Enchantment Quotes

“Tell me again what you said at the revel,” he says, climbing over me, his body against mine.

“What?” I can barely think.

“That you hate me,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Tell me that you hate me.”

“I hate you,” I say, the words coming out like a caress. I say it again, over and over. A litany. An enchantment. A ward against what I really feel. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

He kisses me harder.

“I hate you,” I breathe into his mouth. “I hate you so much that sometimes I can’t think of anything else.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“As Aristocleia raised her cup to toast Xanthippus, her gown slipped from her shoulders, exquisite as Aphrodite’s, and flowed like the water that slid over her naked breasts when she allowed him to watch her bathe. It was wonderful to possess a gem of a woman. It made a man feel beautiful and godlike himself, briefly.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“sometimes i don't know, which moment
which cool gust of wind will come,
and enchant me
tousling my hair
and my heart,

stirring...that familiar ache of poetry,

which drop will kiss
the old wrench in my soul
reminding me, all over again

i miss you better in the rain.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“Some are condemned to remain mere “clock and smart phone watchers”, inasmuch as they are not able to read and interpret the lines of their life or don't even treasure the enchantment of daily captivating moments. If we are not prepared to give some personal time to social time, we walk like blind men through gloomy alleys of our existence. ( " Please. Just a bit of a chat " )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us not remain anchored in the quicksand of a waning past, and lose the war on obliviousness, but let us listen to the bracing sounds of new horizons, grasp the enchantment of the fleeting instants and seize the cleverness of the moment. (Could time be patient?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Life can be a piece of art, a magic enchantment, a fetching fairy tale or an adventurous story trimmed with alluring episodes. But it may as well be a delusive or hazardous act with many wildcat players seeming to be what they are actually not.”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If we cannot flap with the butterflies of “happiness,” we must bring to life the cascades of “joy,” conjuring up the spell of its enchantment and rolling cheerfully on the splashing waves of the future. ("Waiting for Mr. Out-placer")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Let us 'time' be a friendly coach, putting the enchantment of each 'present moment’ artfully in a chosen frame of our thoughts. ("Quest for the real moment")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“It was a way of recognizing places of enchantment: people falling asleep like this.”
― Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections

“just got back from a beautiful eve of winter solstice snowshoeing. my heart was lost and enlivened by both the hush of the mountainous snow world and a very fun irreverence with friends. i shared a solstice quote but did not share this one.

so in the spirit of the year--happy solistice! may there be ever present and growing light in your life as nature unfolds the same in the upcoming months.

"sharp is the night, but stars with frost alive leap off the rim of earth across the dome. it is a night to make the heavens our home. more than the nest whereto apace we strive. lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, in swarms outrushing from the golden comb. they waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: you throb in me, the dead revive. yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, life glistens on the river of death. it folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs of radiance, the radiance enrings: and this is the soul's haven to have felt." --from _winter heavens_”
― George Meredith

“If you still believe in magic,
you're subject to enchantment.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“One day, my lady." said Mr. Keeper, stepping aside and allowing her to join them, "I should hope I would be fortunate enough to see such a graceful, unearthly curtsy from you again.”
― Heather Dixon

“Incidentally, the world is magical.
Magic is simply what's off our human scale... at the moment.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“The psychic witch lives in a state of enchantment, seeing all things as magickal and understanding that the universe is composed of endless possibilities and potential. The psychic witch sees a door where others see a wall.”
― Mat Auryn, Psychic Witch: A Metaphysical Guide to Meditation, Magick & Manifestation

“To reach only for that which pleasantly enchants you is the least of imagination, if even imagination at all, by the obvious reality of remaining within your means. The greater of imagination is parallel to risk. It extends beyond your comfort zone or haven, or sense of beauty, or what you personally believe suits you in exploration of what may not.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Soon, she is dreaming:  I am reading a letter addressed to me by an unknown hand:  Dear Kate.  The moon rises over the tips of the mountain peaks as we sit here in the darkness thinking of you – and remembering.  Remembering the smells of flowers long ago dried and withered away, their faint fragrances hanging in the misty air.  Remembering whispers of times gone by.  As we have done in the past, we dig deep, looking for clues to your whereabouts.  Eyes peek out at us from within the stillness of the night – eyes filled with longing and desire – curious orbs floating like lanterns in the misty void.  Looking up from the letter still within her dream, Kate finds herself face to face with two golden beacons of love-filled radiance.”
― Kathy Martone, Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery

