shapeless struggle of the elements will begin again on the seared earth when men have slain themselves because they were slaves, because they believed the same things, because they were alike.
“I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.”
"Childhood".
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: I cannot reach it, and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity. Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my pow'r,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.
“Take hope from the heart of man and you make him a beast of prey.”
A Village Commune http://books.google.com/books?id=4rksAAAAYAAJ&q=%22take+hope+from+the+heart+of+man+and+you+make+him+a+beast+of+prey%22&pg=PA206#v=onepage (1881)
Cited in: Pratiyogita Darpan https://books.google.nl/books?id=trBMVnMmk6oC&pg=PT47&lpg=PT47&dq=%22Take+hope+from+the+heart+of+man+and+you+make+him+a+beast+of+prey%22&source=bl&ots=CrxbsmwOru&sig=5n_dKLOkkZs7IlJucIBMAy2gG_Y&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiIyumfwJ_LAhWDNpoKHRGjBxoQ6AEIWjAH#v=onepage&q=%22Take%20hope%20from%20the%20heart%20of%20man%20and%20you%20make%20him%20a%20beast%20of%20prey%22&f=false, February 2009
“I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.”
Source: Demian (1919), p. 9. Prologue
In Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.1#
“The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise.”
“It is not, nor it cannot, come to good,
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.”
Variant: But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Source: Hamlet
“My Life cannot implement in action the demands of all the people to whom my heart responds.”
