Universe Stitched Together

"We have everything we need to be happy but we aren’t happy. Something is missing…

It is not books you need, it’s some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

August

"Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

-  William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury  

Borders

“I love borders. August is the border between summer and autumn; it is the most beautiful month I know. Twilight is the border between day and night, and the shore is the border between sea and land. The border is longing; when both have fallen in love but still haven’t said anything. The border is to be on the way. It is the way that is the most important thing.”

- Snufkin, Moominvalley in November

Ok JK

“Read as much as you can. Nothing will help you as much as reading.”

- J.K. Rowling 

Numbness

“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 

This I Prefer

“Whatever energies I may or may not have, I know one thing for certain: that I could not
devote them to anything else I should think entirely worth doing. Indeed nothing else seems
interesting enough, nothing to repay the labor, but the telling of my fellow-men about the one
man who is the truth, and to know whom is the life. Even if there be no hereafter, I would live
my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not. No facts can take the place
of truths; and if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold
by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and
John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make
even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go
farther, and say I would rather die forevermore believing as Jesus believed, than live
forevermore believing as those that deny him.”

From “Telling Secrets” by Frederick Buechner, *Thomas Wingfold, Curate, by George MacDonald (New York, George Routledge, 1876, pp. 490-91)

Artists

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."

-Pablo Picasso

Sigh

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging,that would be o problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."

-E.B. White

Lighten

"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."

-Mark Twain

Broken Heart

❝ I imagine my heart was being broken to make it bigger in order to embrace something I couldn’t have other wise. ❞

CATHE LAURIE 

Not Things

"We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act- and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun."

-Stephen Fry

Trail of Thinking

"Keep a notebook. Travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it. Slap into it every stray thought that flutters up into your brain. Cheap paper is less perishable than gray matter, and lead pencil markings endure longer than memory."

Jack London

Good Pep Talk

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

-C.S. Lewis

If, Then, Now

"If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

-Leo Tolstoy

Melting Stars

“By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. I have seen some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. Since one can melt, they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same night. That sorrow will come — I know it. I mean to sit up every night and look at them as long as I can keep awake. And I will impress those sparkling fields on my memory so that by and by when they are taken away, I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and make them sparkle again. And double them by the blur of my tears.”

- Mark Twain 

The Very Edge

"Here I came to the very edge 

where nothing at all needs saying, 
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, 
and the moon swam back, 
its rays all silvered, 
and time and again the darkness would be broken 
by the crash of a wave, 
and every day on the balcony of the sea, 
wings open, fire is born, 
and everything is blue again like morning.”

- Pablo Neruda 

Be Joyful

“Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”

- Wendell Berry 

When a Wave Comes, Go Deep

"When a wave comes, go deep. There's three things you can do when life sends a wave at you. You can run from it, but then it's going to catch up and knock you down. You can also fall back on your ego and try to stand your ground, but then it's still going to clobber you. Or you can use it as an opportunity to go deep, and transform yourself to match the circumstances. And that's how you get through the wave."

-Humans of NY

Convictions with Compassion

"Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do. Both are nonsense.

You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate."

-Rich Warren

The Rut

"The rut. We humans have this annoying tendency to fall into habitual patterns. Remember those 60,000 daily thoughts I mentioned earlier? Well, all but 1,000 of those thoughts are the exact same thoughts you had yesterday. Scientists tell us that 98 percent of our 60,000 thoughts are repeats from the day before."

-Pam Grout, E-Squared

Thoreau

"We need the tonic of wildness...at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea by indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature."

-Thoreau

Listen and Act

"I shall pass this way but once; any good that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being; let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again."

-Etienne de Grellet

Book of Life

"Every book, every volume you see here, has a soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs his eyes down its pages its spirit grows and strengthens."

