Welcome to
. The following is part of our Venus’ Notebook series — a compendium of beautiful things. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read.
1. Adam and Eve — Max Pietschmann (1894)
2. Charles Dickens, from Great Expectations (1861)
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
3. Lamia — John William Waterhouse (1905)
4. Emile Brontë, from Wuthering Heights (1847)
They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.
5. Le Sommeil — Gustave Courbet (1866)
6. Boris Pasternak, from Doctor Zhivago (1957)
I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self respect. And it's these things I'd believe in, even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all she should be. I love her and it is the beginning of everything.
7. Lovers in a Wood — John Atkinson Grimshaw (1873)
8. F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to a friend about his would-be wife, Zelda (1918)
The sky dreams of stars, the earth dreams of love.
9. L’Oubli des passions - Jean Delville (1913)
10. Mihai Eminescu (c. 19th century)
As for life's tragedies, our love will defeat them. Love is the most effective cure. In the crevices of disasters, happiness lies like a diamond in a mind, so let us instill in ourselves the wisdom of love.
11. Two Lovers — Reza Abbasi (1630)
12. Naguib Mahfouz, from Midaq Alley (1947)
What’s it to you if I love you?
13. The Embrace — Egon Schiele (1917)
14. Johann Wolfgang Goethe (c. 19th century)
The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
15. La Belle Dame sans Merci — Frank Bernard Dicksee (c. 1901)
16. Blaise Pascal, from Pensées (1657–58)
He was my North, my South, my East, and West, My working week, and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.
17. The Flying Carpet — Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1926)
18. W. H. Auden, from ‘Funeral Blues’ (1938)
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.
19. The Stolen Kiss — Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1785)
20. A.A. Milne, from Winnie the Pooh (1926)
And still, after all this time, The sun never says to the earth, "You owe me." Look what happens with A love like that, It lights the whole sky.
21. Painting Bathers at San Niccolò (Detail) — Domenico Passignano (1600)
22. Daniel Ladinsky aka the fake Hafez, from The Subject Tonight is Love (2003)
Dearest love, let me die with you, In the deep earth lie with you, For this world is dark and dreary, I am lonely and weary!
23. Lovers — Unknown (6th century)
24. Adam Mickiewicz, from ‘The Romantic’ (1822)
Thou demandest: what is Love? It is that powerful attraction towards all we conceive, or fear, or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience within ourselves. If we reason, we would be understood; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood. This is Love.
25. Lovers in a Landscape — Muhammadi (1570)
26. Percy Shelley, from On Love (c. 1818)
Love is an incurable malady.
27. The Cyclops — Odilon Redon (1914)
28. Marcel Proust, from In Search of Lost Time (1913)
When we had read how the desired smile was kissed by one who was so true a lover, this one, who never shall be parted from me, while all his body trembled, kissed my mouth.
29. Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta — Lionel Royer (c. 1890)
30. Dante Alighieri, from Inferno (Canto V, lines 133-136) (1314)
Even after all this time? Always.
31. View of Dresden at Sunset — Carl Gustav Carus (c. 1822)
32. J.K. Rowling, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
33. The Parting of Hero and Leander — William Etty (1827)
34. William Shakespeare, from ‘Sonnet 116’ (1609)
What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.
35. Young Man at His Window — Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
36. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from Brothers Karamazov (1880)
When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
37. Lancelot and Guinevere — Herbert James Draper (c. 1890s)
38. Kahlil Gibran, from The Prophet (1923)
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
39. Love in the Village — Jules Bastien-Lepage (1882)
40. F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby (1925)
In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.
41. Le temps passe vite — Edouard Dantan (1895)
42. Maya Angelou (c. 20th century)
For you, a thousand times over.
43. Neger und Tänzerin — Otto Mueller (c. 1903)
44. Khaled Hosseini, from The Kite Runner (2003)
Under the cherry blossoms strangers are not really strangers
45. Adam et Eve au Jardin d'Eden — Gustave Courtois (c. 1902-1906)
46. Kobayashi Issa, a haiku (c. 18th-19th centuries)
When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.
47. La mia rossa (My redhead) — Ettore Tito (1888)
48. Louis de Bernières, from Captain Correlli's Mandolin (1994)
We had the stars, you and I. And this is given once only.
You title a piece simply “Love” and OBVIOUSLY I’m going to read it!
Romance AND gorgeous art to inspire more words. Fabulous addition to the collections, Mikey.