Rare Winter Visitor

Famous quotes containing the words rare, winter and/or visitor:

    The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)

    Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.
    William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.

    Beauty is ever to the lonely mind
    A shadow fleeting; she is never plain.
    She is a visitor who leaves behind
    The gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.
    Robert Nathan (1894–1985)