-Carlos Ruiz Zafon, The Shadow of the Wind

Late Night Thoughts for Everything

"I used to be so afraid to perform on stage. I would often get a migraine heartache before a performance. I felt the pressure of singing just right, looking just right, making the right moves, saying the right things. I felt like I was under a microscope because I had not yet learned that performing music is an act of sharing. Not an act of showing. And also, there is no 'right.' When I remember to share and to forget myself on stage, it is the most energizing and joyful feeling. I find that I have to remind myself of this principle in other areas of my life that cause me anxiety. Sometimes I worry about eyes watching me and judging me through social media or even in person. It can get so exhausting at times that I want to throw in the towel and hide and live out my life where no one can see me and therefore, no one can judge me. What a load of garbage! Living in fear is not a way to live. If I can dance lie a fool, break all the rules of proper vocal technique, wear tutus and sneakers, and speak unscripted from a stage then I can certainly apply the metaphorically to the stage of my life."

-Mindy Gledhill

Sliding Door Ghost Ship

"I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us.  There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

-Cheryl Strayed

Envious of the Gold

"We go through trials to get to where we are meant to be. It's why there is fire in refinement. And when people are envious of the gold without acknowledging the heat, it subtracts from the story that makes you who you are."

-Anonymous, but shared by Ruthie Lindsey

Now Now Now

"Let go of the old to make space for the new. Don't let your present be dictated by your past. What's done is done! Be grateful for where you are today and use the best of your abilities to manifest a beautiful tomorrow. Don't focus on what once was. Direct your attention towards the love that's present in your life today and tomorrow will bring more of the same. I guarantee it.

-Rachel Brathen

One Thing Needful

"I believe we can find our steady footing and stilling of the should by turning away from physical preoccupations, superwoman accomplishments, and endless popularity contests, and returning instead to the wholeness of our soul, that unity in our very being that balances the demanding and inevitable diversity of life."

-Patricia Holland  One Thing Needful

What Matters Most

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter yet with another human being."

-Albert Schweitzer

Strength

"Your strength is soft, indirect, delicate, tender, womanly. But it is strength just the same."

-Anais Nin

Go Outside for Air

"Over the hill she came, her long legs scarcely touching the ground, the cups of her ears listening, with obvious pleasure, to the wind as it stroked the dark arms of the pines; once or twice she lingered and browsed some moist patch of half-wrapped leaves, then came along to where I was-- or nearly--and then, among the thousand bodies of the trees, their splashes of light and their shadows, she was gone; and I, who was heavy that day with thoughts as small as my whole life would ever be, and especially compared to the thousand shining trees, have thanks to whatever sent her in my direction that I might see, and strive to be, as clearly as she was, beyond sorrow, careless, soft-lipped angel walking on air."

-Mary Oliver

Oh There You are Peter

“Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning. ” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough. You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan


“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.” 
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan



“I'm not young enough to know everything.” 
― J.M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton

The Deep Little

“Themes that are "too large for adult fiction can only be dealt with adequately in a children's book" 

- Philip Pullman

Just Be Still

“As Hagrid had said, what would come would come and he would have to meet it when it did.” 


― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Wordless

“…the moon is the very image of silence – and, as Charles Simic says, “The highest levels of consciousness are wordless.” The great lunacy of most lyric poems is that they attempt to use words to convey what cannot be put into words. On the other hand, stars were the first text, the first instance of gabbiness; connecting the stars, making a pattern out of them, was the first story, sacred to storytellers. But the moon was the first poem, in the lyric sense, an entity complete in itself, recognizable at a glance, one that played upon the emotions so strongly that the context of time and place hardly seemed to matter.”

- Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey: Collected Lectures, (with thanks to Whiskey River)

Summer Sky

“Please, don’t worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this earth. Life is fleeting. And if you’re ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night. And when a shooting star streaks through the blackness, turning night into day… make a wish and think of me. Make your life spectacular. I know I did.”

- Robin Williams, Jack (1996)

Well Geez

“She buried her ears into the calm of his heartbeat, and in a matter of seconds: fell terribly in love with the way her loneliness fell softly and suddenly, asleep, in his chest.”

- Christopher Poindexter  

Preach

“Growth is painful. Change is painful.But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”

- Mandy Hale 

Sad

 "I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone."

-Robin Williams

Just Memorize It

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.”

- Janet Fitch, White Oleander  

August

“August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.”

- Sylvia Plath  

On Less

“Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.”

- Elise Boulding

Slave Story

"Most of us are slaves of the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves about our lives. Freedom begins the moment we become conscious of the plot line we are living and, with this insight, recognize that we can step into another story altogether." 

—Carol S. Pearson, The Hero Within