Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb; Keep clean, be as fruit, earn life, and watch, Till the white-wing'd reapers come.
There is nothing which wings its flight so swiftly as calumny, nothing is uttered with more ease; nothing is listened to with more readiness, nothing disbursed more widely.
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.
Evil is the vulgar lover who loves the body rather than the soul, inasmuch as he is not even stable, because he loves a thing which is in itself unstable, and therefore when the bloom of youth which he was desiring is over, he takes wing and flies away, in spite of all his words and promises; whereas the love of the noble disposition is life-long, for it becomes one with the everlasting.
The dove, O hawk, that has once been wounded by thy talons, is frightened by the least movement of a wing.
[Lat., Terretur minimo pennae stridore columba
Unguibus, accipiter, saucia facta tuis.]
Meanwhile the Adversary of God and man, Satan with thoughts inflamed of highest design, Puts on swift wings, and towards the gates of hell Explores his solitary flight.