Famous quotes

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.

Lord Byron (1788 - 1824)

Doppelgänger

In fiction, folklore and popular culture, a doppelgänger is a tangible double of a living person that typically represents evil. In the vernacular, the word doppelgänger has come to refer to any double or look-alike of a person.

The word is also used to describe the sensation of having glimpsed oneself in peripheral vision, in a position where there is no chance that it could have been a reflection. Doppelgängers are often perceived as a sinister form of bilocation and generally regarded as harbingers of bad luck. In some traditions, a doppelgänger seen by a person's friends or relatives portends illness or danger, while seeing one's own doppelgänger is an omen of death.

Abraham Lincoln told his wife that he saw two faces of himself in a mirror soon after being elected president, one deathly pale. His wife believed this to mean he would be elected to a second term but would not survive.

Doppelgangers appear in a variety of science fiction and fantasy works, in which they are a type of shape shifter that mimics a particular person or species for some typically nefarious reason.

Doppelgängers, as dark doubles of individual identities, appear in a variety of fictional works from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Double” to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. In its simplest incarnation, mistaken identity is a classic trope used in literature, from “Twelfth Night” to “A Tale of Two Cities”, by Charles Dickens. But in these cases, the characters look similar for perfectly normal reasons, such as being siblings or simple coincidence.

Some stories offer supernatural explanations for doubles. These doppelgängers are typically, but not always, evil in some way. The double will often impersonate the victim and go about ruining them, for instance through committing crimes or insulting the victim's friends. Sometimes, the double even tries to kill the original. In José Saramago’s 2001 novel The Double (original Portuguese title O Homem Duplicado), both men's baser instincts come to the surface and they attempt to take advantage of each other.

The Land of Summer by Charlotte Bingham

American heiress Emmaline Nesbitt has always understood from her mother that as the eldest of four daughters she is obliged to wed. But it seems that no proposals are going to come her way.

Until, at a crowded ball in her family’s home, Julius, an Englishman, makes his way to her side and waltzes her off. The next morning he makes it plain that he wants to marry her, and will marry her no matter what. So it is that Emmaline finds herself on the way to England from America to be with her husband-to-be, her hopes as high as they have ever been.

What greets her when she arrives, however, is a strange house, full of odd guests and eccentric servants. It is a far cry from the glorious place that Julius had described to her. Indeed, as the days go by, her fiancé seems to change beyond recognition and Emmaline becomes more and more unhappy. She cannot see any future to their relationship. But that is before Julius’s past, and the history of his house, make themselves plain to her.

If Thou Must Love Me

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
"I love her for her smile her look her way
Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of ease on such a day"
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheek dry,
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou may'st love on, through love's eternity.

Elizabeth Browning

Invece no - Laura Pausini

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

‘Can’t you give me brains?’ asked the Scarecrow.

‘You don’t need them. You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn’t know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.’

(…)

‘But how about my courage?’ asked the Lion anxiously.

‘You have plenty of courage, I am sure,’ answered Oz. ‘ All you need is confidence in yourself. There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. True courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty.’

(…)

‘How about my heart?’ asked the Tin Woodman.

‘Why, as for that,’ answered Oz, ‘I think you are wrong to want a heart. It makes the most people unhappy. If you only knew it, you are in luck not to have a heart.’

‘That must be a matter of opinion,’ said the Tin Woodman. ‘For my part, I will bear all the unhappiness without a murmur, if you will give me the heart.'

in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Famous quotes

My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation.

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Music of the Spheres II

The Waltz Sphären-Klänge (Music of the Spheres), composed by Josef Strauss, is absolutely divine and everybody is blessed to hear.

Music of the Spheres I

Musica universalis (lit. universal music, or music of the spheres) is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies — the Sun, Moon and Planets - as a form of musica (the Medieval Latin name for music). This 'music' is not usually thought to be literally audible, but a harmonic and/or mathematical and/or religious concept. The idea continued to appeal to thinkers about music until the end of the Renaissance, influencing scholars of many kinds, including humanists

Pythagorus was the first to hear the Music of the Spheres, quickly teaching others to partake of the astral bounty. He knew the stars to be attached to crystal spheres revolving about the Earth. These heavenly spheres, eternally revolving, produce harmonious sounds only the truly inspired can hear.