“Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.”

As tuas mãos tacteiam-me a tremer...
Meu corpo de âmbar, harmonioso e moço
É como um jasmineiro em alvoroço
Ébrio de sol, de aroma, de prazer!
Quoted in Florbela Espanca (1984), p. 13
Translated by John D. Godinho
The Flowering Heath (1931), "Toledo"

1980s, A Dream Deferred (1989)
Context: He knew in 1968 that while this was a beautiful symbol of hope and possibility, it indeed was only the beginning. For after they joined hands what then were they going to do? Yes, he was dreaming again of marching on Washington, but this time the intent was to stay there not just for a day, not just for speeches and singing but to engage in a campaign of massive civil disobedience to try and stop, nonviolently, the functioning of the national government until the cause of the poor became this nation’s first priority—until all people were guaranteed a decent job, at a decent income, until we stopped the killing of Asians abroad in the Vietnam war and turned to attend to the very desperate needs of our people within our shores. That was the last dream. And if you understand that dream, if you understand that for the last six months of his life Martin Luther King Jr. was not only talking about but actively organizing native Americans, Hispanics, poor whites, blacks, people from all across this nation who had for so long been denied; if you realize how threatening that was, perhaps you will understand why the bullet came, perhaps where it came from.

Daniel Gray, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Bodhicaryavatara

Source: Queer: A Novel (1985), Chapter Two

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

"The Jelly-Bean"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
Context: The street was hot at three and hotter still at four, the April dust seeming to enmesh the sun and give it forth again as a world-old joke forever played on an eternity of afternoons. But at half past four a first layer of quiet fell and the shades lengthened under the awnings and heavy foliaged trees. In this heat nothing mattered. All life was weather, a waiting through the hot where events had no significance for the cool that was soft and caressing like a woman's hand on a tired forehead.

The Liberty Song (1768).