High cost of living

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty
knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

        James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Against mediocrity

But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something?
Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you.
Mediocrity's a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.

            Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

 

 

 

 

 

April showers

For after all, the best thing one can do
When it is raining, is to let it rain.

        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Birds of Killingworth

 

 

 

Something and nothing

Because deep in my heart, I know there is always something to write about,
but there is also always nothing - and terrifyingly little air between.

                Nick Cave, Red Hand Files 286

 

 

 

 

 

Awesome

Awe is more than an emotion; it is a way of understanding, insight into a meaning greater than ourselves. The beginning of awe is wonder, and the beginning of wisdom is awe.

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.

                 Abraham Joshua Heschel, Who Is Man?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: blessing the boats

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back   may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that 

                Lucille Clifton    

 

 

 

 

 

Choose

[Optimism] is not about providing a recipe for self-deception.
The world can be a horrible, cruel place,
and at the same time it can be wonderful and abundant.
These are both truths.
There is not a halfway point;
there is only choosing which truth to put in your personal foreground.

        Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness

 

 

 

 

 

More is better

It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.

                Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment 

 

 

 

 

Isn't it obvious?

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

        Arthur Conan Doyle, The Boscombe Valley Mystery 

 

 

 

 

 

Sleep in

Progress doesn't come from early risers—
progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.

            Robert Heinlein, Time Enough For Love

 

 

 

 

The end?

Never think you've seen the last of anything

        Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter

 

 

 

 

Keep working on it

Religion will not regain its old power
until it can face change
in the same spirit as does science.
Its principles may be eternal,
but the expression of those principles
requires continual development.

        Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

 

 

 

 

Poem: April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

                Langston Hughes

 

 

 

 

 

Make it count

I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something.

        Arthur Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing artificial about it

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.

        Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

 

 

 

 

Play ball

Didn't come up here to read. Came up here to hit. 

Hank Aaron to catcher Yogi Berra, who told him to turn his bat around so he could see the trademark during the 1957 World Series, Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes 

 

 

 

 

Enough

Somebody once said we never know
    what is enough until we know
        what's more than enough.

                Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues

 

 

 

 

The simple life

I could enjoy the simple life
with a small living quarters,
a scratched album of Johnny Cash
and a Box of Twinkies

        Stanley Victor Paskavich, Return to Stantasyland

        [Continental Bakery created Twinkies April 6, 1930]

 

 

 

 

 

Practice resurrection

The word "resurrection" has for many people the connotation
of dead bodies leaving their graves or other fanciful images.
But resurrection means the victory of the New state of things,
the New Being born out of the death of the Old.
Resurrection is not an event that might happen in some remote future,
but it is the power of the New Being to create life out of death,
here and now, today and tomorrow.

                    Paul Tillich, The New Being

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Matzah

Flat you are as a door mat
and as homely.
No crust, no glaze, you lack
a cosmetic glow.
You break with a snap.
You are dry as a twig
split from an oak
in midwinter.
You are bumpy as a mud basin
in a drought.
Square as a slab of pavement,
you have no inside
to hide raisins or seeds.
You are pale as the full moon
pocked with craters.

What we see is what we get
honest, plain, dry
shining with nostalgia
as if baked with light
instead of heat.
The bread of flight and haste
In the mouth you promise, home.

            Marge Piercy 

 

 

 

 

Gods in hiding

We must look at ourselves differently.
We are freer than we think.
We haven't begun to live yet.
The man whose light has come on in his head,
in his dormant sun, can never be kept down or defeated.
We can redream this world and make the dream real.
Human beings are gods hidden from ourselves.

        Ben Okri, The Famished Road

 

 

 

 

 

An unpaid debt

There’s no way to repay a mother’s love, or lack of it.

    Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook

 

 

 

 

Keep the appointed time

Now the LORD spoke to Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai,
in the first month of the second year
after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying:
"Let the children of Israel keep the Passover at its appointed time.
"On the fourteenth day of this month, at twilight,
you shall keep it at its appointed time.
According to all its rites and ceremonies you shall keep it."

            Book of Numbers, chap. 9, verse 1-3