The greatest thing you'll ever learn...

There was a boy...
A very strange enchanted boy.
They say he wandered very far, very far
Over land and sea,
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he.

And then one day,
One magic day, he passed my way.
And while we spoke of many things,
Fools and kings,
This he said to me,
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return."

-- Celine Dion (A New Day Has Come)

Vocabulary

Taciturn, reluctant, reticent...
Somber, dreary, gloomy, ...
Scared, frighted, panicked...
Confused, addled,...
Lonely, desolate...

Respiration, breathing!

Fantastic, is much less interesting!

"In this I owe a debt to G.K. Chesterton, who pointed out on many occasions that the fantastic, when looked at properly, is much less interesting (and a lot less fantastic) than the everyday.

Take Magical lights, for example, A wizard snaps his finger and light appears. Where's the fun in that? He's only doing what wizards do. But a bunch of apes weren't doing what apes do when they learned, over half a million years, how to take the universe apart and put it together again so that a bit of it was now th electric light bulb."
-Terry Pratchet, The Art of the Discworld

I was thinking about something along the same line (or just similar) as the above today. As my departure day is getting closer, I was looking at my bookshelf with regret that there are lots and lots that I should have read and again I'm going to leave all these books behind, unread, in my library and go to another place, with yet bigger libraries that I won't be able to read even one thousandth of it during my whole life.

For a second I wished I could learn it all in ein augenblick, something similar to what people were doing on-board the Nebuchadnezzar (remember Trinity learning how to pilot a helicopter?). But again I thought, where would the fun be in knowing that much, in learning everything in an instant? I think, the greatest joys of life come not from the things you've always known, but they come at the moments when you understand or realize something that you've been trying to understand for sometime. All the adventure, the excitement and everything is in the pursuit of knowledge, the knowledge by itself is perhaps just boring!

...for who could ever learn to love a beast?

Once upon a time,
in a faraway land,
a young prince lived in a shining castle.
Although he had everything his heart desired,
the prince was spoiled, selfish, and unkind.
But then,
one winter's night,
an old beggar woman came to the castle
and offered him a single rose
in return for shelter from the bitter cold.
Repulsed by her haggard appearance,
the prince sneered at the gift
and turned the old woman away,
but she warned him not to be deceived by appearances,
for beauty is found within.
And when he dismissed her again,
the old woman's ugliness melted away
to reveal a beautiful enchantress.
The prince tried to apologize,
but it was too late,
for she had seen that there was no love in his heart,
and as punishment,
she transformed him into a hideous beast,
and placed a powerful spell on the castle, and all who lived there.
Ashamed of his monstrous form,
the beast concealed himself inside his castle,
with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world.
The rose she had offered
was truly an enchanted rose,
which would bloom until his twenty-first year.
If he could learn to love another,
and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell,
then the spell would be broken.
If not,
he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time.

As the years passed,
he fell into despair,
and lost all hope,
for who could ever learn to love a beast?
-- The introduction part of the "Beauty and the Beast"

I simply love this animation movie, especially the introduction part.

Twice

"When you don't show up, it hurts twice. Not only for I realize you don't care to come, but also for I loose the chance to see you!"

Bow and Arrow!

"You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with his might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable." -- "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran