Ours is the same aloneness, the same searchings and solutions, the same love for the labyrinths of literature and history, and the same role to be played out. . . - Boris Pasternak to Marina Tsvetaeva, May 1926

English is full of figures of speech that a Roman would understand but most English speakers don’t. Once you know that volvere is Latin for “to roll,” you can piece together that to “involve” is literally to “roll in,” to evolve is to roll out, to revolve is to roll around, and a

“Beatriz, Beatriz Elena, Beatriz Elena Viterbo, beloved Beatriz. Beatriz forever lost: it is I, Borges.” JLB Borges, Jorge Luis

“The poem is never finished, simply abandoned.” Paul Valery

“I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.” JLB Borges, Jorge Luis

“I am nothing but words, just a shape of dreams or night. I tremble. But my heart is full!” Euripides

“Pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.” Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)

“Maybe the moon is only beautiful because it is far.” لربما القمر ليس جميلا إلا لأنه بعيد. Mahmoud Darwish

“Only several streets divide us, Only several words! The crescent, at this very hour, Inspires poets with its glow, The wind is gusting and your collar Is covered with the snow.” Marina Cvetaeva

“I felt what we always feel when someone dies–the sad awareness, now futile, of how little it would have cost us to have been more loving. One forgets that one is a dead man conversing with dead men.” JLB Borges, Jorge Luis

“Perhaps it's no more than the fire’s reflection on some piece of gleaming furniture that the child remembers so much later like a revelation.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“In the vastness of space and the immensity of time, it is my joy to share a planet and an epoch with you.” Carl Sagan

“Into obscurity retiring Try your development to hide, As autumn mist on early mornings Conceals the dreaming countryside.” Boris Pasternak

הַלְּלוּ יָהּ!

“I must have flowers, always, and always.” Claude Monet

Sometimes “never” is short. ✒️

The Home of Nero’s Wife at Pompeii #Poppeae biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/ancient-…

Ah, tu pensavi che anch’io fossi una che si possa dimenticare e che si butti, pregando e piangendo, sotto gli zoccoli di un baio. … Anna Achmatova

Boris Pasternak to Marina Tsvetaeva "And suddenly here you are, not created by me, born to respond to my least stirring with every fiber of your being.”

Pasquino - talking statue of Rome!