A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. -- ` Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood .' -- Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
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Only with winter-patience can we bring The deep desired, long-awaited spring.
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One could sit still and look at life from the air; that was it. And I was conscious again of the fundamental magic of flying, a miracle that has nothing to do with any of its practical purposes - speed, accessibility, and convenience - and will not change as they change. Looking down from the air that morning, I felt that stillness rested like a light over the earth. What motion there was took on a slow grace, like slow-motion pictures which catch the moment of outstretched beauty that one cannot see in life itself, so swiftly does it move. And if flying, like a glass-bottomed bucket, can give you that vision, that seeing eye, which peers down to the still world below the choppy waves - it will always remain magic.
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Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me.
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Man's yesterday may never be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.
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Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.
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Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a goose with corn...endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and general outlook of a huge country village.
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The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.
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A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.
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O Queen of air and darkness, I think 'tis truth you say, And I shall die to-morrow; But you will die to-day.
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One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.
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The real 196s began on the afternoon of November 22, 1963....It came to seem that Kennedy's murder opened some malign trap door in American culture, and the wild bats flapped out.
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My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen --- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery --- just stark me.
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I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly.
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Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.
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One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: 'Have no anxiety about the morrow'; or the words of Sir William Osler; 'Live in day-tight compartments.
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Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
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Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.
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Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
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Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
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Happy the man, and happy he alone, He, who can call to-day his own: He who, secure within, can say, To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.
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If you delay till to-morrow what ought to be done to-day, you overcharge the morrow with a burden which belongs not to it. You load the wheels of time, and prevent it from carrying you along smoothly. He who every morning plans the transactions of the day, and follows out the plan, carries on a thread which will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life. The orderly arrangement of his time is like a ray of light which darts itself through all his affairs. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidents, all things lie huddled together in one chaos, which admits neither of distribution nor review.
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Good night, good night parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
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Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
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I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
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Ah, Hope what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of to-day, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow.
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Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
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Ah, Hope! what would life be, stripped of thy encouraging smiles, that teach us to look behind the dark clouds of to-day, for the golden beams that are to gild the morrow.
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I feel them steal softly upon my thoughts, pattering gently like drops of rain against my window of thought. And so I lay, wandering the long halls of my thoughts, allowing the shades of memory to slip quietly through my mind, remembering starlight and shadows, days of refulgent glory and nights of moonless pitch, and I allow the needle of the tiny compass inside me to swing wildly… First towards the bright dawn of the morrow…then towards the long night behind me: and I think, and I wonder… When Fate comes to collect one of her sons… which way will the compass lie?
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There is a budding morrow in midnight.
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