“All these things have you said of beauty.

Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,

And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.

It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,

But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.

It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,

But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,

But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.

People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.

But you are life and you are the veil.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

But you are eternity and your are the mirror.” 
-Kahlil Gibran  ( illustration by Dan Hillier )

 

"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do." - Anais Nin (Photo of Maria Germanova 1908 in The Blue Bird)

( photo by Etienne Bertrand Weill )

''Lend, lend your wings! i mount! i fly! o grave! where is thy victory? o death! where is thy sting?''
-Alexander Pope

( photo by Baron Adolf de Meyer )

"A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own." - Percy Bysshe Shelley (Drawing by Albin Brunovsky) 

 ~Astrophyton ( photo by Ernst Haeckel )

 ( photo by Jocelyn Lee )

 ( Richard Teschner puppets )

“Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all.”
 -Walt Whitman    ( painting by Ferdynand Ruszczyc )

“There was something awesome in the thought of the solitary mortal standing by the open window and summoning in from the gloom outside the spirits of the nether world.” -Arthur Conan Doyle
  ( illustration by Alfred Kubin )

“Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav'n” -John Milton 
 ( painting by Wladyslaw Podkowinski )

“You could not see a cloud, because / No cloud was in the sky: / No birds were flying overhead - / There were no birds to fly.”- Lewis Carroll

''Roll on, deep and dark blue ocean, roll. Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain. Man marks the earth with ruin, but his control stops with the shore''. -Lord Byron

( illustration by Dan Hellier )

"On this night I had searched for them without success, fearing to find them; they were nowhere in the house, nor about the moonlit dawn. For, although the sun is lost to us for ever, the moon, full-orbed or slender, remains to us. Sometimes it shines by night, sometimes by day, but always it rises and sets, as in that other life."- Ambrose Bierce   (photo by Horydczak Theodor, ''Charles Bittinger in painting Moon Eclipse'')

''But yesterday I should have thought me blest To stand high-pinnacled upon the peak Of middle life and look adown the bleak And unfamiliar foreslope to the West, Where solemn shadows all the land invest And stilly voices, half-remembered, speak Unfinished prophecy, and witch-fires freak The haunted twilight of the Dark of Rest. Yea, yesterday my soul was all aflame To stay the shadow on the dial's face At manhood's noonmark!'' -Baruch Arnegriff    (painting by Philips Wouwerman)

“Let us go in; the fog is rising.” -Emily Dickinson  (painting by Zdzislaw Beksinski)

“I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.” -Rosalia de Castro

“Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest, which co-mingle their roots in the darkness underground.” -William James   ( illustration by Dan Hillier, ''Forest'' )

''The nearer the dawn the darker the night'' -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  ( painting by Jeffrey Jones, ''Dark Angel'')

“Into a Limbo large and broad, since called / The paradise of fools, to few unknown.”

-John Milton   (painting by Zdzislaw Beksinski)

   O radiant Dark!  O darkly fostered ray!
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day. 
 -George Eliot  (illustration by Scott Belcastro)