61
" The Old Testament records the sage words of an old woman in addressing two younger ones: 'The Lord grant', said Naomi, 'that ye may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband!' Who ever heard of a woman finding rest in the house of her husband?
And yet, and yet ! The restless hearts are not
the hearts of wives and of mothers, as many a lonely woman knows. There is no more crushing load than the load of a loveless life. It is a burden that is often beautifully and graciously borne, but its weight is a very real one. The mother may have a bent form, a furrowed brow, and worn, thin hands ; but her heart found its rest for all that. Naomi was an old woman; she knew the world very well, and her words are worth weighing. Heavy luggage is Christ's strange cure for weary hearts. "
― F.W. Boreham , The Luggage of Life
65
" Of one thing, though, she was sure: " I want to travel," she confessed.Books were making her restless. She was beginning to read, faster, more, until she was inside the narrative and the narrative inside her, the pages going by so fast, her heart in her chest - she couldn't stop... And pictures of the chocolaty Amazon, of stark Patagonia in the National Geographics, a transparent butterfly snail in the sea, even of an old Japanese house slumbering in the snow... - She found they affected her so much she could often hardly read the accompanying words - the feeling they created was so exquisite, the desire so painful. "
70
" I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wings,
God created me this way, no wings, just a poisonous sting,
The one I loved knew my true nature
She knew I could sting her heart, and poisoned her soul,
My lover knew me well, she knew my truth,
She could see my poisonous soul,
My ego bowed to her beauty, always ready to strike
She knew my true nature, she saw the scorpion,
She saw the venom in heart, she loved me still,
I struck her heart multiple times,
I poisoned her soul with my sting,
I guess he was right; I’m just a scorpion without wings
She knew me well; she saw the lethal sting,
She saw her wounded heart, she loved me still
She you loved the scorpion to the end,
She fell in love, and now she’s dead,
The scorpion cries, in agony,
He wishes he wasn’t a venomous beast,
The scorpion suffers; he misses his loved one,
The one he killed, the one he stung,
The one who loved him to the end "
― Quetzal
76
" Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. "
― Nathaniel Hawthorne , The Scarlet Letter
78
" ...her own restless coveting of his love and the slow but sure ebullience of her desire for him; then the Nawab's martydom and her spiritual homelessness and physical loneliness; there was so much, so many portraits and landscapes, like the bright pages of an album of words and pictures. They filled her heart overflowing with the tangy, coppery taste of blood that flows from failure, and pricked her soul with nostalgia, for what was and what could have been. She had never thought that happy memories could come accompanied with so much regret, so much pain, so much repining, and discontent. If you plucked a rose without due care, its thorn pricked you to protest the thoughtlessness and the inconsiderateness you had displayed in taking away its crowning glory. Here, it was nothing else but the rose which was the thorn: its each and every petal was saturated with the scents of the past but it stung like the scorpion plant. But was it possible not to touch those memories? For their scents traveled in and out of your being like breath, and their colours were inside every blink of your eye. "