Do not be oppressed by the frightful sum of human suffering; there is no sum;
two lean women are not twice as lean as one,
and two fat women are not twice as fat as one.
Poverty and pain are not cumulative;
you must not let your spirit be crushed by the fancy that it is.
George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for?
Isn't love hard to believe?
Don't you bully me with your politeness!
Love is hard to believe, ask any lover.
Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist.
God is hard to believe, ask any believer.
What is your problem with hard to believe?
Yann Martel, Life of Pi
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Jack Gilbert
May all my enemies go to hell,
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel.
Hilaire Belloc
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
Fernando Pessoa, Collected Later Poems of Alvaro de Campos
A few years ago, instead of spending a lot of time buying gifts and mailing those out,
Grandma sent checks out in cards that said "Buy your own gift."
She was a little miffed not to have received any thank yous,
until she was cleaning out her desk a few months later, and
came across the entire stack of checks she had forgotten to enclose.
We still kid her about that.
Shared by a reader in The Washington Post
Those who spread their sails in the right way to the winds of the earth
will always find themselves born by a current towards the open seas.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu