• Oscar Wilde, the sphinx

In a dim corner of my room for longer than

my fancy thinks

A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me

through the shifting gloom.

/

Inviolate and immobile she does not rise she

does not stir

For silver moons are naught to her and naught

to her the suns that reel.

• Mark Strand, our masterpiece is the private life

Is there something down by the water keeping itself from us,

Some shy event, some secret of the light that falls upon the deep,

Some source of sorrow that does not wish to be discovered yet?

• John Keats, bright star

• Carl Sagan, a pale blue dot
• We succeeded in taking that picture, and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there – on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam

• Robert F. Kennedy / Aeschylus, agamemnon

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God

• Jin / BTS, epiphany

I’m the one I should love in this world.

Shining me, precious soul of mine; I finally

realised. And so I love me: not so perfect, but so

beautiful.

• Mitch Welling

When the world ends, I want to scream into the chaos that I loved you more than anything in hopes that the sound will continue to exist after everything stops.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald, the great gatsby

Despite everything there is light⸺ and it touches more than just the smoothly painted houses on the cul-de-sac / and it touches more than just monoculture lawns / and it touches more than just shining cars when the garage door opens / and it touches more than what’s good and beautiful

• deep devotion