Sweetness In Your Life Quotes & Sayings

Maybe that's what happens with age, I thought. All your life you force yourself to forget people who have hurt you, but as you get older and weaker their memory surfaces again, like a bubble in the water. You have to surrender, because you feel to tired to fight it and push it down again. And maybe, unexpectedly, you find out that instead, of revamping your anger, those memories produce an unexpected sweetness. — Francesca Marciano

Resurrection plants are usually tiny, no bigger than your fist. They are ugly and small and useless and special. When it rains, their leaves puff up but do not become green for forty-eight hours because it takes time for photosynthesis to start up. During those strange days of its reawakening the plant lives off of pure concentrated sugar, an intense sustained infusion of sweetness, a year's worth of sucrose coursing through its veins in just one day. This little plant has done the impossible: it has transcended the wilted brown of death. The miracle is not sustainable, of course, and within a day or two things will inevitably go back to normal. Such a crazy life takes its toll, and in the long term, even a resurrection plant withers and dies completely. But for a brief, glorious moment it knows something that no other plant has ever known: how to grow without being green. — Hope Jahren

Hummingbird
Flitting, darting
A restless quest
To fuel a fire
That burns your breast
Seeking sweetness
For selfish glee
Bringing gifts
So heedlessly
Your touch a trigger
You fire life
Igniting beauty
In vibrant strife
To equal you
In colors bright
They dazzle, dumbfound
And delight
But in tableau
Their beauty ends
Enlivened only
By the wind
Whilst you with
Generous energy
Prove a lovely
Vibrant Persephone
Their season ends
Those blooms of spring
And hummingbird
On fragile wing
Too soon I fear
You will expire
Sweetness smolders
Consumed in fire. — Michael Sullivan

Sweetness of life depends to its bitterness. — Javad Alizadeh

Two free days like an open mouth. They drank beer all day in the sun and passed out, and when she woke, she was burnt all over, and it was sunset, and Lotto had started building something enormous with sand, already four feet high and ten feet long and pointing toward the sea. Woozy, standing, she asked what it was.
He said, 'spiral jetty.'
She said, 'In sand?'
He smiled and said, 'That's its beauty.'
A moment in her bursting open, expanding. She looked at him. She hand't seen it before, but there was something special here. She wanted to tunnel inside him to understand what it was. There was a light under the shyness and youth, a sweetness, a sudden surge of the old hunger in her to take a part of him into her and make him briefly hers.
Instead, she bent and helped, they all did. And deep into the morning, when it was done, they sat in silence, huddled against the cold wind and watched the tide swallow it whole. Everything had changed somehow — Lauren Groff

Bittersweet is the idea that in all things there is both something broken and something beautiful, that there is a sliver of lightness on even the darkest of nights, a shadow of hope in every heartbreak, and that rejoicing is no less rich when it contains a splinter of sadness. Bittersweet is the practice of believing that we really do need both the bitter and the sweet, and that a life of nothing but sweetness rots both your teeth and your soul. Bitter is what makes us strong, what forces us to push through, what helps us earn the lines on our faces and the calluses on our hands. — Shauna Niequist

I believe that where the love of God is perfected and the true spirit of government watchfully attended to, a tenderness toward all creatures will be experienced, and a care felt in us that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Great Creator intends for them under our government. — John Woolman

The soul that has come to know God fully no longer desires anything else, nor does it attach itself to anything on the earth; and if you put before it a kingdom, it would not desire it, for the love of God gives such sweetness and joy to the soul that even the life of a king can no longer give it any sweetness. — Silouan The Athonite

She was in herself, like a woman near term,
and did not think of the man, going on ahead,
or the path, climbing upwards towards life.
She was in herself. And her being-dead
filled her with abundance.
As a fruit with sweetness and darkness,
so she was full with her vast death. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones. — Pablo Neruda

