The worst thing about sorrow is that it’s blind, and the worst thing about anger is that it sees too much.

— Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer
chapter, “The End of a Dynasty”

The sculpting was highly complex, one pattern shifted into another, and the geometry of congruent figures kept drawing the eye away from the light. It was not sculpture, of course, since no one had hewn and worked this stone of the Horn. The form, commencing from the first seeds, had eaten into the asteroid’s cold ground and heaved in a wave of nanotransformations until, particle by particle, there rose here the memorial of Ugerzo’s gratitude. But how much can be contained in a seed’s starting algorithms, in an architectonic code of crysthorn? […] Surely all this could not have been provided by the code of an initiating seed. […] It seems unlikely that the planners had written into the seeds the future position of every piece of Izmir mineral, ergodic autoprogramming doesn’t work that way, one must leave room for chaos. So if it wasn’t the hand of the planners, whose hand was it? Whose was the talent behind this carving? Who gave grace to the fragile angels, put blood lust in the brows of the stalagmite demons, framed the illusion of refractive flow through the Cathedral’s epithelium?

— The Cathedral by Jacek Dukaj
(apologies)

The swordsmith was not a mere artisan but an inspired artist and his workshop a sanctuary. Daily he commenced his craft with prayer and purification, or, as the phrase was, “he committed his soul and spirit into the forging and tempering of the steel.” Every swing of the sledge, every plunge into water, every friction on the grindstone, was a religious act of no slight import. Was it the spirit of the master or of his tutelary god that cast a formidable spell over our sword? Perfect as a work of art, setting at defiance its Toledo and Damascus rivals, there was more than art could impart. Its cold blade, collecting on its surface the moment it is drawn the vapour of the atmosphere; its immaculate texture, flashing light of bluish hue; its matchless edge, upon which histories and possibilities hang; the curve of its back, uniting exquisite grace with utmost strength;—all these thrill us with mixed feelings of power and beauty, of awe and terror.

— Bushido: The Soul of Japan by Inazo Nitobe
(Chapter XIII)

Clouds of another life
Wash across the sunlight
Changing shape as they go by
Thought I saw your face there
But like them you just—

—disappear
Disappear into empty sky
Quietly
So removed from reason
Hey
Have you ever had to reason?
Hey

The eagle comes and goes
To somewhere much higher
When the silence grows
Can you hear it, sniper?

Visions and memories
Where some one once laid flowers
For the past and things to come
Thought you were gone
But I can feel you
So I —

—turn around
Turn around, yes, and there you are
Here again
Can you give it some meaning?
Hey
ask again, but you say nothing
Hey

Motion without sound
Ice inside the fire
The stillness in the storm
Silence hides the sniper

Eagles come and go
To someplace much higher
When the silence grows
Can you hear it, sniper?

What goes through your sniper’s mind?…

— “Somewhere in the Silence (Sniper’s Theme)”
Yoko Kanno / Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society soundtrack

It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.

— Miguel de Cervantes