“By Being Too Sensitive I Have Wasted My Life.”

Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’”

— John Greenleaf Whittier (b. 17 December 1807)

April 13, 1913 Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka First published : 1973

“If by romantic they mean someone who dreams, I am a romantic, but I shall keep my crown of dreams a secret.”

— Anais Nin, 1917

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.”

—

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Kate Chopin, from The Awakening

Marina Tsvetaeva, from Poem of the End: V (tr. by Elaine Feinstein)

Aeschylus’ (?) Prometheus Bound (tr. David Grene)

Gennady Aygi, tr. by Peter France, from “The People Are a Temple.”