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"If the mighty autocrat of the north knew what a dangerous enemy threatened him in Chopin's works in the simple tunes of his mazurkas, he would forbid this music. Chopin's works are canons buried in flowers."
~Robert Schumann

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.
~Emily Dickinson

The wind kisses her breasts and shakes
Her long veils lying softly on the stream
The shivering willows weep upon her cheeks
Across her dreaming brows the rushes lean
~Rimbaud, from "Ophelia"

"My dear, I'm warning you..."
I stopped her protest with a kiss
And she laughed, low--
A laugh that wanted more than this...
~Rimbaud from "First Evening"

The Indians long ago knew that music was going on permanently and that hearing it was like looking at a landscape which didn't stop when one turned away.
~John Cage

"The human race lives by art and reasonings."
~Aristotle

"All men by nature desire to know."
~Aristotle

But when the days of golden dreams had perished,
And even Despair was powerless to destroy,
Then did I learn how existence could be cherished,
Strengthened, and fed without the aid of joy;
~Emily Bronte from 'Remembrance'


THE DEAD MAN WALKING by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?




I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.




Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.




There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ....




-- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.




But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.




When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;




And when my Love's heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.




And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,




Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.



A good man is hard to find.
~Flannery O'Connor

Why? Because there ain't no such creature

Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.
~Debussy-Rabutin.


Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
~Norman Cousins

If we deny love that is given to us, if we refuse to give love because we fear pain or loss, then our lives will be empty, our loss greater.
~Source unknown

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature's delight.
~Marcus Aurelius

You cannot run away from a weakness; you must sometime fight it out or perish. And if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Everything rises from the ashes...
~Tom Kozlowski

Everything that rises must converge
~Flannery O'Connor

If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for being
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
~Diane Arbus, American photographer

The camera can photograph thought
~Dirk Bogarde

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude. ~Paul Tillich

Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. ~Marcus Aurelius

When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves. ~Eda LeShan

He who hates even one person can love no other.
~Anonymous

An eye for an eye makes us all blind.
~Mohandas Gandhi

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
~Gandhi

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only in movement, with all it's pain, is life.
~Jacob Burkhardt

A time to weep and a time to laugh; A time to mourn and a time to dance.
~Ecclesiastes from the Old Testament

You became like one of us to know the weight of these chains...

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.
~Emily Dickinson

Free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man.
~Flannery O'Connor


All songs Copyright 2009 Tom Kozlowski
Except as noted


tjkoz2@yahoo.com