Life is full of days and each day comes with its own happenstances; good and unbearable ones! Some days are remembered, for though such days come and go, they leave their memorable footprints on our minds; footprints of difficulties, footprints of sweetness and joy, footprints of regrets, and footprints worth pondering over and over! Until something happens to you in the day, you shall least remember that moment of time and day in your lifetime! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Sweetness eliminates gravity and thus a man with a heavy burden of life starts feeling like floating in the air before sweetness. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Life is never what you expect it to be. Sex has more to do with salt than sweetness. The sky is white as often as it's blue. — Carolyn Parkhurst

The calendar hath not an evil day
For souls made one by love, and even death
Were sweetness, if it came like rolling waves
While they two clasped each other, and foresaw
No life apart. — George Eliot

Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them. — Michel De Montaigne

Even when the strings are broken in our lives, the sweet music plays on in our hearts. — Bryant McGill

Sweetness cloys. Tart fruit and tart women give life its savor ... Daenerys, sweet queen, I cannot tell you what a pleasure it gives me to bask once more in your presence. — George R R Martin

Besides, she had just reached the autumnal period of womanhood, in which reflection is combined with tenderness, in which the beginning of maturity colours the face with a more intense flame, when strength of feeling mingles with experience of life, and when, having completely expanded, the entire being overflows with a richness in unison with its beauty. Never had she possessed more sweetness, more leniency. Secure in the thought that she would not err, she abandoned herself to a sentiment which seemed to her justified by her sorrows. And, moreover, it was so innocent and fresh! What an abyss lay between the coarseness of Arnoux and the adoration of Frederick! — Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes I can still sleep it off, my fear. My dreams are gentle now even when they are about being mugged, robbed and knocked down, even when I am pressing my car key into a bit of yielding earth. But often in the afternoons I wake after a nap with an awful sense of its being over and that it never meant much; I never had a life. The valuable sweetness and the hard work are infected by the fact of death: they no longer seem to have been so wonderful, but they are all I had. And then I want to be comforted. I want my old, unthreatening forms of silence, and comedy-and-cowardice. I want breath and stories and the world. — Harold Brodkey

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth. — Albert Camus

It is more difficult to find the Creator in a barbecue sandwich than in your favorite Sunday-morning song, but when you do, when you begin to find Him in all the stuff of life, everything starts singing. Every moment breaks into song. Every breath becomes sacrifice, and the songs become sweetness. This is living praise. — David Crowder

Saruman rose to his feet, and stared at Frodo. There was a strange look in his eyes of mingled wonder and respect and hatred. 'You have grown, Halfling,' he said. 'Yes, you have grown very much. You are wise, and cruel. you have robbed my revenge of sweetness, and now I must go hence in bitterness, in debt to your mercy. I hate it and you! Well, I go and I will trouble you no more. But do not expect me to wish you health and long life. You will have neither. But that is not my doing. I merely foretell. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Once we realize that our essential sweetness is in our minds, and that each of us has unique life-path potential not fully tethered to a body-determined route, then it is as sensible to be transhuman as it is to be transgendered. The being is mightier than the gene. — Martine Rothblatt

There is no kind obondage which life lays upon us that may not yield both sweetness and strength; and nothing reveals a man's character more fully than the spirit in which he bears his limitations. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Coffee is a lot like people. In many ways, it's deceiving. The sweetness that you smell as it brews is more often than not a fallacy. The scent of a dark roasted coffee bean promises you rich flavors with hints of chocolate and hazelnut, but if you're not used to coffee's deceptiveness, you're left with a bitter aftertaste dangling at the back of your throat. To those of us who are used to it- we've grown a fondness for that bitter taste. It's complex. It's teasing. It reminds us that most things in life are not consistently sweet with every sip. One morning, your coffee might brew mild with just a flirtation of nutty undertones, And the next morning, it might be pelting you in the face with those same nuts, leaving little stinging marks with each sip. It's moody. It's not easy to perfect. But when you get the perfect brew, it's rewarding. And that same perfection is not guaranteed tomorrow just because you managed it today. — Katana Collins

