Herbert Mason Quotes

As if some faces could be doorways in
To life one has an image of
But never sees. The vista was
A strange and beautiful
Release

They fell like wolves
At each other's throats,
Like bulls bellowing,
And horses gasping for breath
That have run all day.

He looked at the walls,
Awed at the heights
His people had achieved
And for a moment -- just a moment --
All that lay behind him
Passed from view.

As when we can recall so vividly
We almost touch,
Or think of all the gestures that we failed
To make.

[Humbaba's] sound is like a flood's sound
Slowly forming in the distance,
Then enveloping all other sounds

You are a human being now, not like them [the animals].

What we finally do, out of desperation ... is go on an impossible, or even forbidden, journey or pilgrimage, which from a rational point of view is futile: to find the one wise man, whomever or wherever he may be; and to find from him the secret of eternal life or the secret of adjusting to this life as best we can.

I think love's kiss kills our heart of flesh.

It is the only way to eternal life,

Which should be unbearable if lived

Among the dying flowers

And the shrieking farewells

Of the overstretched arms of our spoiled hopes.

-Book III

But my hand was too small to do the gathering. [Epic of Gilgamesh, p. 79]

Everything had life to me,' he heard Enkidu murmur, 'the sky, the storm, the earth, water, wandering, the moon and its three children, salt, even my hand had life. It's gone. It's gone.

Don't moralize at me! I have no love
For images, old gods, prophetic words.
I want to talk to Utnapishtim!
Tell me how.

Gilgamesh was called a god and a man; Enkidu was an animal and a man. It is the story of their becoming human together.

All that is left to one who grieves
Is convalescence. No change of heart or spiritual
Conversion, for the heart has changed
And the soul has been converted
To a thing that sees
How much it costs to lose a friend it loved.

You have known, O Gilgamesh,
What interests me,
To drink from the Well of Immortality.
Which means to make the dead
Rise from their graves
And the prisoners from their cells
The sinners from their sins.
I think love's kiss kills our heart of flesh.
It is the only way to eternal life,
Which should be unbearable if lived
Among the dying flowers
And the shrieking farewells
Of the overstretched arms of our spoiled hopes.

He entered the city asked a blind man if he had ever heard the name Enkidu, and the old man shrugged and shook his head, then turned away, as if to say, 'It is impossible to keep the names of friends whom we have lost