Sappho Intl Quotes

Do you prefer him or her? Either one's cool-I'm genderfluid. ~ Mvxx. Amillivn

In Ancient Greek literature male poets tend not simply to portray women as lecherous but to attribute to them a species of lust different from that of males: a subhuman and automatic reflex, an animalistic urge. Sappho is important because she gives a fulle human voice to female desire for the first time in Western history. Since she defiantly chooses the quintessential love-object Helen of Troy as her freethinking agent, she seems fully conscious of the revolutionary claim she is making. ~ Sappho

I will let my body flow like water over the gentle cushions. ~ Sappho

Although only breath, words which I speak are immortal. ~ Sappho

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor. ~ Sappho

You're Sappho, I'm Phaon, agreed.
But there's one thing still troubling me:
You don't know your way to the sea. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

May you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend ~ Sappho

The inextinguishable lesbian spark. You've surely heard about it? The one that was first ignited at Lesbos, because Sappho was so sad every time a young woman left the academy that she wrote her a poem. Fancy being sad because someone leaves! Perverted, that's what I call it. Don't you? ~ Gerd Brantenberg

Dawn with arms of roses ~ Sappho

Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done. ~ Sappho

In the end he became as fragmentary as the poems of Sappho he never succeeded in restoring, and finally one morning he looked up into the face of the woman who'd been the greatest love of his life and failed to recognize her. And then there was another kind of blow inside his head; blood pooled in his brain for the last time, washing even the last fragments of his self away. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

The evening star Is the most beautiful of all stars ~ Sappho

I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion. ~ Erica Jong

From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious. ~ Sappho

not one girl I think
who looks on the light of the sun
will ever
have wisdom
like this ~ Sappho

Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.
~ Sappho

Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time ~ Sappho

Nothing is sweeter than love, all other riches
second: even honey I've spat from my mouth. ~ Diane J. Rayor

In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia
because I prayed
this word:
I want. ~ Sappho

For the man who is beautiful is beautiful to see but the good man will at once also beautiful be ~ Sappho

What did we talk about?

I don't remember. We talked so hard and sat so still that I got cramps in my knee. We had too many cups of tea and then didn't want to leave the table to go to the bathroom because we didn't want to stop talking. You will think we talked of revolution but we didn't. Nor did we talk of our own souls. Nor of sewing. Nor of babies. Nor of departmental intrigue. It was political if by politics you mean the laboratory talk that characters in bad movies are perpetually trying to convey (unsuccessfully) when they Wrinkle Their Wee Brows and say (valiantly--dutifully--after all, they didn't write it) "But, Doctor, doesn't that violate Finagle's Constant?" I staggered to the bathroom, released floods of tea, and returned to the kitchen to talk. It was professional talk. It left my grey-faced and with such concentration that I began to develop a headache. We talked about Mary Ann Evans' loss of faith, about Emily Brontë's isolation, about Charlotte Brontë's blinding cloud, about the split in Virginia Woolf's head and the split in her economic condition. We talked about Lady Murasaki, who wrote in a form that no respectable man would touch, Hroswit, a little name whose plays "may perhaps amuse myself," Miss Austen, who had no more expression in society than a firescreen or a poker. They did not all write letters, write memoirs, or go on the stage. Sappho--only an ambiguous, somewhat disagreeable name. Corinna? The teacher of Pindar. Olive Schriener, gr ~ Joanna Russ

Death must be an evil and the gods agree; for why else would they live for ever? ~ Sappho

The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view;
The good man will in time be gorgeous, too. ~ Sappho

I don't know what to do
two states of mind in me ~ Sappho

I simply want to be dead.
Weeping she left me

with many tears and said this:
Oh how badly things have turned out for us.
Sappho, I swear, against my will I leave you.

And I answered her:
Rejoice, go and
remember me. For you know how we cherished you. ~ Sappho

Yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just ~ Sappho

He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also. ~ Sappho

Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks. ~ Sappho

When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me and a trembling seizes me all over. ~ Sappho

Whatever one loves most is beautiful. ~ Sappho

Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man. ~ Sappho

At noontime

When the earth is
bright with flaming
heat falling straight down

the cricket sets
up a high-pitched
singing in his wings ~ Sappho

The Unchanging
Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten
These were the same for Sappho as for me.
Two thousand years - much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then. ~ Sara Teasdale

neither for me honey nor the honey bee ~ Sappho

for you beautiful ones my thought
is not changeable ~ Sappho

Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays! ~ Robert Browning

but if you love us
choose a younger bed
for I cannot bear
to live with you when I am the older one ~ Sappho

]
]you will remember
]for we in our youth
did these things

yes many and beautiful things
]
]
] ~ Sappho