The very shape of our dreams defines us. We learn about the world and try out our thoughts and visions in them. Our dreams goad us and drive us and summon and sustain us and when we are old they comfort us. Magic is a kind of dream, and love is a dream, and hope is a dream. Without our dreams, there is no sweetness, no purpose to life. — Isobelle Carmody

Unhappily we have to pay in life for everything worthwhile. If we want experience, depth and an understanding of life's infinite phases we have to suffer shock and sorrow and then, if we are strong enough to rise above them, life is a curious bittersweet affair. Too much of its bitter aspect is of course terrible, but too much of unalloyed sweetness can also be bad enough. — Pamela Hicks

When you are insulted, you must not only not resent it, but you must make it an opportunity to exhibit the Son of God in your life. And you cannot imitate the nature of Jesus-it is either in you or it is not. A personal insult becomes an opportunity for a saint to reveal the incredible sweetness of the Lord Jesus. — Oswald Chambers

My mother showed her gratitude for her life in exile by alluding to India's modernity: the expansive railway network; the Bollywood movies she came to love for their tumultuous stories which ultimately conceded to the cardinal guidelines she held in her own life- love, family and duty. Still, it was Tibet's antiquity that anchored her in exile. It was phayul she longed for when her skin was scorched by the summer heat of India's plains. When she drank milk she compared it to the milk of her childhood for such sweetness and creaminess was not easily forgotten, and when she felt nauseous riding the buses that weaved their way around curvaceous mountain roads she spoke of the horses she had loved to ride. — Tsering Wangmo Dhompa

The trials and pressures of life
and how we face them
often define us. Confronted by adversity, many people give up while others rise up. How do those who succeed do it? They persevere. They find the benefit to them personally that comes from any trial. And they recognize that the best thing about adversity is coming out on the other side of it. There is a sweetness to overcoming your troubles and finding something good in the process, however small it may be. Giving up when adversity threatens can make a person bitter. Persevering through adversity makes one better. — John C. Maxwell

how you were moved by a child in its mother's arms, how you saw an old man on his deathbed, and how it was your father who lay there dead, who had passed on to the silent dead - remember this, remember this. Forget, forget nothing, don't forget the sweetness, don't forget the severity. If indifference and unkindness take hold of your being, stir your memory and think of all the beautiful, and all the burdensome things. Remember there is life and there is death, remember there are moments of bliss and there are graves. Do not be forgetful, but instead remember this. — Robert Walser

How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among the friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out. — Michel De Montaigne

It's these little things, they can pull you under
Live your life filled with joy and wonder
I always knew this altogether thunder
Was lost in our little lives — R.E.M Sweetness Follows

Oh, if you only knew what joy, what sweetness awaits a righteous soul in Heaven! You would decide in this mortal life to bear any sorrows, persecutions and slander with gratitude. If this very cell of ours was filled with worms, and these worms were to eat our flesh for our entire life on earth, we should agree to it with total desire, in order not to lose, by any chance, that heavenly joy which God has prepared for those who love Him. — Seraphim Of Sarov

Unless you come out of your mind and become a no-mind you will not know what life is all about, you will live in vain. You will not have your honeymoon, it is impossible. You will not know the sweetness that existence is full of and the ecstasy. — Rajneesh

Love has both its gall and honey in abundance: it has sweetness to the taste, but it presents bitterness also to satiety. — Plautus

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. — Louise Erdrich

In the end, the wind takes everything, doesn't it? And why not? Why other? If the sweetness of our lives did not depart, there would be no sweetness at all. — Stephen King

Speaking of this, he felt something had been returned to him, as though the inestimable losses of life had been lifted like a boulder, and beneath he saw - under the attentive gaze of Daisy's blue eyes - the comforts and sweetness of what had once been. — Elizabeth Strout

