“From such absurdity
I shall soon turn gray
or change into another person.
Why do you beckon me with your hand?”

— Anna Akhmatova

Poem without a Hero (1963)
Context: This means that gravestones are fragile
and granite is softer than wax.
Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity
I shall soon turn gray
or change into another person.
Why do you beckon me with your hand?
For one moment of peace
I would give the peace of the tomb.

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Anna Akhmatova 99

Russian modernist poet 1889–1966

Desmond Leslie (1921–2001) British pilot, film maker, writer, and musician

The Amazing Mr. Lutterworth (1958)

“I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.”

Thomas Tickell (1685–1740) English poet and man of letters

Colin and Lucy.

“Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

“Lysistrata: O women, if we would compel the men to bow to Peace, […] We must refrain from every depth of love…. Why do you turn your backs? Where are you going? Why do you bite your lips and shake your heads? Why are your faces blanched? Why do you weep?”

Aristophanés Lysistrata

tr. Lindsay 1925, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Lys.+120
Lysistrata, line 120-121 & 124-127
Lysistrata (411 BC)

““Why do you tell me this?”
“Perhaps because I am a cat and it amuses me to be arbitrary and do you a good turn.””

Roger Zelazny book A Night in the Lonesome October

October 2 (p. 9)
A Night in the Lonesome October (1993)

“I am favoured with your obliging letter, and shall finish your picture in two or three days at farthest, and send to Colchester according to your order, with a frame. I thank you. Sir, for your kind intention of procuring me a few heads to paint when I come over, which I purpose doing as soon as some of those are finished which I have [now] in hand. I should be glad if you'd place your picture as far from the light as possible; observing to let the light fall from the left.”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote in Gainborough's letter, 24 Feb. 1757 from Ipswich, to a correspondent in the neighbouring town of Colchester; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 20
1755 - 1769

“This government of yours does not please me, and I cannot trust it; you must change it and give me a pledge that you will observe everything you promised; otherwise you will soon realize that I do not want to live this way; and I will not …my friend …my enemy.”

Cesare Borgia (1475–1507) Duke of Romagna and former Catholic cardinal

as quoted by Roberto Ridolfi, 'The Life of Niccolo Machiavelli', page 74.

“I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”
Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque ut pecuniam accepero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1 (1974)
Variant translation: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.