Thomas Moore

Came but for friendship, and took away love.

From plants that wake when others sleep, from timid jasmine buds that keep their odour to themselves all day, but when the sunlight dies away let the delicious secret out to every breeze that roams about.

Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

Disguise our bondage as we will, 'Tis woman, woman, rules us still.

A friendship that like love is warm; A love like friendship, steady.

It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury.

What though youth gave love and roses, Age still leaves us friends and wine.

And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.

There's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

No, there's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream.

Fond memory brings the light of other days around me.

It's important to be heroic ambitious productive efficient creative and progressive but these qualities don't necessarily nurture the soul. The soul has different concerns of equal value: downtime for reflection conversation and reverie beauty that is captivating and pleasuring relatedness to the environs and to people and any animal's rhythm of rest and activity.

Soul appears when we make room for it.

Most of the people I know who are having trouble finding their life work are somewhat passive in style. They wait for something good to happen to them rather than make strong positive moves.

... ongoing care for the soul rather than seek for a cure appreciates the mystery of human suffering and does not offer the illusion of a problem-free life.I sees every fall into ignorance and confusion as an opportunity to discover that the beast residing at the center of the labyrinth is also an angel.To approach this paradoxial point of tension where adjustment and abnormality meet is to move closer to the realization of our mystery-filled, star-born nature.It is a beast this thing that stirs in the core of our being, but it is also the star of our innermost nature.We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlock the star.~Thomas Moore *Care of the Soul*

Music, oh, how faint, how weak,Language fades before thy spell!Why should Feeling ever speak,When thou canst breathe her soul so well?

It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth.