Saturday ~ February 1, 2020

The trouble with comparing yourself to others is that there are too many others. Using others as your control group, all of your worst fears and all your fondest hopes are at once true. You are good; you are bad; you are abnormal; you are just like everyone else.

(Sarah Manguso, b. 1974)

Friday ~ January 31, 2020

It is not the critics who count, nor the people who point out how the strong have stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strive valiantly... who know great enthusiasm and great devotion, and spend themselves in worthy cause; who, at best, know the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if they fail, at least fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

(Theodore Roosevelt, 1858 - 1919)

Thursday ~ January 30, 2020

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)

Wednesday ~ January 29,2020

Nothing forced works.
The Gordian knot just worsens if it's jerked at by a person.
One of the main stations of the cross is patience.
Another, of course, is impatience.
There is such a thing as too much tolerance for unpleasant situations,
a time when the gentle teasing out of the threads ceases to be pleasing to a woman born for conquest.
Instead, she must assault the knot or alp or everest with something sharp and take upon herself the moral warp of progress,

(Kay Ryan, b. 1945)

Tuesday ~ January 28,2020

Peace is not the product of despair.
An army's most invincible least used.
Strength engenders weakness when abused,
Serving best by merely being there.
One conquers in the end by being just,
Vanquishing the conscience with the right.
Each child that's passed over in the night
restores just one-half bullet's worth of trust.

(Nicholas Gordon, b. 1940)

Monday ~ January 27,2020

We want more soul, a higher cultivation of all spiritual faculties. We need more unselfishness, earnestness, and integrity. We need men and women whose hearts are the homes of high and lofty enthusiasm and noble devotion to the cause of emancipation, who are ready and willing to lay time, talent, and money on the altar of universal freedom.

Sunday ~ January 26, 2020

Friendship of a kind that cannot easily be reversed tomorrow must have its roots in common interests and shared beliefs.

(Barbara Tuchman, 1912-1989)