What weapons has the Lion but himself?

Here are some pithy words that I hold very dear... words that, you might say, I live my life by... God, that sounds so pretentious...hehe. Anyway, while nowhere close to being the complete set of my "guiding principles", this will do as a starter! :)

"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain."
- Maya Angelou

"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"What weapons has the Lion but himself?"
- John Keats

"To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe."
- Anatole France

"The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed."
- Alexis Carrel, Reflections on Life

"You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note."
- Doug Floyd

"A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around."
- Edward W. Howe

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."
- Abraham Lincoln

"If you can come to peace with the fact that you're surrounded by idiots, you'll realize that resistance is futile,your tension will dissipate, and you can sit back and have a good laugh at the expense of others."
- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

If thou must love me...

Some days, your heart just wants to scream out aloud... but lacks the words it needs to do it with. On some other days, you even manage to get a few words out, but they just seem so hollow... so strangely inadequate... And you wonder - if I can feel it in me, throbbing away with such great passion, why then can my brain not find that same power in the words it chooses?! (Stereotypically speaking, us men-folk are purported to be the most frequent offenders of this kind - how often we are blamed for not being able to verbalize what's truly running in our heads and our hearts! Hehe!:))

Now I am a markedly talkative bloke - you leave me in a room with some close friends and I could yap on till kingdom cometh! Hehe!:) This verbal constipation that I just mentioned is not my natural state of existence, so to speak! However, when you look at it in all honesty, it's not all that incongruous... Blessed is the one who speaks 'coz he has something to say... more often than not, we speak 'coz we can't bear the silence... And finally when we do have something to say... something truly important... truly significant... we are faced with a unique burden - how do I say it so that what comes out of my mouth is what's running in my head!?

Now don't get me wrong; this isn't merely one's fear of the 'foot-in-mouth' syndrome... I think, it's more along the lines of, "If this means so much to me that I can't bear to exist another moment without sharing it with you, how do I get it across without losing any of the intensity, the emotions, the pathos?”

It's at times like these that I keep going back to the poetry of the yesteryears. Now mind you, most of these poets were total nuts with train-wrecks for personal lives... Frequently they were suicidal... sometimes they were just sociopathic! But maybe since everything else in their lives sucked so bad, they ended up working wonders in the one area they picked to excel in - literature! Aah, what words... what thoughts... Sometimes, it feels like Browning and Shelley and Yeats and Keats traveled through time, just to peek into my heart... and then went right back, and put my feelings down on paper, in a style far better than any I could ever manage!

One such example is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 14 - "If thou must love me, let it be for nought"! For years I have tried to knock this idea into several peoples' heads... but never have I managed to do it with such class! Hehe!:)

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
For these things in themselves, Beloved, may
Be changed, or change for thee,—and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,—
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.