starry night

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He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. 

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.


―Victor Hugo
Les Misérables

 

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To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. 

To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. 

Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.


—Marcus Aurelius 121 - 180 CE
Meditations

 

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I am not to speak to you, 

I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, 

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, 

I am to see that I do not lose you.

—Walt Whitman

To A Stranger

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thank you

wait - what ?

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