And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us,
new, untouched, full of things that have never been,
full of work that has never been done, full of tasks, claims, and demands;
and let us see that we learn to take it
without letting fall too much of what it has to bestow
upon those who demand of it necessary, serious, and great things.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters
In the depths of winter,
I finally learned that within me
there lay an invincible summer.
Albert Camus, Return to Tipasa
The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world;
I am like a snowball — the further I am rolled the more I gain.
Susan B. Anthony, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony
The grace of God means something like:
Here is your life.
You might never have been,
but you are
because the party wouldn't have
been complete without you.
Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC
I forget the derivation of Boxing Day,
but the feeling of wanting to invite
your loved ones outside one at a time
and punch them in the face,
does that come into it somewhere?
Allison Pearson,
I Don't Know How She Does It: The Life of Kate Reddy, Working Mother
How many observe Christ's birthday!
How few, his precepts!
O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack
Christmas: It’s the only religious holiday that’s also a federal holiday.
That way, Christians can go to their services,
and everyone else can sit at home and reflect on
the true meaning of the separation of church and state.
Samantha Bee, Reader’s Digest 2008
To be interested in the changing seasons is,
in this middling zone,
a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana, The Life of Reason
Do not hurry too fast in these early winter days—
a quiet hour is worth more to you than anything you can do in it.
Sarah Orne Jewett, Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett
Remain in wonder if you want mysteries to open up for you.
Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning.
Questioners sooner or later end up in a library.
They end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.
And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder.
Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh), The Book of Wisdom
So the shortest day came, and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive,
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us—Listen!!
All the long echoes sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!
Susan Cooper
That the starry vault shall surcharge the heart with all rapturous marvelings,
is only because we ourselves are greater miracles,
and superber trophies than all the stars in universal space.
Herman Melville, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities
Tomorrow everybody - or practically everybody -
will have had the education of the upper class of yesterday,
and will expect equivalent opportunities.
That is why we face the problem of making every kind of job
meaningful and capable of satisfying every educated man.
Peter F. Drucker, Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New 'Post-Modern' World
Riches... don't consist in having things,
but in not having to do something you don't want to do....
Riches is being able to thumb your nose.
Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar
The path of the righteous ones is like the bright light
that is getting lighter and lighter until the day is firmly established.
Solomon, Proverbs Chapter 4, Verse18
To devotion God set no limits,
and to dedication of the spirit
God set no bounds.
But great quantities of tribute God did not demand,
and the people were restrained from bringing
too much gold for the Tabernacle.
Though the Temples of Solomon and Herod
were far more costly,
it is written that the Divine Presence was found
more constantly in the humbler structure.
To dedicate the spirit to God is more difficult
than to give money,
to devote the whole heart to God
is more difficult than bringing gifts.
Not because of the gold on the walls
does the light of the sanctuary shine forth,
but because of the spirit within.
Those who worship carry away with them
more than they bring
for they find there the light to illumine
their lives.
Ruth Brin
December is a month that is rife with nostalgia.
If there’s anything deep in your heart that you want to keep buried,
you can count on December to bring it to the surface.
Lois Duncan, Don’t Look Behind You
Sometimes, I feel discriminated against but it does not make me angry.
It merely astonishes me.
How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?
Zora Neal Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet;
how important you can be to people you may never even dream of.
There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages
To use the past to justify the present is bad enough—
but it’s just as bad to use the present to justify the past.
Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace
I agree with Paul that love is more important than faith and hope;
but so are honesty, integrity, and moral courage.
The world needs less faith and more love and nobility.
Walter Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism
Be ambitious for the higher gifts,
And I’m going to show you a way
that is better than any of them.
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels,
but have no love,
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbol.
I may have the gift of prophecy,
and know every hidden truth;
I may have faith strong enough to move mountains;
but if I have no love,
I am nothing.
If I offer all my goods to the poor, piece by piece
and deliver my body to be burned,
I gain nothing.
Love is patient and kind;
love is not jealous or boastful,
it is not arrogant or rude.
Love does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the truth.
Love forgives all things,
bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
Endures all things.
Love never ends;
as for prophecies, they will pass away;
as for knowledge, it will vanish.
For our knowledge and our prophecy alike are imperfect,
and the imperfect vanishes when wholeness comes.
