Gennady Aygi, Tr. By Peter France, From “The People Are A Temple.”

Marina Tsvetaeva, from Poem of the End: V (tr. by Elaine Feinstein)

Oscar Wilde, from At Verona

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from “Sorrow”, Collected Poems

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”

— John Greenleaf Whittier (b. 17 December 1807)

[He] felt that the murky twilight which was gradually seeping into the room was also slowly penetrating his body, transforming his blood into fog, and that he was powerless to stop the spell that was being cast on him by the twilight.

Vladimir Nabokov, Mary, 1926

“I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.”

—The Picture of Dorian Gray - O. Wilde

Naomi Shihab Nye, from You & Yours: Poems; "Stay," originally published in 2005

Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Book of Hours

“She would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love […] in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”

— Arthur Rimbaud (b. 20 October 1854)