The water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life." John 4:14 The picture our Lord described here is not that of a simple stream of water, but an overflowing fountain. Continue to "be filled" (Ephesians 5:18) and the sweetness of your vital relationship to Jesus will flow as generously out of you as it has been given to you. If you find that His life is not springing up as it should, you are to blame - something is obstructing the flow. Was Jesus saying to stay focused on the Source so that you may be blessed personally? No, you are to focus on the Source so that out of you "will flow rivers of living water" - irrepressible life (John 7:38). — Oswald Chambers

Life taught me an eternal love will demand the worst sacrifices. A transcendent love will split your soul, cleaving you into pieces. A love this strong doesn't grant you sweetness - it grants you pain. And in that pain is the greatest pleasure of all. — Anonymous

And then you opened your mouth. All that love, all that loyalty, all the innocence, even though life had kicked you around time and time again, and all I wanted to do was let some of that sweetness and light touch me. I've never had very clean hands, but the first time I touched you, that first gasp out of that perfect mouth, the first time I thrust into you, God, Dovie, you made me feel like I was the king in a land of second chances." I was stunned. — Jay Crownover

I'm reminded of how wonderful grace is. We simply accept its healing, loving presence. We allow its sweetness to fill us and nourish us. The only expectation is that we accept it. What acts of grace have appeared in your life? How might you extend grace to those you know? — Laurie Brock

Help one another, was a favorite Plumfield motto, and Nat learned how much sweetness is added to life by trying to live up to it. — Louisa May Alcott

Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears. — Robert Farrar Capon

Gratitude is the sweetest thing in a seeker's life- in all human life. If there is gratitude in your heart, then there will be tremendous sweetness in your eyes. — Sri Chinmoy

Those who have not lived in the eighteenth century, in the years before the Revolution do not know the sweetness of living and cannot imagine what it was like to have happiness in life. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

She had a dream sometimes that she was running along a road and there was Doll ahead of her, waiting for her, and she just ran into her arms, and she thought, It's over now, I'm not lost anymore, and the dream had all the sweetness of a mild day in summer. If you could smell in dreams, it would be the smell of hay on the softest breeze and sunlight warming the fields. She thought that was going to be waiting for her, that life, and she never even stopped to wonder about herself for thinking that way. I been crazy for a long time, she said. — Marilynne Robinson

You knew the sweetness of now, now, TONIGHT! who cares for tomorrow, tomorrow is nothing, yesterday is over and done, tonight live, tonight! — Ray Bradbury

Not only had he wanted her in his personal territory, he'd just wanted her with him. Earlier, her quiet, thoughtful care had wiped away the gut-churning anger that had gripped him after his discussion with his mother. His and Charlotte's resulting conversation had made him remember that he wasn't that lost, angry boy anymore but a man who had a beautiful, smart, deliciously sexy woman in his life. It had been selfish, but he'd wanted more of her warmth and sweetness around him. — Nalini Singh

She looks up. I've caught her by surprise. Her face opens up and all of a sudden it's like that paper mask is transparent. I'm looking right through it, and I get a flash of some kind of life we could've had - barbecues, dogs, kids flopping over us in bed - it rolls through me fast but strong and clear, like one of those cooking smells that blows in the window so sharp you can pick out the ingredients. And then it's gone. It's gone, and Holly's holding my hand. Finally, after that long long wait, her hand is back on mine. Dry cool fingers, slim. The rings loose. I close my eyes. My hand is so hot, I feel my pulse in every finger. I'm afraid she'll let go but she doesn't let go. She keeps her hand around mine and it's like she's holding all of me in her cool sweetness, calming my fever back down. — Jennifer Egan

After the clouds, the sunshine; after the winter, the spring; after the shower, the rainbow; for life is a changeable thing. After the night, the morning, bidding all darkness cease, after life's cares and sorrows, the comfort and sweetness of peace. — Helen Steiner Rice