“I had cooperated. I could not have refused. I was smitten with her, half in love but also afraid, because in my life (and she seemed to know this) I had not loved anyone without having been wounded. Love was power and possession, love caused pain: you were never more exposed than when you were in love, never more wounded; possession was an enslavement, something stifling.”
― Paul Theroux, A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

“Kate’s eyes grow dim as the past envelops her, pulling her into the silent black void of the desolate mother and her winged emissaries.  Rustling their feathers, the ever-vigilant ravens sink their claws into the deepest recesses of her mind as they seek control of her consciousness.”
― Kathy Martone, Victorian Songlight: The Birthings of Magic & Mystery

“Guard and preserve your mystery like a chef who cannot reveal the secret to his best recipes. Remember, if you lose your mystery, you lose all your pizazz and enchantment.”
― Lebo Grand

“An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.”
― W.B. Yeats, When You Are Old: Early Poems and Fairy Tales

“At the base of the tree sat an unusual object; cylindrical in shape with a lens facing out, which contained a miniature world. A Christmas scene and a bot holding a sled. Twinkling ice drops completed the winter wonderland. It snowed, and the kaleidoscope was a mirror to the world.”
― Suzy Davies

“From the moment I first heard the sound of your voice, my heart took control and was captivated by every vibration. A spark of this fire must have always been within me. Each of your actions only increases my desire for more of you and forces me to crave your presence even more. It is the sound of a lover's voice that I so desperately long for, not the memories of a love that is no longer mine.”
― Rolf van der Wind

“There is a magic about the desert at night. Until you have seen it, stood alone in the midst of it, you cannot know what enchantment is. There is a stillness and a nearness of stars that no other place on Earth offers.”
― Louis L'Amour, Silver Canyon

“The lady replied in a voice holding all the magic of the winter solstice. Her voice drew him in, chiming softly in the wind.”
― Suzy Davies, The Snow Queen

“I haven’t given up on the spiritual life; in fact, I need a steady inner grounding more than ever. In my questing, I’ve come around to unexpected answers....I had a revelation. It was nothing profound, really, but it has changed me ever since. I realized this: I do not need to find and follow the perfect plan. (What a relief!) What I truly need is people I can follow—older sisters, brothers, mentors, spiritual friends who have been this way before. In my search for people over plans, I’ve found my way to faithful Christian women and men from across centuries and cultures, each with challenges all their own yet very much like mine. Their varied stories are thrilling, heartening, extreme, bizarre, even quotidian. For all their flaws and eccentricities, they discover, even blunder into, a spirituality of amazement and encounter God’s presence shimmering everywhere.”
― Karen Wright Marsh, Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday

“Your heart and my heart have known the language of enchantment all along. That's what brought you to me. That's what brought me to you in the first place. So our meeting would melt every other thing, and would shake us for something profound.”
― Jayita Bhattacharjee

“Enchantment came so easily to me as a child, but I wrongly thought it was small, parochial, a shameful thing to be put away in the rush towards adulthood. Now I wonder how I can find it again. It turns out that it had nothing to do with beauty after all--not in any grand objective sense. I think instead that when I was young, it came from a deep engagement with the world around me, the particular quality of experience that accompanies close attention, the sense of contact that emerges from noticing. I worked hard to suppress all those things. I thought it was what I had to do in order to grow up. It took years of work, years of careful forgetting. I never realised what I was losing.

But enchantment cannot be destroyed. It waits patiently for us to remember that we need it. And now when I start to look for it, there it is: pale, intermittent, waiting patiently for my return. The sudden catch of sunlight behind stained glass. The glint of gold in the silt of a stream. The words that whisper through the leaves.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Here I am, once again dismantled. There are moments when we must address our losses, without being fully conscious of what is lost. Somehow I must find my way to step back into the water, if only because I remember there was once enchantment there, if only because I am not sure who I am without it. But the water is not to blame. It only shows the shape of the problem, having surged to fill it. It is this negative space--this absence--that I need to understand.”
― Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

“Ma sola
Ha questa luna in ciel, che da nessuno
Cader fu vista mai se non in sogno.”
― Giacomo Leopardi, Versi del Conte Giacomo Leopardi (Giacomo Leopardi) 1826 [Leather Bound]

“The mountains I saw through the break in the fog were familiar, and yet something was off about them. They seemed too dark, somehow, and the nearest was riddled with hollows where tiny lights glimmered. The fog shifted again, and I was gazing at a luxuriant rose garden. The flowers were fat and healthy, but the garden itself was overgrown and had the air of abandonment, the rosebushes almost swallowing their trellises, some of which had collapsed. A little wind blew back the heads of the nearest roses, and I felt as if they were turning to gaze at me.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands