Obvious State

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson From his extraordinary poem Ulysses. The complete excerpt reads; Tho' much is taken, m...

"Leaving for leaving's sake, Hearts light as balloons: Let's go!" - Charles Baudelaire, Le Voyage From his poem Le Voyage, this quotation beautifu...

"Midway on our life's journey I found myself in a dark wood, For the right way was lost." - Dante Alighieri The opening line of Dante's Inferno set...

"My candle burns at both ends;it will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh my friends -It gives a lovely light!" - Edna St. Vincent Millay T...

"I will write my story for my better self." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Of writing many books there is no end;And I who have written much in pro...

"Fate is a cunning hussy." - Elizabeth Gaskell   An amusing zinger from an unfairly overlooked Victorian novelist. The fun passage (which defies ...

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson We love the way this quotation captures Emily Dickinson's quiet streng...

"Hope is the thing with feathers" - Emily Dickinson For this illustration, we used Emily Dickinson's own words as line elements to create the "th...

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain." - Emily Dickinson Dickinson's extraordinary poetry at its most intimate.  It ne...

"Every mother should be a true artist." - Frances Harper From her short story, The Two Offers. It was the first short story published by an Afric...

"The life so short, the craft so long to learn." - Geoffrey Chaucer The blades of a pair of dark shears create the silhouette of a mountain, and a...

"I resolved never to be conquered." - Harriet Jacobs It goes without saying that Harriet Jacobs was an extraordinary human being. From an illitera...

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - John Keats Inspired by one of the most famous and hotly debated lines of verse in the English language, this ill...

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter." - John Keats From his exquisite poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. Keats pushes all the right b...

"We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way" - Khalil Gibran From his bestselling masterpiece, The Prophet. The most well known of Gibran's work...

"Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." - Khalil Gibran Gibran's The Prophet is one ...

"My soul has grown deep like the rivers." - Langston Hughes The river may have carried him to unfamiliar places, but he’s not adrift. • 11x14 ...

"The Future is only dark from outside - Leap into it, and it explodes with Light." - Mina Loy From her manifesto Aphorisms on Futurism, first pub...

"Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." - Omar Khayyám This illustration depicts two warring ideas in The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám...

"'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days" - Omar Khayyám Composed in the eleventh century, and translated into English in 1859, The Rubáiyát...

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde From his 1892 play "Lady Windermere's Fan." In our illustration...

"I have nothing to declare except my genius." - Oscar Wilde Wilde is reported to have dropped this zinger upon arrival in the New York Customs Hou...

"I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees." - Pablo Neruda From Neruda's collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canción deses...

"I cast my sad nets into your ocean eyes." - Pablo Neruda From Neruda's collection Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada, an emotional ...