Monday ~ November 14, 2016

When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

( Alan Watts, 1915 - 1973 )

Sunday ~ November 13, 2016

Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.

( Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452 - 1519 )

Saturday ~ November 12, 2016

The time will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, and each will smile at the other's welcome. And say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was yourself. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to yourself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

(Derek Walcott, 1930 -  )

Wednesday ~ November 9, 2016

Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow prople to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.

( Octavia Butler, 1947 - 2006 )

Tuesday ~ November 8, 2016

A test: try living the life of a good person and see how it suits you. Be the one happy with her fate, rejoicing his acts of justice, and bent on deeds of kindness.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Monday ~ November 7, 2016

I am not what I have or what I do;
But what I was I am, I am even I.
Therefore myself is that one only thing
I hold to use or waste, to keep or give;
My sole possession every day I live.

(Christina Rossetti, 1830 - 1894)

Sunday ~ November 6, 2016

We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only     solution is love and that love comes with community.


    ( Dorothy Day, 1897 - 1980 )

Saturday ~ November 5, 2016

In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one's social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education... But internal factors may be even more crucial in assessing one's development as a human being; honesty, sincerity, simplicity, humility, purity, generosity, absence of vanity, readiness to serve others - qualities within the reach of every soul - are the foundation of one's spiritual life. Never forget that a saint is a sinner that keeps on trying.

( Nelson Mandela, 1918 - 2013 )

Friday ~ November 4, 2016

Think of a tree. When you think of a tree, you tend to think of a distinctly defined object. But when you look at it more closely, you will see that it has no independent existence. When you contemplate it, you will find that it dissolves into an extremely subtle net of relationships that stretch across the universe. The rain that falls on its leaves, the wind that sways it, the soil that nourishes and sustains it: all form part of the tree. As you think about the tree more and more you will discover that everything in the universe helps make the tree what it is - that it cannot be isolated from anything else and at every moment its nature is subtly changing.

( Soygal Rinpoche, 1950 -   )

Thursday ~ November 3, 2016

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me also occupied in the search, that certain environments , certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conductive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.


(Ann Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001)

Wednesday ~ November 2, 2016

Gratefulness is the only appropriate response to that which is given... and this life is a given. Every human being can realize: we didn't make ourselves, we didn't even choose this life. If you train yourself to be grateful for everything, every moment, then when you come to something that you don't like, you realize it's still given and you have to deal with it. You will be alert to the gift within every gift, which is opportunity.

( David Steindl-Rast, 1926 - )

Monday ~ October 31, 2016

Now when dying grasses veil earth from the sky in one last pale wave, as autumn dies to bring winter back, and then the spring, we who die ourselves can peel back another kind of veil that hangs among us like thick smoke. Tonight at last I feel it shake. I feel the nights stretching away thousands long behind the days til they reach the darkness where all of me is ancestor.

Annie Finch (b. 1956 )

Thursday ~ August 11, 2016

It is very rare to find ground that produces nothing. If it is not covered with flowers, fruit trees, and grains, it produces briars and pines. It is the same with human beings; if they are not virtuous, they become vicious.

(Jean de la Bruyere (1645 - 1696)

Wednesday ~ August 10, 2016

Lord, bless those hands, the harvesters. Bless the travelers who gather our food, and those who grow it, clean it, cook it, who bring it to our tables. Bless the laborers whose faces we do not see - like the girl my grandmother was, walking the rails home; bless us that we remember.

(Natasha Trethewey, b. 1966)

Tuesday ~ August 9, 2016

Does the news bother you? Do you worry about things out of your control? Then take the time to concentrate your mind in the acquisition of some new and useful knowledge and stop it from flitting about. By the same token, guard against making the mistake of those who keep themselves so busy trying to gain control that they wear themselves out and lose their sense of direction, having no purpose to guide their actions or even their thoughts.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Monday ~ August 8, 2016

Talk about it only enough to do it. Dream about it only enough to feel it. Think about it only enough to understand it. Contemplate it only enough to be it.

