Unintended consequences

When people say clean as a whistle,
    they forget that a whistle is full of spit.

            George Carlin, Napalm & Silly Putty

 

 

 

 

 

Discovery

One doesn't discover new lands
    without consenting to lose sight,
        for a very long time,
            of the shore.

                    Andre Gide, The Counterfeiters

 

 

 

 

Dream it out

You have to dream things out.
It keeps a kind of an ideal before you.
You see it first in your mind
and then you set about to try and make it like the ideal.
If you want a garden,
why, I guess you've got to dream a garden.

        Bess Streeter Aldrich, The Bess Streeter Aldrich Reader

 

 

 

 

Many mansions

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle
made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal,
in which there are many rooms,
just as in Heaven there are many mansions.

            Teresa of Ávila, The Interior Castle

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

                    Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arbor Day

Until you dig a hole,
you plant a tree,
you water it
and make it survive,
you haven't done a thing.
You are just talking.

        Wangari Maathai, Unbowed, A Memoir

 

 

 

 

 

 

Danger!

A very dangerous state of mind: thinking one understands.

                Paul Valéry, The Collected Works of Paul Valery