Quotes, Poems, & Sayings...

[Toofrufru]

Children wish to be adults, and adults long to be children, it’s a question of being carefree but dependent, or careworn and independent. Satisfaction lies in settling on the spot where the two paths cross.

[Kätzchen]

Thomas Merton (b. 1915 - d. 1968), born in France, a trappist monk of the Abbey of Gesthamani in Kentucky, was an American Catholic writer, poet, social activist and student of comparative religion. In 1949, he was ordained into the priesthood and given the name Father Louis. (Link for further info)

Not only am I a huge fan of Czeslaw Milosz, but I'm a huge fan of Thomas Merton... I wanted to leave a few of his quotes here this morning and a poem, too.

Quotes:

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

Peace demands themost herioc labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to someonebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

Thomas Merton's Marian Poetry:

Evening: Zer0 Weather (1947)

Now the lone world is streaky as a wall of marble
With viens of clear and frozen snow.
There is no bird song there, no hare's track
No badger working in the russet grass:
All the bare fields are silent as eternity.

And the whole herd is home in the long barn.
The brothers come, with hoods about their faces,
Following their plumes of breath
Lugging the gleaming buckets one by one.

This was a day when shovels would have struck
Full flakes of fire ut of the land like rock:
And ground cries like iron beneath our boots.

When all monks come in with eyes as clean as the cold sky
And axes under their arms,
Still paying out Ave Maria's
With rosaries between their bleeding fingers.

We shake the chips out of our robes outside the door
And go hide in cowls as deep as the clouds,
Bowing our shoulders in the church's shadow, lean and whipped,
To wait upon your vespers, MOther of God!

And we have eyes no more for the dark pillars or the freezing windows,
Ears for the rumorous cloister or the chimes of time above our heads:
For we are sunken in the summer of our adoration,
And plunge, down, down into the fathoms of our secret joy
That swims with indefinable fire.

And we will never see the copper sunset
Linger a moment, like an echo, on the frozen hill
Then suddenly we die an hour before the Angelus.

For we have found our Christ, our August
Here in the zer0 days before Lent -
We are already binding up our sheaves of harvest
Beating the lazy liturgy, going up with exultation
Even on the eve of our Ash Wednesday,
And entering our blazing heaven by the doors of the Assumption!

[Andrew, Jr.]

"If love is the answer, could you please rephrase the question?"

Lily Tomlin

[Mister Bent]

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand - his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony.

- Lord Byron

[Hack]

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't. - Margaret Thatcher

[Fancy]

From one preteen to another, "A sports bra is like a hug. A very tight hug!"

LOL

[Guy]

The art of relationship is all in appreciation

[Rook]

Joe Black: I don't care Bill. I love her.
William Parrish: How perfect for you - to take whatever you want because it pleases you. That's not love.
Joe Black: Then what is it?
William Parrish: Some aimless infatuation which, for the moment, you feel like indulging - it's missing everything that matters.
Joe Black: Which is what?
William Parrish: Trust, responsibility, taking the weight for your choices and feelings, and spending the rest of your life living up to them. And above all, not hurting the object of your love.
Joe Black: So that's what love is according to William Parrish?
William Parrish: Multiply it by infinity, and take it to the depth of forever, and you will still have barely a glimpse of what I'm talking about.
Joe Black:[in protest] Those were my words.
William Parrish: They're mine now!

long movie, good content...

[Fancy]

"there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted--each pond with it's blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, each morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray."

-Mary Oliver, Morning Poem

[Liam]

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

—The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien, 1937

[Toofrufru]

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
~Marian Wright-Edelman

[Soon]

Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble.

--French Proverb

[Kätzchen]

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.”

[Kobi]

Paranoia is having all the facts - William Burroughs

A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth - Albert Einstein

[PinkieLee]

Love all that you can, give all that you have, smile away your days, and dream away your nights.

[BestButchBoy]

Always keep your face toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

~Walt Whitman

[JakeTulane]

“Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.” - Lord Byron

[JakeTulane]

“Nothing is more beautiful than the love that has weathered the storms of life. The love of the young for the young, that is the beginning of life. But the love of the old for the old, that is the beginning of things longer.” - Jerome K. Jerome

[JakeTulane]

"Tis the set of the sail that decides the goal, and not the storm of life” - Ella Wheeler

[Ms. Tabitha]

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau