Thursday ~ May 14, 2015

The summer's flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

(William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616)

Wednesday ~ May 13, 2015

I acknowledge the commonplace in my life and my surroundings. I have been letting life grow dingy on my sleeve. Often it is easy to take all things for granted. This I do with my friends; often also with the joys that are inherent in much of my living; also with the blessings and graces of life without which much of living would be utterly beyond the springs of my endurance. I acknowledge the commonplace in my life and my surroundings.

(Howard Thurman, 1900 - 1981)

Tuesday ~ May 12, 2015

One vital spirit is distributed among the animals, and one rational spirit is allotted to humankind. There is also one earth for all creatures that live on earth and share a single light by which they see and a single atmosphere by which they breathe.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Monday ~ May 11, 2015

In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul.

(Mary Renault, 1905 - 1983)

Sunday ~ May 10, 2015

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of one thing in which it is right to be stingy. You are living as if destined to live forever; your own frailty never occurs to you; you don't notice how much time has already passed, but squander it as though you had a full and overflowing supply - though all the while that very day which you are devoting to somebody or something may be your last. You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire...How late it is to begin really to live just when life must end! How stupid to forget our mortality, and put off sensible plans to our fiftieth and sixtieth years, aiming to begin life from a point which few have arrived!

(Seneca, 4 BCE - 65 CE)