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[timenssecundus]

How can I keep silent? How can I stay quiet?
My friend, whom I loved, has turned to clay,
my friend Enkidu, whom I loved has turned to clay.
Shall I not be like him, and also lie down,
never to rise again, through all eternity?
What is this sleep which holds you now?
You are lost in the dark and cannot hear me.

The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror

~ Anonymous, Epic of Gilgamesh

He fled in terror, reached the silent fields,
And howled, and tried to speak. No use at all!
Foam dripped from his mouth bloodthirsty still, he turned
Against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter,
And his arms were legs, and his robes were shaggy hair,
Yet he is still Lycaon, the same grayness,
The same fierce face, the same red eyes, a picture
Of bestial savagery. One house has fallen,
But more than one deserves to. Fury reigns
Over all the fields of Earth. Let them pay for it, and quickly!
So stands my purpose.
Part of them approved
With words and added fuel to his anger,
And part approved with silence, and yet all
Were grieving at the loss of humankind...

~ Ovid, Metamorphoses (translated by Rolfe Humphries)

I have lost you, my brother
And your death has ended
The spring season
Of my happiness,
our house is buried with you
And buried the laughter that you taught me.

~ Catullus

In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.

~ Anonymous, Beowulf (translated by Seamus Heaney)

In nature there's no blemish but the mind.
None can be called deformed but the unkind.

~ Wm. Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

The most racking pangs succeeded: a grinding in the bones, deadly nausea, and a horror of the spirit that cannot be exceeded at the hour of birth or death. Then these agonies began swiftly to subside, and I came to myself as if out of a great sickness. …it remained to be seen if I had lost my identity beyond redemption and must flee before daylight from a house that was no longer mine… […] Instantly the spirit of hell awoke in me and raged. […] The pangs of transformation had not done tearing him, before Henry Jekyll, with streaming tears of gratitude and remorse, had fallen upon his knees and lifted his clasped hands to God.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

There was once a witch who desired to know everything. But the wiser a witch is, the harder she knocks her head against the wall when she comes to it. Her name was Watho, and she had a wolf in her mind. …She was straight and strong, but now and then would fall bent together, shudder, and sit for a moment with her head turned over her shoulder, as if the wolf had got out of her mind on to her back.

~ George MacDonald, The Day Boy and the Night Girl

Let us first understand what we mean by the word magic. Magic is a mystery and we call a thing a mystery because we do not understand it. ...One kind is created by man, wherein he produces things which are magical or mysterious to everybody but himself because to him they are simple results due to natural causes which are manipulated by him.

~ Loϊe Fuller, "Lecture on Radium"

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."

~ T. H. White, The Once and Future King

Latin Glossary

• Difficile est longum subito deponere amorem. Difficile est, verum hoc qua lubet efficias ~ It is difficult suddenly to put aside a long-standing love; it is difficult, but somehow you must do it. (Catullus)
• Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus ~ Never tickle a sleeping dragon (Rowling)
• filius Reae Silviae ego sum ~ I am Rhea Silvia's son
• In perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale ~ Forever and ever, brother, hail and farewell. (Catullus)
• iuro sollemnito ~ I solemnly swear…
• nec hic neque illic ~ neither here nor there
• Odi et amo; quare fortasse requiris, nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior ~ I hate and I love; you ask why I do this, I don't know, but I feel and am tormented. (Catullus)
• persta atque obdura ~ be steadfast and endure
• semel morsus, timens secundus ~ once bitten, twice shy
• sona si latine loqueris ~ honk if you speak Latin
• tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito ~ do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it (Vergil)