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melancholy

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Quotes filed under melancholy

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Under the glass porte-cochère of a theatre Amory stood, watching the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became grey and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; in the street the lamps of the taxicabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome November rain had perversely stolen the day__ last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

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Broken MelodyBroken melody _ tear sparkling in the eyeOf a woman loved_Please past,Jewel lost,A trampled dreamLips unkissedIn the broken melody.With silent sobs the naked shoulders shake,Their whiteness dazzling_Stabbed, stabbed with remorseFor the moments of mindlessness,For her ruined fate,For the happiness lostIn the broken melody.Face hidden in her hands in shame,Remorsefully the woman weeps,With heart despairing(A broken guitar,A voice stifledOn lips kissed by painIn the broken melody).Silent he stands beside the woman weepingScolding tears of shameThat dim her eyes.Some money on the table quickly laysAnd goes away,Leaving the woman lostIn the broken melody.But when another comes, lust mounts again,The heated bloodPounds furiously through the veins,Benumbing mind_ and only gaspsAnd grants are heardIn the horrid melody.(Translated by R.Elsie)

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There is a phase of melancholy__ phase that has sloughed all urgency__hat seems to me always a revelation of that ancient, familiar thing, my true self. If there is anything in a person with which one may be in love, surely it can only ever be the self that such melancholy reveals. There are potent and austere traditions that teach us a true self that has no qualities, no atmosphere, and which thus could never be revealed by melancholia; some of these traditions maintain, in a tone that suggests resistance is folly, that there is no self at all. But such traditions are not native to my soul, and within my life they are new, though they are older than me in history. For me, the self revealed by melancholy is older and thus truer.

QC
Quentin S. Crisp

The Little One: A Meditation

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In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps she had peeped into one of my strange windows out of curiosity and had caught a glimpse of my doomed loneliness, or her fancy had been intrigued by the mute language, the clue of my painting.And then, while I advanced always along my corridor, she lived her normal life outside, the exciting life of those people who live outside, that strange, absurd life in which there are dances and parties and gaiety and frivolity. And it happened at times that when I walked by one of my windows she was waiting for me, silent and longing (why was she waiting for me? why silent and longing?); but other times she did not get there on time, or she forgot about this poor creature hemmed in, and then I, with my face pressed against the glass wall, could see her in the distance, smiling or dancing carefree, or, what was worse, I could not see her at all and I imagined her in inaccessible or vile places. And then I felt my destiny a far lonelier one than I had imagined.

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I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.