William Blake

If the Doors of Perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it truly is - infinite.

Jean Paul Sartre

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away. To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

Albert Camus

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

William Carlos Williams

In summer, the song sings itself.

W. H. Auden

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

Susan B. Anthony

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

Abigail Adams

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.

Frank Lloyd Wright

An idea is salvation by imagination.

Theodore Parker

Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere;

its temple, all space;

its shrine, the good heart;

its creed, all truth;

its ritual, works of love;

its profession of faith, divine living.

Edward Everett Hale

I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do.

Ray Bradbury

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Margaret Fuller

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Mary Pipher

I think history is inextricably linked to identity. If you don't know your history, if you don't know your family, who are you?

Julia Ward Howe

I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build.

W. H. Auden

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started,

And know the place for the first time.

from "Four Quartets"

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

William Henry Channing

To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy , not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly,
Talk gently,
Act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
To bear all cheerfully,
Do all bravely,
Await occasions,
Hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common.

THIS IS TO BE MY SYMPHONY

Jane Addams

The essence of immorality is the tendency to make an exception of myself.

Benjamin Franklin

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Betty Friedan

The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own. There is no other way.

Gloria Steinem

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us.

Ferris Bueller

Life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

from the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"

Walt Whitman

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it

to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof,

is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things,

and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things

that provokes it out of the soul.

from "Leaves of Grass"

Wendell Berry

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

Barbara Kingsolver

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Barack Obama

We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ The Torah commands, ‘That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.’ In Islam, there is a hadith that reads ‘None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself’.’ And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus; for followers of Confucius and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to love one another; to understand one another; to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

February 3, 2010

May Sarton

…to be always hopeful gardeners of the spirit
knowing that without darkness nothing comes to birth,
As without light nothing flowers.

from "Gardeners of the Spirit"

William Blake

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.

from "Eternity"

Egyptian, c. 1500 BCE

So, seize the day! Hold holiday!

Be unwearied, unceasing, alive,

you and your own true love;

Let not your heart be troubled

during your sojourn on earth,

but seize the day as it passes!

from "The Song of he Harper"

Martin Luther King, Jr.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

Mohandas Gandhi

Be the change you want to see in the world.