But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
~ Haruki Murakami
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny - it is the light that guides your way.
~ Heraclitus
It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
The sun glows inside her chest the moon echoes from her eyes
~ Michaela Leventis, The Bitter Vanilla (via wnq-writers)
Though my soul may set in darkness;
it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.
~ Sarah Williams
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
~ Epicurus
When a child gives you a gift, even if it is a rock they just picked up, exude gratitude. It might be the only thing they have to give, and they have chosen to give it to you.
~ Dean Jackson
Like a
bird singing
in the rain
let grateful
memories
survive in
time of sorrow.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson
The man who, solely from regard to the opinion of others, and without any wish or necessity of his own, toils after gold, honour, or any other phantom, is no better than a fool.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
In character, in manner, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
They caught the wild children and put them in zoos, They made them do sums and wear sensible shoes. They put them to bed at the wrong time of day, And made them sit still when they wanted to play. They scrubbed them with soap and they made them eat peas. They made them behave and say pardon and please. They took all their wisdom and wildness away. That’s why there are none in the forests today.
~ Jeanne Willis, Wild Child
Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern... Life is like that - One stitch at a time taken patiently, and it will all come out all right.
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Cavalier, mocking, violent - this is what wisdom wishes for us to be: she is a woman, and will ever love only a warrior."
~ Thus Spoke Zarathustra
And your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? […] how this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!
~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
This world, with its imposing outward structure that makes it seem to some so secure, is actually tottering, its foundation rotting away from the self-love and unbelief with which even those who think to defend it are filled. Its fall is at hand, and the same beast of godless Communism that once swallowed the holy Russian land now stands ready to devour the rest of the world and, completing now what it began then, to exterminate the last Christians and lead apostate humanity in its worship of Antichrist.
~ The Orthodox Word
“No such reality,” writes Dostoevsky, “and there never was on earth, because the essence of things is unreachable to man, and he perceives nature as it is reflected in his idea, having passed through his senses; so it is that we must set the idea in motion and not fear the ideal."
~ Notebooks, 21, 75
Why do we judge our neighbors? Because we are not trying to get to know ourselves. Someone busy trying to understand himself has no time to notice the shortcomings of others. Judge yourself — and you will stop judging others. Judge a poor deed, but do not judge the doer. It is necessary to consider yourself the most sinful of all, and to forgive your neighbor every poor deed. One must hate only the devil, who tempted him. It can happen that someone might appear to be doing something bad to us, but in reality, because of the doer’s good intentions, it is a good deed. Besides, the door of penitence is always open, and it is not known who will enter it sooner — you, “the judge,” or the one judged by you.
+ St. Seraphim of Sarov
There is nothing better than peace in Christ, for it brings victory over all the evil spirits on earth and in the air. When peace dwells in a man’s heart it enables him to contemplate the grace of the Holy Spirit from within.
+ St. Seraphim of Sarov
We cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of one who gives and kindles joy in the heart of one who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other, not even those whom you catch committing an evil deed. We condemn others only because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a morass of filth that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Keep away from the spilling of speech. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult, outrage, and will shield your glowing hearts against the evil that creeps around.
+ St. Seraphim of Sarov
"Sometimes a person is in such a state of mind that it seems to him that it would be easier for him to be destroyed or to be without any feeling or consciousness, rather than to remain any longer in this unaccountable and tormenting state.
It is necessary to hurry to get out of it. Watch out for the spirit of despondency, for from this is born all evil ... there are thousands of temptations: confusion, rage, blasphemy, complaining about their fate, depraved thoughts, moving from place to place. Unbearable becomes the place of residence, and those who live with him ...
The soul runs away from people, as the perpetrators of its confusion; and it does not understand, that the cause of illness is within it: the soul, filled with grief, becoming as though mad and frenzied, and cannot calmly accept good advice, nor meekly respond to the proposed questions".
+ St. Seraphim of Sarov
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
~ William Wordsworth, “Ode,” Poems, in Two Volumes
53. Endure the trial of yourself and your own faults and sins peacefully, serenely, because you know that God’s mercy is greater than your brokenness.
