To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. In a word to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

- William Ellery Channing (1780)

via Listry Dakota

When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars
and he will make the face of heaven so fine
that all the world will be in love with night
and pay no worship to the garish sun.

- William Shakespeare

     She moaned and seemed to be lifting her arms to him. The boat began to drift. Waves lifted it, drove it out. Water on all sides seemed to darken. Jesse climbed awkwardly into the front seat of the boat, where Shelley lay, and gathered her into his arms. He could not stop weeping. Why was he weeping after he had come so far, why was he sobbing so bitterly? She could not escape him any longer. And yet she kept moaning as if in pain, in a delirium, her hands light as moths against the side of his face, beating him away or caressing him, he could not tell. "You won't remember any of the things they did to you," he whispered. His tongue felt swollen and blistered. Shelley's lips were cracked. Caked with something sour. She was sick, dying, he could smell the stench of death about her, and panic rose in him at the thought of her escaping again, her eluding him forever --
     "Why are you dying? Why are you going away?" he whispered.
     The boat bounced and shuddered.
     "Why are you going away from me, all of you, going away one by one . . . " he said, clutching at her, feeling her heat, her dryness, her incredible dryness, the dryness of this body that was straining to get loose from him and to fly out of the world entirely: straining to break its orbit and elude him forever. Where were they all going, these people who abandoned him?--one by one, going away, abandoning him? Was there a universe of broken people, flung out of their orbits but still living, was there perhaps a Jesse there already in that void, the true, pure, undefiled Jesse, who watched this struggling Jesse with pity?
     "All of you . . . everyone . . . all my life, everyone. . . . Always you are going away from me and you don't come back to explain . . .," Jesse wept.
     He embraced her. He clutched at her thighs, her emaciated thighs, her legs. He pressed his face against her knees, weeping.
     The boat drifted most of the night. Near dawn it was picked up by a large handsome cruiser, a Royal Mounted Police boat, a dazzling sight with its polished wood and metal and its trim of gold and blue.

- Joyce Carol Oates, Wonderland
(This was the ending in the 1971 first edition, which was changed in later editions.)

"Don't you ever get bored?" she asked.
     What's bored? Bored is when you caint find something to keep you curious. So long as there's anything going on in the world, I'll never be bored.
     "But what's going on in the world? Nothing ever happens around here."
     She heard his scoffing laughter. You just aint looking for it. Or you caint see it. Or caint hear it. Or caint taste it or smell it or feel it. Why, there aint a moment goes by that something wondrous don't occur.
     "Like what?"
     Like a orange garden spider building her web. Or like the wind a-slewing through the cedars. Or the sound of them dogs afar off a-hrolfing and a-hrothgaring as they chase their game. Or the lightning bugs all over the meader at dusky dark. Or the fine smell of oak wood fresh cut. Or the sweet breeze that puffs from your nose when you're a-sleeping.

- Donald Harington, With