Saturday ~ February 8,2020

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust, the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life, some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 - 1882)

Friday ~ February 7, 2020

The world either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.

(Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950)

Thursday ~ February 6, 2020

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call out great virtues.

(Abigail Adams, 1744 - 1818)

Wednesday ~ February 5, 2020

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 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)

Tuesday ~ February 4, 2020

In America, I saw the freest and most enlightened people placed in the happiest circumstances that the world affords. Yet it seemed to me as if a cloud habitually hung upon their brows, and I thought them serious and almost sad, even in their pleasures. In the United States, people build houses in which to spend their old age, and they sell them before the roof is on; they plant gardens and sublet them just as the trees are coming into bearing; the bring fields into tillage and leave others to gather the crops; they embrace a profession and give it up; they settle in a place, which they soon afterwards leave to carry their changeable longings elsewhere... They who have set their hearts exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare are always in a hurry, for they have but a limited time at their disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.

(lexis de Tocqueville, 1805 - 1859)

Monday ~ February 3, 2020

There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.

(Edith Wharton, 1862 - 1937)

Sunday ~ February 2, 2020 ... 02/02/2020

If space and time, as sages say,
  Are things which cannot be,
The fly that lives a single day
  Has lived as long as we.
But let us live while yet we may,
  While love and life are free,
For time is time, and runs away,
  Through sages disagree.


(T.S. Eliot, 1888 - 1965)