Health food

And when people ask me why I’m so healthy,
        I say, “Plenty of red meat and gin!”

                Julia Child, 1992 interview 

 

 

 

 

Testing

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention —
        but calamity is the test of integrity.

             Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady

 

 

 

 

 

Advice for a Monday

If you can’t stop the bad thoughts from coming to visit,
at least you can make fun of them while they’re hanging around.

            Jim Butcher, Turn Coat

 

 

 

 

Poem: variation of poem 1544

Who has not found the Heaven—below—
Will fail of it above—
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

        Emily Dickinson

A divine order

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

                        Jack London, The Call of the Wild

 

 

 

Play on

The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.

                Ashley Montagu, Growing Young 

 

 

 

 

Radical and rebel

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel,
for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

        Niels Bohr, Harmony and Unity: The Life of Niels Bohr