Saturday ~ January 18, 2020

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth can find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring comes after winter.

(Rachel Carson, 1907 - 1964)

Friday ~ January 17, 2020

It is a miracle that New York works at all. The whole thing is implausible... By rights, New York should have destroyed itself long ago, from panic or fire or rioting or failure of some vital supply line in its circulatory system or from some deep labyrinthine short circuit. Long ago the city should have experienced an insoluble traffic snarl at some impossible bottleneck. It should have been touched in the head by the August heat and gone off its rocker... There is not enough air and not enough light, and there is usually either too much heat or too little. But the city makes up for its hazards and deficiencies by supplying its citizens with massive doses of a supplementary vitamin: the sense of belonging to something unique, cosmopolitan, mighty and unparalleled.

(E.B. White. 1899-1985)

Thursday ~ January 16, 2020

There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us - to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.

(Matthew Arnold, 1882 - 1888)

Wednesday ~ January 15, 2020

The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism... History is a struggle in dead earnest between justice and injustice, looking towards the ultimate victory in the promise and fulfillment of grace. Anyone who does not enter into that struggle with the affirmation of love and beauty misses the mark and thwarts creation as well as self-creation.

(James Luther Adams, 1901 - 1994)

Tuesday ~ January 14, 2020

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, It was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going directly the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

(Charles Dickens, 1812 - 1870)

Monday ~ January 13, 2010

The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep.
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
A voice out of the silence of the deep,
 A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882)

Sunday ~ January 12, 2020

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions: desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

(Blaise Pascal, 1623 - 1662)