It is my belief, based partly on personal experience
but partly also arrived at by looking around at others,
that childhood lasts considerably longer
in the males of our species than in the females.
Lewis Thomas, The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher
The memory sometimes is so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient;
at others, so bewildered and so weak;
and at others again so tyrannic, so beyond control!
We are, to be sure, a miracle every way—
but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting
do seem peculiarly past finding out.
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Life is like playing a violin solo in public
and learning the instrument as one goes on.
Samuel Butler, Speech at the Somerville Club, 1895
Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns,
so that each small piece of her fabric reveals
the organization of the entire tapestry.
Richard Feynman, 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.
We feel it in a thousand things.
It is the heart which experiences God, and not the reason.
This, then, is faith: God felt by the heart, not by the reason.
We do not content ourselves
with the life we have in ourselves and in our being;
we desire to live an imaginary life in the mind of others,
and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.
We labor unceasingly to adorn and preserve
this imaginary existence and neglect the real.
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Bill Jones had been the shining star upon his college team,
His tackling was ferocious and his bucking was a dream;
When husky William tucked the ball beneath his brawny arm
They had a special man to ring the ambulance alarm.
Bill had the speed—Bill had the weight—the nerve to never yield;
From goal to goal he whizzed along while fragments strewed the field;
And there had been a standing bet—which no one tried to call—
That he could gain his distance through a ten-foot granite wall.
When he wound up his college course each student’s heart was sore;
They wept to think that Husky Bill would buck the line no more;
Not so with William—in his dreams he saw the field of fame
Where he would buck to glory in the swirl of life’s big game.
Sweet are the dreams of campus life—the world which lies beyond
Gleams ever on our inmost gaze with visions fair and fond;
We see our fondest hopes achieved and on with striving soul
We buck the line and run the ends until we reach the goal.
So, with his sheepskin tucked beneath his brawny arm one day,
Bill put on steam and dashed into the thickest of the fray;
With eyes ablaze, he sprinted where the laureled highway led—
When Bill woke up his scalp hung loose and knots adorned his head.
He tried to run the ends of life—when lo—with vicious toss
A bill-collector tackled him and threw him for a loss;
And when he switched his course again and crashed into the line,
The massive guard named failure did a two-step on his spine.
Bill tried to punt out of the rut—but ere he turned the trick
Rick-tackle competition tumbled through and blocked the kick;
And when he tackled at success in one long vicious bound,
The full-back, disappointment, steered his features in the ground.
But one day when across the field of fame the goal seemed dim,
The wise old coach, experience, came up and said to him:
“Old boy,” spoke he, “the main point now before you win your bout
Is keep on bucking failure till you’ve worn the lobster out.
“Cut out this work around the ends—go in there, low and hard—
Just put your eye upon the goal and start there, yard by yard;
And more than all—when you are thrown—or tumbled with a crack—
Don’t lie there whining—hustle up—and keep on coming back.
“Keep coming back for all they’ve got and take it with a grin
When disappointment trips you up or failure barks your shin;
Keep coming back—and if at last you lose the game of right
Let those who whipped you know at least they, too, have had a fight,
“You’ll find the bread-line hard to buck and fame’s goal far away,
But hit the line and hit it hard across each rushing play;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to write against your name—
He marks—not that you won or lost—but how you played the game.”
Grantland Rice
The arts are not a way to make a living.
They are a very human way of making life more bearable.
Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly,
is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake.
Sing in the shower.
Dance to the radio.
Tell stories.
Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem.
Do it as well as you possibly can.
You will get an enormous reward.
You will have created something.
Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
The first thing I learned at school was that some people are idiots;
the second thing I learned was that some are even worse.
Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City
there is bound to be a certain amount of
trouble running any country
if you are president the trouble happens to you
but if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so
that most of the trouble happens to other people
Don Marquis, archy's newest deal
You will be free of the world's turbulence
as soon as you stop taking your thoughts so seriously.
Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior
The small thick book I’d wrapped my fingers around was the novel.
I had never read a novel, though I understood the concept of fiction.
It wasn’t so unlike religion, or history, for that matter.
Percival Everett, James: A Novel
The inner spaces that a good story lets us enter
are the old apartments of religion.
John Updike
Introduction to The Best American Short Stories of 1984
Somehow it is never hard work
to mourn well in October,
Indian summer being a time
of easy mourning.
We remember the smell
of leaves burning, the smoke
drifting over the fields,
angels of wood.
In October the moon, hanging,
always comes down a little,
and a woman almost forms,
then forms just below the hills.
As if she is holding out something,
as if what she holds smells
of fields, of sage and corn,
and she’s coming up toward the house.
And somehow we feel
we have always known her.
In her gourd cup she carries
the moon, there is a musk
on her dried flowers,
and the moments of her voice
hang down like grapes.
And since we are alone
we can suffer such sentiment,
there in the twilight,
the road past our house
a long door asking us in.
Don Welch
Some years ago, I was lucky enough invited to a gathering of great and good people: artists and scientists, writers and discoverers of things. And I felt that at any moment they would realise that I didn’t qualify to be there, among these people who had really done things.
On my second or third night there, I was standing at the back of the hall, while a musical entertainment happened, and I started talking to a very nice, polite, elderly gentleman about several things, including our shared first name. And then he pointed to the hall of people, and said words to the effect of, “I just look at all these people, and I think, what the heck am I doing here? They’ve made amazing things. I just went where I was sent.”
And I said, “Yes. But you were the first man on the moon. I think that counts for something.”
And I felt a bit better. Because if Neil Armstrong felt like an imposter, maybe everyone did. Maybe there weren’t any grown-ups, only people who had worked hard and also got lucky and were slightly out of their depth, all of us doing the best job we could, which is all we can really hope for.
Neil Gaiman, 2017 blog entry
I don’t know whether my life has been a success or a failure.
But not having any anxiety about becoming one instead of the other,
and just taking things as they come along,
I’ve had a lot of extra time to enjoy life.
Harpo Marx, Harpo Speaks!
Re-examine all you have been told
at school or church or in any book,
dismiss whatever insults your own soul.
Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass
It's October, and the shorter days have made us hungrier,
depriving us of light and forcing us to look for it in other people.
Billy-Ray Belcourt, Coexistence: Stories
People generally see what they look for,
and hear what they listen for.
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
I have come to believe that there are really two religions in the world:
Those people in religions who say ‘yes’ to life and
those people in religions who say ‘no’ to life.
And I think people who share the ‘yes’ to life in different religions
have more in common with each other than they do with people
in their own culture or specific religious tradition who say ‘no’ to life.
Rabbi Arnie Belzer, 1944-2025
Here I am again
ready to let go of my mistakes.
Help me to release myself
from all the ways I've missed the mark.
Help me to stop carrying
the karmic baggage of my poor choices.
As I cast this bread upon the waters
Lift my troubles off my shoulders.
Help me to know that last year is over,
washed away like crumbs in the current.
Open my heart to blessing and gratitude
Renew my soul as the dew renews the grasses.
And we say together:
Amen.
Rachel Barenblat
It occurs to me that there is a proper balance
between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.
It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end a day in depression.
Not easy to find the balance, for if one does not have wild dreams of achievement,
there is no spur even to get the dishes washed.
One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
Life's perhaps the only riddle
That we shrink from giving up.
W. S. Gilbert, Bab Ballads And Savoy Songs
Should I not atone for the sins I have committed,
All that I have ever said will be a lie.
Milarepa, The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa