Enchanting Quotes - page 2
.. on the banks of a very picturesque mountain stream that pours out its crystalline water in four or five waterfalls into the Dussel brook... Oh, in this cave, at this crystal flood, I often felt myself so well! Sensations frequently welled up in my bosom at this blessed place that ennoble the soul and make pour out joyful tombs; [they] give the heart impressions that neither greatness or honor can steal from us. An indomitable longing came to me, to learn more and more about these enchanting shades of beautiful and holy nature, and to transfer them on the canvas with my brush.
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong beauty enchanting but rare goodness very apt to be weak folly very apt to be defiant wickedness to carry the day imbeciles to be in great places, peolpe of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of a night we wake up to it again for ever and ever we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it.
Henry James
I had tasted the bait and knew that there was nothing more attractive and more subtle on earth than the Game. I had also observed fairly early that this enchanting Game demanded more than naive amateur players, that it took total possession of the man who had succumbed to its magic. And an instinct within me rebelled against my throwing all my energies and interests into this magic forever. Some naive feeling for simplicity, for wholeness and soundness, warned me against the spirit of the Waldzell Vicus Lusorum. I sensed in it a spirit of specialism and virtuosity, certainly highly cultivated, certainly richly elaborated, but nevertheless isolated from humanity and the whole of life - a spirit that had soared too high into haughty solitariness. For years I doubted and probed, until the decision had matured within me and in spite of everything I decided in favor of the Game. I did so because I had within me that urge to seek the supreme fulfillment and serve only the greatest master.
Hermann Hesse
I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things... but -
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.
Gerald Durrell
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.Elves are terrific. They beget terror.The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.No one ever said elves are nice.Elves are bad.
Terry Pratchett
Among its [Boresko's] curiosities is a high rock, which overhangs a fearful precipice, whose bottom is just as much below the surface of the surrounding country as the summit of the rock is above the surface. From its summit the rock presents the most enchanting views that the country affords... The atmosphere exerts, however, a medical influence. While inhaling it, each person possesses in imagination whatever he desires at the moment: riches, health, power, or even a lady's love. The place is appropriately termed the pinnacle of hope. ...Hither come ...all persons who wish to cheat the present moment of its anguish by pleasant anticipations of the future. Occasionally, however, a peculiar madness seizes the visiters, and they jump from the delightful pinnacle into the abyss below, whose noxious vapours prostrate all the energies of life, and reverse all the reveries of hope.
Alexander Bryan Johnson
This is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look upon, the most satisfying to the eye and spirit. To see the sun sink down, drowned in his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature, and make a sympathetic one drunk with ecstasy.
Mark Twain
Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!
Attuning still the soul to tenderness,
As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,
Had touched her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,
Hadst caught the tones, nor suffered them to die.
O'ershading sorrow doth not make thee less
Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress
With a bright halo, shining beamily,
As when a cloud a golden moon doth veil,
Its sides are tinged with a resplendent glow,
Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,
And like fair veins in sable marble flow;
Still warble, dying swan! still tell the tale,
The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.
John Keats
The animals are much more content with mere existence than we are; the plants are wholly so; and man is so according to how dull and insensitive he is. The animal's life consequently contains less suffering but also less pleasure than the human's, the direct reason being that on the one hand it is free from care and anxiety and the torments that attend them, but on the other is without hope and therefore has no share in that anticipation of a happy future which, together with the enchanting products of the imagination which accompany it, is the source of most of our greatest joys and pleasures. The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.
Arthur Schopenhauer