I knew even before I had desire that it would be gnarled and knotted, black and hard, a tree that would never bear fruit, a fish that would never jump, a cat that would never meow. All my life, bitterness and regret, bitterness, and regret. "And yet," he said, briefly closing his eyes, "I was able to imagine the softness and sweetness of love, for a time." He rested his head upon his right hand, in a gesture worthy of a classical actor, and everyone in the Teatro Barbarossa heard his breathing. — Mark Helprin

I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning. Then, two tired angels of some kind, hung-up forlornly in an LA shelf, having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together, we fell asleep and slept till late afternoon. — Jack Kerouac

If a happy ending is what you're after, stop the story where it makes you smile, or cry for laughter. In life, it's the rare sweetness to have tears of joy, or painless endings. People feel. It's what they know, and it's why i write. — Mark T. Barnes

Kvothe looked at Bast for a long moment. "Oh Bast," he said softly to his student. His smile was gentle and sad. "I know what sort of story I'm telling. This is no comedy."
"This is the end of the story, Bast. We all know that." Kvothe's voice was matter-of-fact, as casual as if he were describing yesterday's weather. "I have led an interesting life, and this reminiscence has a certain sweetness to it. But ... "
Kvothe drew a deep breath and let it out gently. " ... but this is not a dashing romance. This is no fable where folk come back from the dead. It's not a rousing epic meant to stir the blood. No.
We all know what kind of story this is. — Patrick Rothfuss

But when thou findest sensibility of heart, joined with softness of manners, an accomplished mind, and religion, united with sweetness of temper, modest deportment, and a love of domestic life; such is the woman who will divide the sorrows and double the joys of thy life. Take her to thyself; she is worthy to be thy nearest friend, thy companion, the wife of thy bosom. — Noah Webster

Just in case you thought elephants were all sweetness, I can attest to the fact that this one had the time of her life scaring the bejeezus out of those dudes. — James Patterson

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The road to greatness is often sought, but if journeyed with kindness, it is sweetly paved. — Tom Althouse

For a long time," he said at last, "when I was small, I pretended to myself that I was the bastard of some great man. All orphans do this, I think," he added dispassionately."It makes life easier to bear, to pretend that it will not always be as it is, that someone will come and restore you to your rightful place in the world."
He shrugged.
"Then I grew older, and knew that this was not true. No one would come to rescue me. But then-" he turned his head and gave Jamie a smile of surpassing sweetness.
"Then I grew older still, and discovered that after all, it was true. I am the son of a great man."
The hook touched Jamie's hand, hard and capable.
"I wish for nothing more. — Diana Gabaldon

And oh, god, how could so much regret and so much sweetness and so much sadness all be present in that single moment. I was already dead and missing my unlived life. I was already dead and Tobias was mourning.
I tried to smile. For him. — Katherine Applegate

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious. — Padma Lakshmi

Our purpose in this life is to live in higher consciousness and to teach others to live in higher consciousness. But the best test to that consciousness is humility, selflessness, and sweetness. When you teach, teach with honesty, truthfulness, and straightforwardness. As a teacher, never compromise. As a man, always compromise. The teacher who compromises is an idiot; a person who does not compromise is an idiot. Because the teacher does not teach for himself, but for the higher consciousness. And higher consciousness will never compromise with lower consciousness. This is a straight law and that has to be considered as a law; that has to be observed as a law. — Yogi Bhajan

The maxims of Christian life, which should draw upon the truths of the Gospel, are always partially symbolic of the mind and temperament of those who teach them to us. The former, by their natural sweetness, show us the quality of God's mercy; the latter, by their harshness, show us God's justice. — Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...

