Quotations
"My dad passed away...and suddenly I found myself at the top of the tree and looking at the sky instead of at my mom and dad."
-- Neil Young
"Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."
-- WH Auden
"Joy. Maybe I have too hard of a time finding joy …. But lots of things I see and feel and hear touch my soul. I feel beauty in many things. Sometimes, though, joy makes me ache. Makes me feel spent. And joy educates. But you don’t know what you are learning. And … if you are sad, joy only makes you cry from a deeper place."
-- Terre Woodward
"Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads."
-- Harold Bloom
"When you wake up, get up. When you get up, do something."
-- a friend of my Uncle David Grenier's, a very old man who was a Cape Cod fisherman like my uncle.
"Worrying puts tomorrow's clouds on today's sunshine."
-- Source unknown
"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
-- Flannery O'Connor
"There are no pockets in the shroud."
-- Irish proverb
"Are you a January complainer or a July complainer? Because if you're a January complainer, I don't want to hear you say how hot it is today."
-- Charlie Sweet (in July)
“I’m sad because I am.”
-- Melissa Seymour
“He was braggi-diose.”
-- Patrice Procopio
"...I'm so over the tattoos and the T-shirts and rings through the noses. It's not pretty, it's not pleasant, it's not exciting. Please stop it now."
-- Elton John [First time I ever admired something about Sir Elton.]
"When all you have left of someone
is memories,
the memories
become treasures"
-- from St. Petersburg newspaper 5/4/06
"I find myself, at this time in my life, no less challenged, no less plagued, no less intrigued, by what I still don't know."
-- Sidney Poitier, at age 72
"Joy for no reason
I am filled with quiet
joy for no reason save
the fact that I'm alive.
The message I receive
is clear -- there's no time
to lose from loving, no
place but here to offer
kindness, no day but this
to be my true, unfettered
self and pass the flame
from heart to heart. This
is the only moment that
exists -- so simple, so
exquisite, and so real."
-- Danna Faulds
"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in--forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. Begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Dancing what you sense - finding joy in each movement. Rather than being a hostage to life's changes, see each moment as an opportunity to know that joy is a choice, and an endless flow."
-- Debbie Rosas and Carlos Rosas
"Feasting in mid-winter promotes friendship and strengthens the family if like the sage you can be tolerant enough to let others just be themselves with nothing said."
-- Lao Fzu
"There is only one day left, always starting over: It is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
"...I'm trying to instill in her some modicum of independent thinking. She has no idea what she's getting into: fast-talkin', hard-shuckin', blood-spittin', heavy-telemarketin', sue-your-pants-off America. I paint her a realistic portrait of chronically unhappy, tattooed people glued to their cellphones. She doesn't believe me. She knows the streets of America are paved with gold."
-- Poe Ballentine, "Wide-Eyed in the Gaudy Shop," The Sun, March 2007
"Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into."
-- Mahatma Gandhi
"Faith is not simply a patience which passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit which bears things...with blazing serene hope."
-- Corazon Aquino
"All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."
-- Isak Dinesen
"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."
-- G. K. Chesterton
"What geography can give all Middle Westerners, along with the fresh water and topsoil, if they let it, is awe for an Edenic continent stretching forever in all directions. Makes you religious. Takes your breath away."
-- Kurt Vonnegut
"It also is my passion -- to keep all the suffering that ever was and ever will be everlastingly fresh in my mind ... to be forever in a state of shock, of not believing my eyes, of being unable to breathe, of not being able to comprehend ... Don't let me get used to it, Lord; that's all I ask."
"Let it always hurt just as much."
-- Tova Reich, My Holocaust
"I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth."
-- Wally Schirra Jr., astronaut , pioneer of spaceflight
"Ancient native ways teach that there us nothing on Earth more powerful than a circle of decided women. In ancient Council ways, the circle of women is at the center of the community, holding the heart of all people. The circle of men is around this protecting and learning from the women. By connecting from our wombs to the dream of Mother Earth, we can revive the women’s circles and this more balanced way of living. As natural educators, women must stand for nature, for our children, for justice. In re-creating the women’s clans, we’ll be able to stand together for what is right, not as isolated women anymore. In solidarity with one another, this struggle will be less painful. The Earth is calling for this return to Council ways calling women to take up her Bow of Authority, which is right here, in the earth."
-- Ohki Simine Forest, of Canadian Mohawk descent
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"Giving advice to others is a difficult job as the sage well knows. Fools already know everything so don't
listen, while the truly wise have no need for it. Thus, those who know don't speak."
-- Lao Fzu
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."
-- Erma Bombeck
To be continued...