(This is very important. St. Seraphim of Sarov said: “To have the Holy Spirit is to see your own wretchedness peacefully, because you know that God’s mercy is greater than your wretchedness.” St. Thérèse of Lisieux, a Roman Catholic saint who died at 24, she wrote to a friend: “If you are willing to bear the trial of your own wretchedness, serenely, then you will surely be the sweetest dwelling place of Jesus.” We have to bear our own faults, serenely. St. Paul said: “Where sin has abounded, grace has superabounded.” And we cannot let the devil rejoice two times. Pythagoras said: “When we fall, the devils rejoice. When we stay down, the devils keep rejoicing.” And nothing puts the devils more to shame than having fallen, we stand up again. So we must bear peacefully, calmly, our own weaknesses, our own failings. Expect them. Don’t make them happen, but expect them. We are not God.)
~ 55 Maxims of the Christian Life, Fr. Thomas Hopko
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~ Robert Frost
If you dwell on your feelings about things rather than dwelling on the faithfulness, the love, and the mercy of God, then you're likely to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Our feelings are very fleeting and ephemeral, aren't they? We can't depend on them for 5 minutes at a time. But dwelling on the love, faithfulness, and mercy of God is always safe.
~ Elizabeth Elliott
The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.
~ Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs
...the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
~ Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!
And God, please let the deer on the highway get some kind of heaven. Something with tall soft grass and sweet reunion. Let the moths in porch lights go some place with a thousand suns, that taste like sugar and get swallowed whole. May the mice in oil and glue have forever dry, warm fur and full bellies. If I am killed for simply living, let death be kinder than man.
~ Althea Davis
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein
“Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating, too. When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kinda stuff’s happening to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can’t stand it.”
~ Holden Caulfield, Catcher in the Rye
If you ask a fly, “Are there any flowers in this area?” it will say, “I don’t know about flowers, but over there in that heap of rubbish you can find all the filth you want.” And it will go on to list all the unclean things it has been to. Now, if you ask a honeybee, “Have you seen any unclean things in this area?” it will reply, “Unclean things? No, I have not seen any; the place here is full of the most fragrant flowers.” And it will go on to name all the flowers of the garden or the meadow. You see, the fly only knows where the unclean things are, while the honeybee knows where the beautiful iris or hyacinth is. As I have come to understand, some people resemble the honeybee and some resemble the fly. Those who resemble the fly seek to find evil in every circumstance and are preoccupied with it; they see no good anywhere. But those who resemble the honeybee only see the good in everything they see. The stupid person thinks stupidly and takes everything in the wrong way, whereas the person who has good thoughts, no matter what he sees, no matter what you tell him, maintains a positive and good thought.
+ St. Paisios of Mt. Athos, “Good and Evil Thoughts,” Spiritual Counsels III: Spiritual Struggle
But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational. For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires towards which [such souls] are borne,—[desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor ever are they satiate of ills. For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.
~ About the Common Mind (4), from the Hermetic Corpus
and perhaps
what made her beautiful
was not her appearance
or what she achieved,
but in her love
and in her courage,
and her audacity
to believe:
no matter
the darkness
around her,
Light ran wild
within her,
and that was the way
she came alive,
and it showed up
in everything.
~ Morgan Harper Nichols
In living close to nature, one discovers that happiness does not consist in maximizing pleasure. It consists in tranquility. Once you have enjoyed tranquility long enough, you acquire actually an aversion to the thought of any very strong pleasure—excessive pleasure would disrupt your tranquility.
Finally, one learns that boredom is a disease of civilization. It seems to me that what boredom mostly is is that people have to keep themselves entertained or occupied, because if they aren’t, then certain anxieties, frustrations, discontents, and so forth, start coming to the surface, and it makes them uncomfortable. Boredom is almost nonexistent once you’ve become adapted to life in the woods. If you don’t have any work that needs to be done, you can sit for hours at a time just doing nothing, just listening to the birds or the wind or the silence, watching the shadows move as the sun travels, or simply looking at familiar objects. And you don’t get bored. You’re just at peace.
~ Theodore Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future