May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.
~ John O’Donohue
(Echoes of Memory)
The use of this digital painting is a gift from Val Erde. Thanks ever so much, Val!
Infinite riches are all around you if you will open your mental eyes and behold the treasure house of infinity within you. There is a gold mine within you from which you can extract everything you need to live life gloriously, joyously, and abundantly.
~ Joseph Murphy
(The Power of Your Subconscious Mind)
We have all of us eaten the pomegranate seed of language, and we are its Persephones in its ways of structuring our experience of ourselves and the world.
~ John Moriarty
(Turtle Was Gone a Long Time)
They weren’t true stories; they were better than that.
~ Alice Hoffman
(The Story Sisters)
Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories. We can hardly manage our lives without a powerful on-going narrative.
~ Alice Munro
(Sport & Memory in North America)
The world is shaped by two things – stories told and the memories they leave behind.
~ Vera Nazarian
(Dreams of the Compass Rose)
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of our science.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Society & Solitude)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” (I found it!) but “That’s funny….”
~ Isaac Asimov
(The Stuff of Thought: Language As a Window into Human Nature)
Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.
Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
~ Carl Sandburg
(Under the Harvest Moon)
In many ways, constancy is an illusion. After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time. Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them. Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
~ Mary Catherine Bateson
(Composing a Life)
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action. And because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
~ Martha Graham
(Dance to the Piper)
One day I would have all the books in the world, shelves and shelves of them. I would live my life in a tower of books. I would read all day long and eat peaches. And if any young knights in armor dared to come calling on their white chargers and plead with me to let down my hair, I would pelt them with peach pits until they went home.
~ Jacqueline Kelly
(The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate)
Today we went to Holmberg Orchards to pick a few peaches for Tim. There were some nectarines ready to be plucked, too – lucky me!
On the way home Tim spotted a gnarly old tree sporting a few mushrooms!
And after a lot of fuss and bother in the kitchen, a portion of homemade peach cobbler for my honey!
These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time in them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present above time.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(Self-Reliance)