(Jean Toomer, 1894  - 1967)

Saturday ~ August 6, 2016

I try, I am trying, I will try. I shall in the meantime try. I sometimes have tried. I shall still by that time be trying.

(Dianne Glancy, 1941 -   )

Friday ~ August 5, 2016

Who knows whether there is life on any other planet anywhere in the universe, but there is life on this planet. And what is life like? Think of not knowing what life is and then finding out: a book suddenly learning how to read; a rock jutting out into the sea suddenly knowing the thump and splatter of the waves, the taste of salt. You are alive. It needn't have been so. It wasn't so once, and it will not be so forever. But it is so now. And what is it like: to be alive in this maybe one place of all places anywhere where life is? Live a day of it and see. Take any day and be alive in it.

(Frederick Buechner, 1926 -  )

Thursday ~ August 4, 2016

God is that function in the world by reason of which our purposes are directed to ends  which in our consciousness are impartial as to our own interests. God is that element in life in virtue of which judgement stretches beyond facts of existence to values of existence. God is that element in virtue of which our purposes extend beyond values for ourselves to values for others. God is that element in virtue of which the attainment of such a value for others transforms itself into values for ourselves... God is not the world, but the valuation of the world.

(Alfred North Whitehead, 1861 - 1947)

Wednesday ~ August 3, 2016

I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes.

( Marita Golden, 1950 -  )

Tuesday ~ August 2, 2016

It is important to look deeply into the suffering of others. Someone whose actions are unkind, whose thoughts are unwholesome, whose speech is unwelcome is certainly suffering a lot. When you look deeply and see this suffering, your heart will open and the key of understanding will reveal itself.

(Thich Nhat Hanh, b. 1926)

Monday ~ August 1, 2016

Many things in the world have already happened. You can go back and tell about them. They are part of what we own as we speed along through the white sky. But many things in the world haven't yet happened. You help them by thinking and writing and acting. Where they begin, you greet them or stop them. You come along and sustain the new things.

William Stafford, 1914 - 1993)

Monday ~ July 11, 2016

Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use your suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are a part) and of the power that rules it (to which your part owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.

(Marcus Aurelius, 121 - 180)

Sunday ~ July 10, 2016

Back down these stairs to the same scene, to the moon, the stars, the night wind. Hours pass and only the harp off in the distance and the wind moving through it. And soon the sun's gray disk, darkened by clouds, sailing above. And beyond, as always, the sea of endless transparence, of utmost calm, a place of constant beginning that has within it what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no hand has touched, what has not arisen in the human heart. To that place, to the keeper of that place, I commit myself.

(Mark Strand, 1934 -   )

Saturday ~ July 9, 2016

There is no mystery greater than our own mystery. We are, to ourselves, unknown. And yet we do know. The thought we cannot quite think is nevertheless somehow a thought, and it lives in us without our being able to think it. We are a mystery, but we are a living mystery. The most alive thing about us is what we are when thought breaks off and our mind can go no further - for that is where our yearning begins, our inconsolable yearning, and the loneliness that begets compassion, the forlornness that prepares the heart for love.

( A. Powell Davies, 1902 - 1957)

Monday ~ June 20, 2016

A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to you about himself, and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.

(Lisa Kirk, 1925 - 1990)

Sunday ~ June 19, 2016

A faith that creates no community of faith and a faith that assumes no definite form is not only a protection against any explicit faith, it is probably a protection for a hidden idolatry of blood or state or economic interest, a protection for some kind of tyranny. It is not the faith of the free. The faith of free persons must tangibly make them free in a community of human dignity and equal justice.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Saturday ~ June 18, 2016

Knowledge abounds on every hand by which my steps may be guided, Facts, facts, facts... Thet are everywhere about me. I know with my mind the meaning of many choices that I make. Besides there are many sources upon which I may draw for information that will be the raw material of my decisions. But facts are not the heart of my need. I need wisdom. The quality that will make clear to me the significance, the relatedness of things that are a part of my daily experience - this I lack again and again. I need wisdom to cast a slow and steady radiance over my landscape in order that things, choices, deeds may be seen in their true light - the light of the eternal and the timeless.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Monday ~ June 13, 2016

I walked a mile with pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with sorrow
and ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things I learned from her
When sorrow walked with me!