Our own are our own for ever" has been said by one and another in differing words and in many languages. That is why time and distance are (in a sense) nothing in any human life that lives in the "Things unseen -- Eternal" where St. Paul had his abiding place. And just as the essential beauty and sweetness of a rose is what stays with us, and not the very rose itself, so it is the personality of a beloved person or the spirit of a season of time (to put it like that) that abides with us for ever. In — Oswald Chambers

Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. [Michael Faraday] was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. — John Tyndall

And they are unjust to us often, for when they find life bitter they blame us for it, and when they find it sweet we do not taste its sweetness with them. — Oscar Wilde

I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all my life long: the happiness that comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going rotten. — George Bernard Shaw

Death accompanies us at every step and enables us to use those moments when life smiles at us to feel more deeply the sweetness of life. The more certain the end, the more tempting the minute. — Theodor Fontane

Indifference

This hate has blossomed like a living love,
grieving, watching its own exhaustion.
It seeks a face, it seeks flesh, as though it were love.

The worldly flesh and the voices that spoke
are dead, all has shuddered away,
all life hangs on a voice.
Days pass in bitter ecstasy to the sad
caress of the voice that returns
and drains the blood from our faces. Not without sweetness
that voice returns to the mind exhausted
and trembling: once it trembled for me.

But the flesh does not tremble. Only love
could set it alight, this hate seeks it out.
All the possessions, all the flesh and all the voices
in the world cannot equal the burning caress
of that body and those eyes. In the bitter ecstasy
that kills itself, this hate still finds
each day a glance, a broken word,
and grasps them, hungrily, like love. — Cesare Pavese

What divine drink wouldst thou have, my God, from this overflowing cup of my life?

My poet, is it thy delight to see thy creation through my eyes and to stand at the portals of my ears silently to listen to thine own eternal harmony?

Thy world is weaving words in my mind and thy joy is adding music to them. Thou givest thyself to me in love and then feelest thine own entire sweetness in me. — Rabindranath Tagore

I don't know where you are these days, what's broken down and what's beautiful in your life this season. I don't know if this is a season of sweetness or one of sadness. But I'm learning that neither last forever. There will, I'm sure, be something that invades this current loveliness. That's how life is. It won't be sweet forever. But it won't be bitter forever either. If everywhere you look these days, it's wintery, desolate, lonely, practice believing in springtime. It always, always comes, even though on days like today it's nearly impossible to imagine, ground frozen, trees bare and spiky. New life will spring from this same ground. This season will end, and something entirely new will follow it. — Shauna Niequist

Oh, there is sweetness in the mountain air And life, that bloated Ease can never hope to share. — George Gordon Byron

Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live and dream - a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as the pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled and swelled with that image of gold. — Willa Cather

Dear God, master of the universe, compassionate and merciful: we who are steeped in sin, kneel in supplication before your throne and beseech you to recall from this world Saadat Hasan Manto, son of Ghulam Hasan Manto, who was a man of great piety. Take him away, Lord, for he runs away from fragrance and chases after filth. He hates the bright sun, preferring dark labyrinths. He has nothing but contempt for modesty but is fascinated by the naked and the shameless. He hates sweetness, but will give his life to taste bitter fruit. He will not so much as look at housewives but is in seventh heaven in the company of whores. He will not go near running waters, but loves to wade through filth. Where others weep, he laughs; and where others laugh, he weeps. Faces blackened by evil, he loves to wash with tender care to make visible their real features. He never thinks about you but follows Satan everywhere, the same fallen angel who once disobeyed you. — Saadat Hasan Manto

...replying with a smile to the silent question asked by all small babies: "Who on earth are you? — Francoise Heritier

Why are they together, the tree and the fungus? We don't know. The fungus could certainly live very well alone almost anywhere, but it chooses to entwine itself with the tree over an easier and more independent life. It has adapted to seek the rush of pure sweetness that comes directly from a plant root, such a strange and concentrated compound, unlike anything to be found elsewhere in the forest. And perhaps the fungus can somehow sense that when it is part of a symbiosis, it is also not alone. — Hope Jahren