When I was a child,
my speech, my outlook and my thoughts were all childish.
When I grew up, I had done with childish things.
Now we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror,
but then we shall see face to face.
My knowledge now is imperfect,
then it will be whole,
like God’s knowledge of me.
So faith, hope, love abide –
these three –
but the greatest of these
is love.
Saint Paul, Letter to the Corinthians
It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything
hard, so I brought Johnnie Walker Red
along with some resentment I’d held in
for a few weeks, which was not helped
by the sight of little nameless things
pierced with toothpicks on the tables,
or by talk that promised to be nothing
if not small. But I’d consented to come,
and I knew what part of the house
their animals would be sequestered,
whose company I loved. What else can I say,
except that old retainer of slights and wrongs,
that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown—
I’d brought him along, too. I was out
to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me,
but did not ask about my soul, which was when
I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red
to find the right kind of glass, and pour.
I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall,
then walked past a group of women
dressed to be seen, undressing them
one by one, and went up the stairs to where
the Rottweilers were, Rosie and Tom,
and got down with them on all fours.
They licked the face I offered them,
and I proceeded to slick back my hair
with their saliva, and before long
I felt like a wild thing, ready to mess up
the party, scarf the hors d’oeuvres.
But the dogs said, No, don’t do that,
calm down, after a while they open the door
and let you out, they pet your head, and everything
you might have held against them is gone,
and you’re good friends again. Stay, they said.
Stephen Dunn
Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.
Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
There is nothing more luxurious
than eating while you read—
unless it be reading while you eat.
E. Nesbit, The Magic World
The consolation of imaginary things
is not imaginary consolation.
Roger Scruton, Art and Imagination
Come December, people always say, 'Isn't it cold?'
Well, of course it's cold. It's the middle of winter.
You don't wander around at midnight saying, 'Isn't it dark?'
Arthur Smith, Arthur Smith's Hamlet
I have learned that faith means trusting in advance
what will only make sense in reverse.
Philip Yancey, Finding God in Unexpected Places
My mother loves butter more than I do,
more than anyone. She pulls chunks off
the stick and eats it plain, explaining
cream spun around into butter! Growing up
we ate turkey cutlets sauteed in lemon
and butter, butter and cheese on green noodles,
butter melting in small pools in the hearts
of Yorkshire puddings, butter better
than gravy staining white rice yellow,
butter glazing corn in slipping squares,
butter the lava in white volcanoes
of hominy grits, butter softening
in a white bowl to be creamed with white
sugar, butter disappearing into
whipped sweet potatoes, with pineapple,
butter melted and curdy to pour
over pancakes, butter licked off the plate
with warm Alaga syrup. When I picture
the good old days I am grinning greasy
with my brother, having watched the tiger
chase his tail and turn to butter. We are
Mumbo and Jumbo’s children despite
historical revision, despite
our parent’s efforts, glowing from the inside
out, one hundred megawatts of butter.
Elizabeth Alexander
We can redream this world and make the dream come real.
Human beings are gods hidden from themselves.
Ben Okri, The Famished Road
Yet, as our power has grown, so has our peril. Today we give our thanks, most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers--for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them.
Let us therefore proclaim our gratitude to Providence for manifold blessings--let us be humbly thankful for inherited ideals--and let us resolve to share those blessings and those ideals with our fellow human beings throughout the world.
John F. Kennedy, in his last Thanksgiving Day proclamation, 1963
I love you like a river that creates the right conditions
for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks.
I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty
and takes people where they want to go.
Paulo Coelho, Aleph
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation,
nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
Truth stands, even if there be no public support.
It is self sustained.
Mahatma Gandhi, Young India
We think in generalities, but we live in detail.
Alfred North Whitehead, The Education of an Englishman
There is no act of love toward one’s neighbor that falls into the void.
Just because the act was realized blindly, it must appear somewhere as effect.
Somewhere.
Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption
If I had to preach a sermon on the family I would take for my text this phrase of Paul Valery's: In every family there is concealed a specific interior boredom which causes its members to escape and live their own lives. There is also in every family an ancient and powerful force which manifests itself when the group is gathered in the dining-room for its evening meal, when its members feel free to be completely themselves.
André Maurois, Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living)
At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light,
an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates,
not by building, but by hacking away.
Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity