Resisting the Unravelling

It may be raining,
but there's a rainbow above you.

In Another's Eyes

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, 
and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them,
above and beyond all thought, 
unless we were meant to be immortal. 

- Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Pleasures

One half of the world 
cannot understand 
the pleasures of the other. 

 - Jane Austen

Origins

Consider your origins:
you were not made to live as brutes, 
but to follow virtue and knowledge. 

- Dante Alighieri 

Little Things

Little things comfort us because little things distress us. 

- Blaise Pascal 

Wiser Today

A man should never be ashamed to own 

that he has been in the wrong, 

which is but saying in other words 

that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

-Alexander Pope 

Now To Think

And now I thought: 
till now I had only heard, seen, moved - 
followed up or down where I was lead or dragged - 
watched event rush on event,
 disclosure open beyond disclosure: 
but now, I thought. 

- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre 

Bravery in Increments

When you have mastered numbers, 
you will in fact no longer be reading numbers
any more than you read words when you read books. 
You will be reading meaning.

W.E.B. DuBois 

Les is More

Have a great day.

-Les Miles

Your Reward

And he writhed inside 

at what seemed the cruelty 

and unfairness of the demand. 

He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed 

your reward is usually to do 

another and harder and better one. 

- C.S. Lewis 

The Heroine's Couch

And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, 
which is the true heroine's portion - 
to a pillow strewd with thorns and wet with tears.  


- Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey 

Happy Now

If you want to be happy,
be.

-Leo Tolstoy 

In the Shadow of the Black Horse

The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart 
upon the black horse of affliction.

- Charles Spurgeon

She Who Travels with Another (& Another)

The man who goes alone can start today;
but he who travels with another 
must wait till that other is ready.

- Henry David Thoreau 

Late Nights with Yeti and Nietzsche

When we are tired, 
we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Midnight Confessions

A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, 
when he kneels in the dust, 
and beats his breast, 
and tells all the sins of his life.  

- Oscar Wilde  

The Virtue of Displeasure

If you would attain to what you are not yet, 
you must always be displeased by what you are.
For where you are pleased with yourself, 
there you have remained.
Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

-Saint Augustine   

Holes & Lumps

Sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump.

-Auguste Rodin 

Eighty-Nine Years of Song

 Even in the mud and scum of things, 
something always, always sings. 

- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Notes on Irrigation

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it.
It enriches the necessary competencies
that daily life requires and provides;
and in this respect,
it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

- C.S. Lewis