Due to spam and off-topic content, these forums are being phased out and replaced with new great books forums. Please join us! Ahoy fellow book lovers!

The former post was removed as it violated our user agreement, or it did not add to the "Great Books" conversation in a constructive manner.

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We prefer deep reflections on Philosophy, Shakespearean Sonnets, and tender musings along the lines of:

I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty. -John Keats

Beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain, Love once possessed. Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671)

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After I wrote this sonnet there appeared to me a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more about this blessed one until I should be capable of writing about her in a nobler way. -Dante on his inspiration for The Divine Comedy, after falling short of Beatrice's splendor in the Vita Nuova

All The Best,

William Einstein Shakespeare :)

XCVII

How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere! 
And yet this time removed was summer's time;
The teeming autumn, big with rich increase,
Bearing the wanton burden of the prime,
Like widow'd wombs after their lords' decease:
Yet this abundant issue seem'd to me
But hope of orphans, and unfather'd fruit;
For summer and his pleasures wait on thee,
And, thou away, the very birds are mute:
  Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,
  That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.
 	--William Shakespeare