(Robert Browning Hamilton, 1890 - 1943?)

Saturday ~ June 11, 2016

But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not until then, will he be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself.

(Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815 - 1902)

Friday ~ June 10, 2016

Then I came to an edge of very calm
But couldn't stay there. It was the washed greenblue mapmakers use to indicate Inlets and coves, softspoken contours where the land leaves off
And water lies plainly, as if lamped by its own justice.
I hardly know how to say how it was
Though it spoke to me most kindly,
Unlike a hard afterwards or the motions of forestalling.
Now in evening light the far-off ridge carries marks of burning.
The hills turn thundercolored, and my thoughts move toward them, rough skins
Without their bodies. What is the part of us that feels it isn't named, that doesn't know
How to respond to any name? That scarcely or not at all can lift its head
Into the blue and so unfold there?

(Laurie Sheck, b. 1953)

Thursday ~ June 9, 2016

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself
that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,
and too happy tp permit the presence of trouble.
To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words but great deeds. To live in faith that the whole world is on your side
so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

(Christian Larson, 1874 - 1962)

Thursday ~ June 2, 2016

The Dreams of the dreamer
   Are life-drops that pass
The break in the heart
   To the soul's hiur-glass.
The songs of the singer
   Are the tones that repeat
The cry of the heart
   "Till it ceases to beat.

(Georgia Douglas Johnson, 1880 - 1996)

Monday ~ May 30, 2016

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

(Stephen Spender, 1909 - 1995)

Tuesday ~ May 17, 2016

In the ordinary course of nature, the great beneficent changes come slowly and silently. The noisy changes, for the most part, mean violence and disruption. The roar of storms and tornadoes, the explosions of volcanoes, the crash of the thunder are the result of a sudden break in the equipoise of the elements; from a condition of comparative repose and silence they become fearfully swift and audible. The still small voice is the voice of life and growth and perpetuity. In the stillness of a bright summer day what work is being accomplished, what processes are being consummated!

(John Buroughs, 1837 - 1921)

Sunday ~ May 7, 2016

Do all the good you can,
By all the mans you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
As long as ever you can.

(John Wesley, 1703- 1791)

Saturday ~ May 7, 2016

I seek this day an active wonder. An active wonder is the desperate need of my mind and spirit. The awareness of the unexplored and the untried until I find my way into their secret places: this I need and I seek. The illumination of wonder over my familiar landscape, revealing ordinary things, fresh glories, making manifest in my familiar heights and depths that which I have never known; this I need and I seek this day.

(Howard Thurman, 1899 - 1981)

Monday ~ April 11, 2016

From the simplest lyric to the most complex novel, literature is asking us o pay attention. Pay attention to the frog. Pay attention to the west wind. Pay attention to the boy on the raft, the lady on the tower, the old man on the train. In sum, pay attention to the world and all that dwells therein and thereby learn at last to pay attention to yourself and all that dwells therein.

( Frederick Buechner, b. 1926 )

Sunday ~ April 3, 2016

No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across, but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk but you. Where does it lead? Don't ask, walk!

( Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844 - 1900 )

Saturday ~ April 2, 2016

Unless we are very, very careful, we doom each other by holding onto images of one another based on preconceptions that are in turn based on indifference to what is other than ourselves. This indifference can be, in its extreme, a form of murder and seems to me a rather common phenomenon.

Friday ~ April 1, 2016

You've got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated, you are in trouble.

( James Baldwin, 1924 - 1987 )

Saturday ~ February 13, 2016

If I were much wiser, and much more patient, and had much greater concentration, I could sit in silence in my chair, look out my windows at a green tree and the blue sky, and know that breathing is a gift; that a breath is sufficient for the moment; and that breathing air is breathing God.

