I was in love with New York.
I do not mean 'love' in any colloquial way,
I mean that I was in love with the city,
the way you love the first person who ever touches you
and never love anyone quite that way again.
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Getting what you go after is success;
but liking it while you are getting it is happiness.
Bertha Damon, A Sense of Humus
Meditation is always becoming. Meditation is always transformation. Meditation always moves us from one place to another; from unconsciousness to awareness, from tension to relaxation, from being scattered to being centered, from a shallow relationship with our environment and ourselves to a deeper one, from sleep to wakefulness, from a sense of God’s absence to the sense that God was in this place all along and I didn’t know it!
Alan Lew, Be Still and Get Going: A Jewish Meditation Practice for Real Life
Most of the warriors I knew
Have settled down to gardening, and the morning Times,
Tired of stalking ghosts
and the melody of secret rhythms
above the sound of traffic
and other monotonous voices,
Finally content to stare and wonder.
Most of the warriors I knew
Have unsaddled stallions and built a fence in the backyard,
Weary of studying the clouds
And the shadows creeping across mountains
beyond the flash of neon
and other pretentious symbols,
Finally content to stare and wonder.
Most of the warriors I knew
Have died before their time and are forgotten
Save in the memory of their sons
And the dreams they seldom share
beyond the taint of time
and other unimportant measures
Finally content to stare and wonder.
James Kavanaugh
There is a famous story that you and Springsteen were invited to a dinner party at Sinatra’s house around the time you did that TV tribute to him. Had you met him before? Did you feel like he knew your stuff?
Not really. I think he knew “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Blowin’ In the Wind.” I know he liked “Forever Young,” he told me that. He was funny, we were standing out on his patio at night and he said to me, “You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we’re from up there,” and he pointed to the stars. “These other bums are from down here.” I remember thinking that he might be right.
Bob Dylan, Q&A with Bill Flanagan, March 2017
People seldom see the halting and painful steps
by which the most insignificant success is achieved.
Anne Mansfield Sullivan, Helen Keller: The Story of My Life
That of which we are not aware, owns us.
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
St. Ciaran of Clonmacnoise was St. Kevin's soul-friend, and they were very close. When Ciaran approached death, he said: "Let me be carried to a small height." Then angels went to meet his soul, filling as they did all the space between heaven and earth. He was carried back into the little church, and raising his hands, he blessed his people. Then he told the brethren to shut him up in the church until Kevin should come from Glendalough.
Kevin arrived three days after Ciaran's death, having left his monastery as soon as he heard that his closest friend was dying, but he had been very delayed. At once Ciaran's spirit returned from heaven and reentered his body so that he could commune with Kevin and welcome him. The two friends stayed together for a long time, engaged in mutual conversation, and strengthening their friendship.
Excerpted from: https://orthodoxwiki.org/Kevin_of_Glendalough
When something is festering
in your memory or your imagination,
laws of silence don’t work,
it’s like shutting a door and locking it
on a house on fire
in hope of forgetting that the house is burning.
But not facing a fire doesn’t put it out.
Silence about a thing just magnifies it.
It grows and festers in silence, becomes malignant.
Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Some of these things are true
and some of them lies.
But they are all good stories.
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
True happiness, we are told,
consists in getting out of one's self;
but the point is not only to get out -
you must stay out;
and to stay out
you must have some absorbing errand.
Henry James, Roderick Hudson
The joy of the new, hip, happening, double-espresso Dublin
is that you can blame any strange mood on coffee deprivation.
This never worked in the era of tea,
at least not at the same level of street cred.
Tana French, In the Woods
The spiritual disposition of a poet inclines to catastrophe.
Osip Mandelstam, Selected Essays
Whereas elsewhere in Europe,
no educated man would be caught dead speaking a vernacular,
the Irish thought that all language was a game.
Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization
some believe in general motors,
others in market purity;
some believe in earnings per share
and their financial security-
still more believe in politics,
and everything they've read;
but i believe the sun
when its shining on my head.
A. Cohen
In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better.
C.E. Murphy, Urban Shaman
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
David Gerrold, The War Against the Chtorr
The true secret of happiness lies in taking
a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
William Morris, The Beauty of Life
In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.
Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, Mahaffy: A Biography of an Anglo-Irishman
If you’ve never eaten toasted Ormeau Veda bread
with Dromona butter and homemade lemon curd,
do not despair, because this is the breakfast food
that you will be served in heaven.
Adrian McKinty, Hang on St. Christopher
In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied
with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning.
In either case one loses touch with the present
and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities.
What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk.
You do not need to know precisely what is happening,
or exactly where it is all going.
What you need is to recognize the possibilities
and challenges offered by the present moment,
and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.
In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
I cannot tell you how it was,
But this I know: it came to pass
Upon a bright and sunny day
When May was young; ah, pleasant May!
As yet the poppies were not born
Between the blades of tender corn;
The last egg had not hatched as yet,
Nor any bird foregone its mate.
I cannot tell you what it was,
But this I know: it did but pass.
It passed away with sunny May,
Like all sweet things it passed away,
And left me old, and cold, and gray.
Christina Rossetti