All three boys were bursting with ideas – not all of them good, most of them internet-related, and creating a website about a rabbit with flashing eyes called 'funny bunny' being perhaps the most sensible of them. In el Salvador with preteens.

~ Peter Moore. The Full Montezuma

And all that you brought upon us

And all that you have done to us,

You have in justice?

Deliver us in your wonderful way.

Song of the Three Children, 7-19

The apocrypha

I thought, it's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

Jonathan Safron Foer

I don't want to end up having simply visited this world.

Mary Oliver

"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world. I told you that."

--Salman Rushdie

Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

You don't want to come back here. The weather is miserable and everyone is in a bad mood.

It sounded wonderful.

Francesca Marciano. Rules of the Wild

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the root of trees

Is my destroyer

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry flower

Dylan Thomas

Luke, once this winter, brought home the school goldfish, Swimmy, for the weekend. He got up on a chair to stare at this bowl and said hello. No answer. Then he recalled what kind of goldfish it was, "Ca va, Swimmy?" he said at last, "Ca va?"? Speaking the goldfish's language to the goldfish.

Adam Gopnik. Paris to the Moon, 267

If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head.

~ The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

When you say that you're having an impossible time, what do you mean?

I'm constantly emotional.

Are you emotional right now?

I'm extremely emotional right now.

What emotions are you feeling?

All of them.

Like?

Right now I'm feeling sadness, happiness, anger, love, guilt, joy, shame, and a little bit of humor?

~ Jonathan Safron Foer

You don't want to come back here. The weather is miserable and everyone is in a bad mood.

It sounded wonderful.

~ Francesca Marciano, Rules of the Wild

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the root of trees

Is my destroyer

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry flower

~ Dylan Thomas

And I sing this

For the heart with no companion

For the soul without a king

For the prima ballerina who cannot dance to anything

~ Leonard Cohen

The child may be nutty as a fruitcake but they'll manage somehow. Being in the thinking business.

~ My House in Umbria

This is one of the many ways you can change your life. If you want to.

~ Francesca Marciano, Rules of the Wild

I know the trick to get rid of pain: whole chunks of my life dissolve like a drop of ink in water.

~ Francesca Marciano. Rules of the Wild, 22

Now from his breast into his eyes the ache

Of longing mounted, and he wept at last,

His dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,

Longed for as the sun warmed earth is longed for by a swimmer

Spent in rough water where his ship went down

Under Poseidon's blows, gale winds and tons of sea.

Few men can keep alive through a big surf

To crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches

In joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:

And so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,

Her white arms round him pressed as though forever.

~Homer, The Odyssey

For all this attention, the family feels most lucky to have kept it a family affair.

~Sylvia Plath

Come to the edge

We might fall

Come to the edge

It's too high!

COME TO THE EDGE!

So they came

And he pushed

And they flew

~ Christopher Logue

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a

dancing star."

~ Nietzsche

All the particles in the world

Are in love and looking for lovers.

Pieces of straw tremble

In the presence of amber.

~ Rumi

"The charlatan is always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow."

~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Leather Funnel

The trumpet of a prophecy! O wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Come to the edge

We might fall

Come to the edge

It’s too high!

COME TO THE EDGE !

So they came

And he pushed

And they flew

~ Christopher Logue

"Once the disease of reading has laid hold upon the system it weakens it so that that it falls an easy pretty to that other scourge which dwells in the inkpot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."

~ Virginia Woolf

A blessing

Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom.

~ James Wright

"The one thing all nations on the earth share is the fear that a member of the family will want to be an artist."

~ Robert Frost

~ joan didion

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

~ Rabbi Hillel

“The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service.”

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“He who wished to secure the good of others, has already secured his own.”

~ Confucius

“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.”

~ St. Francis of Assisi

Do You Need Me? I Am There

Do you need Me? I am there.

You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by

You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.

You cannot feel Me, Yet I am the power at work in your hands

I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.

I am at work, though you do not recognize My works

I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.

Only in absolute stillness, beyond self,

Can you know Me as I am,

And then but as a feeling and a faith.

Yet I am there. Yet I am here. Yet I answer.

When you need Me, I am there.

Even if you deny Me, I am there.

Even when you feel most alone, I am there.

Even in your fears, I am there.

Even in your pain, I am there.

I am there when you pray and when you do not pray

Though your faith In Me is unsure,

My faith in you never wavers,

Because I know you, because I love you.

Beloved I am there.

~ James Dillet Freeman

Source: I Am With You Always: A Treasury of Inspirational Quotations, Poems and Devotional Prayers; Author: Douglas Bloch; ISBN .. 0-553-35404-3

Dimensions of Love

Some people come into our lives and quickly go.

Some people move our souls to dance.

They awaken us to new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom.

Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon.

They stay in our lives for awhile, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never ever the same.

~ by Flavia Weedn


Since love grows within you, so beauty grows.

For love is the beauty of the soul.

~ St. Augustine


True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.

~ by Antoine De Saint-Exupery


Source: http://www.romantic-lyrics.com/lovequotes.shtml

Strength & Perseverance

When you have gone so far that you can't manage one more step, then you've gone just half the distance that you're capable of.

~ Greenland proverb


Nothing is so strong as gentleness; Nothing so gentle as real strength.

~ St. Francis De Sales


Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertion and passionate concerns of dedicated individuals.

~ Martin Luther King



Source: Words on Strength and Perseverance; A Helen Exley Giftbook