( Andre Dubus, 1936 - 1999 )

Thursday ~ February 11, 2016

I think perfection is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.

(Anne Lamont, b. 1954)

Tuesday ~ February 9, 2016

There is a thing of me that dreamed of trees
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere...
I would that it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?

(Mary Oliver, 1935 -   )

Monday ~ February 8, 2016

Still, for Jesus' sake, do me a favor, would you,just this once?
Prophesy, give scandal, cast the stone.
Two sides to every question, yes, yes, yes...
But every now and then, just weighing in
 Is what it must come down to,
And without any self exculpation or self pity.

(Seamus Heaney, 1939 - 2013)

Sunday ~ Ferruary 7, 2016

We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid that it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity.

(Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1906 - 2001)

Saturday ~ February 6, 2016

O gereration of the thoroughly smug and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth and heard ungainly laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake and do not even own clothing.

(Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972)

Thursday ~ February 5, 2016

When from our better selves
 we have too long
 Been parted by the hurrying
 world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its
pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign is
Solitute.

(William Wordsworth, 1770 - 1850)

Tuesday ~ February 2, 2016

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they waken us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?

(Phillip Larkin, 1922 - 1985)

Saturday ~ January 30, 2016

My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams - like the lives of all who stop deceiving themselves.

(Herman Hesse, 1877 - 1962)

Tuesday ~ November 10, 2016

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. Those to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, are as good as dead: their eyes are closed.

(Albert Einstein, 1879 - 1955)

Friday ~ January 29, 2016

A ritual takes what happened a long time ago and drags it into the present so you can experience it here and now. Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.

(Tony Campolo, 1935 -   )

Thursday ~ January 28, 2017

...whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

(Ezra Pound, 1885 - 1972)

Wednesday ~ January 27, 2016

Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

( Iris Murdoch, 1919 - 1999 )

Tuesday ~ January 26, 2016

It's a contention of my father's - believing as he does that those who miss the journey miss about all they're going to get - that people become what they pay attention to. Our observations and curiosity, they make and remake us. Maybe a tonic of curiosity would counter my numbing sense that life inevitably creeps toward the absurd.

( William Least Heat Moon, 1939 -   )

Monday ~ January 25, 2016

People seem to be capable of great virtues, but not of small virtues, capable of defying their torturers but not of keeping their tempers.

( G.K. Chesterton, 1874 - 1936 )

Sunday ~ January 24, 2016

Whether something lasts or not has nothing to do with whether it's made of stone or steel or wood or fabric. A house built all in wood can be a monument that lasts for hundreds of years because it seduces people to live in it, to use it and maintain it. Eternity depends on whether people are willing to take care of something. In Greece, ordinary white houses are repainted every year. Today we are often told to use materials and structures that are free of maintenance. But no building can be neglected entirely. We need constantly to renew our relationships - to the houses we live in, to our friends, to our own bodies - all the time, every day.

(Werner Herzog, 1942 -   )

Saturday ~ January 23, 2016

Every peak is a Crater This is the law of volcanoes.

( Adrienne Rich, 1929 - 2012 )

Friday ~ January 22, 2016

...to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing; a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window. And then another: my daughter in a yellow dress. And then another: the perfect outline of a full, dark sphere behind the crescent moon. Until I learn to be in love with my life again.

( Barbara Kingsolver, 1955 -   )

Thursday ~ January 21, 2016

The problem of self-identity is not just a problem for the young. It is a problem all the time. Perhaps the problem. It should haunt old age, and when it no longer does it should tell you that you are dead.

( Norman Maclean, 1902 - 1990 )

Wednesday ~ January 20, 2016

Individualism names what many people consider to be the finest achievement of modern civilization. We live in a world where people have a right to choose for themselves their own pattern of life, to decide in conscience what convictions to espouse, to determine the shape of their lives in a whole host of ways that their ancestors couldn't control... The dark side of individualism is a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.

( Charles Taylor, 1931 -   )

Tuesday ~ January 19, 2016

The city is the image of the soul, the surroundings walls being the frontier between the outward and inward life. The gates are the senses which connect the life of the soul with the outward world. Living springs of water rise within it. And in the center, where beats the heart, stands the holy sanctuary.

( St. Catherine of Siena, 1347 - 1380 )

Monday ~ January 18, 2016

"One of the great liabilities of history is that all too many people fail to remain awake through great periods of social change. Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. Today, our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change."

( Martin Luther King, Jr. 1929 - 1968 )

Sunday ~ January 17, 2016

It is no easy task to be good. Anyone can act: get angry, give money, speak to friends, and so on. But to do something to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right motive, and in the right way, that is not easy.

( Aristotle, 384 - 322 )

Saturday ~ January 16, 2016

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, we will understand only what we are taught.

( Baba Dioun, 1937 -    )

Friday ~ January 15, 2016

Now give hearts onward habit brave intent:
Hammer the golden day until it lies
A glimmering plate to heap with memory;
Salute the arriving moment with your eyes,
Open the door that opens toward the sky;
Press mind and body hard against this world,
Before we fall asleep, before we die.

( John Holmes, 1815 - 1894 )

Thursday ~ January 14, 2016

Trees need their protective bark to enable the delicate process of growth and renewal to unfold without threat. Likewise, we must have our our boundaries and defenses so that the more venerable parts of ourselves can safely heal and unfold. But our growth also depends upon our ability to soften, loosen, and discard boundaries and defenses that we no longer need. It is often the case in life that structures we put in place to help us grow eventually become constricting..

( Madisyn Taylor, b. late-20th c. )

Wednesday ~ January 13, 2016

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.

( Willian Shakespeare, 1954 - 1616)

Tuesday ~ January 12, 2016

We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

( Pema Chodron, 1936 -   )

Monday ~ January 11, 1016

When giving thanks comes hard for you,
And things are grim,
And hope runs thin,
Recall: Despair's a door to pass on through,
and not a home for living in.
When Thanksgiving fills your cup,
And those you love are all about,
Look at your blessings, count them up,
and give back something to the world without.

( Robert Mabry Doss, 1927 -   )

Sunday ~ January 10, 2016

To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

( Bessie Anderson Stanley, 1879 - 1952 )

Saturday ~ January 09, 2016

To be grateful for the good things that happen in our lives is easy, but to be grateful for all our lives - the good as well as the bad, the moments of joy as well as the moments of sorrow, the success as well as the rejections - that requires hard spiritual work.

( Henri Nouwen, 1932 - 1966 )

Friday ~ January 8, 2016

The choice to follow love through to completion is the choice to seek completion within ourselves. The point at which we shut down on others is the point at which we shut down on life. We heal as we heal others, and we heal others by extending our perceptions past their weaknesses. Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who that person is. Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is. Forgiving others is the only way to forgive ourselves, and forgiveness is our greatest need.

( Marianne Williamson, 1952 -   )

Thursday ~ January 7, 2016

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

( Norman Vincent Peale 1898 - 1999 )

Wednesday ~ January 6, 2016

Tuesday ~ January 5, 2016

The people who are aware of themselves are henceforward independent; and they are never bored, and life is only too short, and they are steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. They alone live, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip past them in a kind of dream.

( Virginia Woolf, 1882 - 1941 )

Monday ~ January 4, 2016

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

( Helen Keller, 1880 - 1968 )

Sunday ~ January 3, 2016

Persistence. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press on!" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

( Calvin Coolidge, 1872 - 1933 )

Saturday ~ January 2, 2016

Where after all do basic human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any map of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person, the neighborhood we live in, the school or college we attend, the factory, farm or office where we work. Such are the places where every man woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for purpose in the larger world.

( Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962 )

Friday ~ January 1, 2016

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

( Mark Twain, 1835 - !910 )