Librarian is a service occupation,
gas station attendant of the mind.
In an earlier age, I might have made things.
Now I only make things available.
Richard Powers, Gold Bug Variations
Librarian is a service occupation,
gas station attendant of the mind.
In an earlier age, I might have made things.
Now I only make things available.
Richard Powers, Gold Bug Variations
It is often said that the Church is a crutch.
Of course it’s a crutch.
What makes you think you don’t limp?
William Sloane Coffin, Jr., Credo
John Kenney, Love Poems for Anxious People
Observations in animals have found that, for most, over 70% of waking life is spent being afraid, stressed or anxious. And in primates, where social conflict is a bigger part of the equation, this number rises to 85%. Research also suggests that negative feelings are felt twice as strongly as positive ones and that cortisol—the primary stress hormone—delivers effects that last thirty to sixty times longer than dopamine or serotonin, further exacerbating this hellish existence.
Nick Lynch, The Bowling Broke Substack
We can believe what we choose.
We are answerable for what we choose to believe.
Cardinal John Henry Newman, Letter to Mrs. William Froude
I could do great things, if I weren’t so busy doing little things.
Ashleigh Brilliant, Pot-Shots
God did not make the world according to my specs.
I was not on the planning committee
Nor did he take my bid
But he did use union labor
Even though it was hard to count time and a half
At the start of the job.
But the angels were well organized
And they got their due.
Someone must have negotiated Sabbath,
Hard to believe that it was a management decision,
Although God loves gardening,
And fair labor laws are someplace in Scripture.
I'm not sure that I would have done a better job,
But I would have stacked the odds differently,
Made nature a little easier to understand,
And made sure that the two day week-end
Was part of the primal plans.
I sometimes forget that creation is a kit
All the pieces are in the box,
And God gave us the directions,
And since the help line is always busy,
Perhaps it is time to read the instructions.
Lewis Eron
For a long time I was sure
it should be "Jumping Jack Flash," then
the adagio from Schubert's C major Quintet,
but right now I want Oscar Peterson's
"You Look Good to Me." That's my request.
Play it at the end of the service,
after my friends have spoken.
I don't believe I'll be listening in,
but sitting here I'm imaging
you could be feeling what I'd like to feel––
defiance from the Stones, grief
and resignation with Schubert, but now
Peterson and Ray Brown are making
the moment sound like some kind
of release. Sad enough
at first, but doesn't it slide into
tapping your feet, then clapping
your hands, maybe standing up
in that shadowy hall in Paris
in the late sixties when this was recorded,
getting up and dancing
as I would not have done,
and being dead, cannot, but might
wish for you, who would then
understand what a poem––or perhaps only
the making of a poem, just that moment
when it starts, when so much
is still possible––
has allowed me to feel.
Happy to be there. Carried away.
Lawrence Raab
As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.
Fred Rogers, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood: Thoughts For All Ages
I’m filled with a desire for clarity and meaning
within a world and condition that offers neither.
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It’s more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack.
Dr. Seuss [Theodor Geisel], Los Angeles Times interview 1983
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letter to Renate and Eberhard Bethge
I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
After one school shooting, my beloved rabbi friend Sydney Mintz told me a story from the Midrash (a collection of stories about what the Hebrew Bible teaches). When Moses smashed the original tablets with the Ten Commandments and stomped off back to Mount Sinai, someone swept up all the shards. They were eventually added to the ark alongside the replacement copy of the commandments. We drag around our brokenness in the same container as our holiness.
Anne Lamott, NY Times editorial, September 1, 2025
we are running
running and
time is clocking us
from the edge like an only
daughter.
our mothers stream before us,
cradling their breasts in their
hands.
oh pray that what we want
is worth this running
pray that what we’re running
toward
is what we want.
Lucille Clifton
There is not something or someone experiencing experience! You do not feel feelings, think thoughts, or sense sensations any more than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling. “I feel fine” means that a fine feeling is present. It does not mean that there is one thing called an “I” and another separate thing called a feeling, so that when you bring them together this “I” feels the fine feeling. There are no feelings but present feelings, and whatever feeling is present is “I.” No one ever found an “I” apart from some present experience, or some experience apart from an “I”—which is only to say that the two are the same thing.
Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
One should always have one’s boots on, and be ready to leave.
Michel de Montaigne. Essays
It’s rarely the truth itself that people can’t accept.
It’s how they feel about it.
Karen Russell, The Antidote
If you have the words,
there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
Seamus Heaney, Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney
Love is an act of faith,
and whoever is of little faith
is also of little love.
Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving
She liked her little friends. She liked the songs
they sang when they weren't
twisting and folding paper into dolls.
What could be so bad?
Jesus had been a good man, and putting faith
in good men was what
we had to do to stay this side of cynicism,
that other sadness.
OK, we said, One week. But when she came home
singing "Jesus loves me,
the Bible tells me so," it was time to talk.
Could we say Jesus
doesn't love you? Could I tell her the Bible
is a great book certain people use
to make you feel bad? We sent her back
without a word.
It had been so long since we believed, so long
since we needed Jesus
as our nemesis and friend, that we thought he was
sufficiently dead,
that our children would think of him like Lincoln
or Thomas Jefferson.
Soon it became clear to us: you can't teach disbelief
to a child,
only wonderful stories, and we hadn't a story
nearly as good.
On parents' night there were the Arts & Crafts
all spread out
like appetizers. Then we took our seats
in the church
and the children sang a song about the Ark,
and Hallelujah
and one in which they had to jump up and down
for Jesus.
I can't remember ever feeling so uncertain
about what's comic, what's serious.
Evolution is magical but devoid of heroes.
You can't say to your child
"Evolution loves you." The story stinks
of extinction and nothing
exciting happens for centuries. I didn't have
a wonderful story for my child
and she was beaming. All the way home in the car
she sang the songs,
occasionally standing up for Jesus.
There was nothing to do
but drive, ride it out, sing along
in silence.
Stephen Dunn
So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.
Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?
Those who were kindest to you, I bet.
It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.
George Saunders, 2013 commencement speech
Life is a moderately good play
with a badly written third act.
Truman Capote, Tru
Life's perhaps the only riddle
That we shrink from giving up.
W. S. Gilbert, Bab Ballads And Savoy Songs
Trees know when we are close by.
The chemistry of their roots and the perfumes of their leaves
pump out change when we're near...
when you feel good after a walk in the woods,
it may be that certain species are bribing you.
Richard Powers, The Overstory
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For heaven and the future’s sakes.
Robert Frost, from the poem Two Tramps in Mud Time