Autumnal face....

No spring nor summer’s beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face....

~John Donne, "Elegy IX: The Autumnal"

Nothing else but light...

Louder and louder the deep thunder rolled, as through the myriad halls of some vast temple in the sky; fiercer and brighter came the lightning; more and more heavily the rain poured down. The eye, partaking of the quickness of the flashing light, saw in its every gleam a multitude of objects which it could not see at steady noon in fifty times that period.... in a trembling, vivid, flickering instant, everything was clear and plain: then came a flash of red into the yellow light; a change to blue; a brightness so intense that there was nothing else but light; and then the deepest and profoundest darkness. 

~Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter XLII

There is something haunting...

There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. 

~Joseph Conrad

If there's one thing...

If there's one thing that I pray for,
      As I live my daily life,
      It's that I may be courageous
      When I'm faced with bitter strife!...

So, I humbly pray for courage
      To be with me morn and night,
      Thro' the coldness of the Winter
      And the Summer's bright sunlight!

~Gertrude T. Buckingham, "Courage"

Treasured Memories..

How my memory treasures every sweet stray moment of our past — handclasp, kiss and heart-beat, the passion of those dear unfathomable eyes, the rustle of garments, the gliding steps and lingering farewells! 

~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens

Stream of Blood...

Civilization is a stream with banks.  The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues.  The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks.  Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.  

~Will Durant

Good weather..!!

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.  

~John Ruskin

A sense of one's being...!!

I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living.... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God. 

~Martha Graham, c.1953

Simple beauty...!!

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keep the hue in you...!!!

It's wonderful when you can bring sparkle into people's lives without fading away from your own true color. Keep the hue in you. 

~Dodinsky, www.dodinsky.com

A Cup of blessing...!!

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.  Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I started smiling too....

Smiling is infectious,
You can catch it like the flu.
Someone smiled at me today,
And I started smiling too.

~Author Unknown

Life of things...

[T]hat blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,In which the heavy and the weary weightOf all this unintelligible world,Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,In which the affections gently lead us on,—Until, the breath of this corporeal frameAnd even the motion of our human bloodAlmost suspended, we are laid asleepIn body, and become a living soul:While with an eye made quiet by the powerOf harmony, and the deep power of joy,We see into the life of things.

~William Wordsworth, 1798

Blue...!!!

The sky was a midnight-blue, like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a water-lily, floating forward with an invisible current. 

 ~Willa Sibert Cather

Is it too much to ask ??

Is it too much to ask that women be spared the daily struggle for superhuman beauty in order to offer it to the caresses of a subhumanly ugly mate?  

~Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch, 1970

Its journey into forever....

Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them.... Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom.... Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility.... She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever.


~Tim Willocks, The Religion

Flowers don't worry..

Flowers don't worry about how the're going to bloom.  They just open up and turn toward the light and that makes them beautiful.  

~Jim Carrey

A World lives in you..!!

You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.  

~Frederick Buechner

Burn up human hearts..!!

Love is no respecter of age or practicality
Neither morality: unabashed
She enters where she will
Unheeding that her immortal fires
Burn up human hearts...

~Phillip Pulfrey, from Beyond Me, www.originals.net

The meeting of your sparks!

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.  


~Natalie Clifford Barney

Flying feet...!!

On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.


~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Eyes...full of questions...!!

Her eyes were of different colors, the left as brown as autumn, the right as gray as Atlantic wind. Both seemed alive with questions that would never be voiced, as if no words yet existed with which to frame them.... Her face was as fresh as an apple and as delicate as blossom.... Her mouth never curved into a smile. God, it seemed, had withheld that possibility.... She was a beam of starlight trapped in flesh and awaiting only the moment when it would continue on its journey into forever. 

~Tim Willocks, The Religion

Imperfect..

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness.  We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways. 

~Samuel McChord Crothers

Faded thoughts...

As the evening sky faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint. 

~Jack Handey

Manipulate and Revitalize..

A good, real, unrestrained, hearty laugh is a sort of glorified internal massage, performed rapidly and automatically.  It manipulates and revitalizes corners and unexplored crannies of the system that are unresponsive to most other exercise methods.  

~Author unknown, from an editorial in New-York Tribune, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren

First morning moment.

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours.  No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen.  And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot.  The possibility is always there. 

~Monica Baldwin

Music can...!!

Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.

~Joseph Addison

Can't touch the stars???

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands.  But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny. 

~Carl Schurz, address, Faneuil Hall, Boston, 1859

Generation grows....

As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.

~Homer, Iliad

The locks of a beauty..!!

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.  

~Oliver Wendell Holmes

For attractive lips....!!!

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair, let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone....

~Sam Levenson

Welcome Beauty...!!!

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament.  Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dynamites - Teamwork

One piece of log creates a small fire, adequate to warm you up, add just a few more pieces to blast an immense bonfire, large enough to warm up your entire circle of friends; needless to say that individuality counts but teamwork dynamites. 

~Jin Kwon

Symbol of Identity..

An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy.... One of the most wonderful things in nature is a glance of the eye; it transcends speech; it is the bodily symbol of identity.  

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of course... that's life....

Of course... that's life. A series of trade-offs.

- Demi Moore as Meredith Johnson in Disclosure (1994)

Invisible to the eye...

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Only unfulfilled love can be romantic...

You're still searching for me in every woman...

- Maria Elena
(Vicky Christina Barcelona - 2008)

Destiny...

On a windswept hill
by a billowing sea,
my destiny sits
and waits for me.
~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you...stranger."

"You won't kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won't kill you, because you're just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever." ―The Joker to Batman[src]

No object is Mysterious..

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye. ~Elizabeth Bowen, The House in Paris, 1935

Love is like...

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable. ~Bruce Lee

Solitariness....

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves. ~Eric Hoffer

Beauty and Charm..

There's a difference between beauty and charm. A beautiful woman is one I notice. A charming woman is one who notices me. ~John Erskine

Going of time...

Whether we wake or we sleep, Whether we carol or weep, The Sun with his Planets in chime, Marketh the going of Time. ~Edward Fitzgerald

Stronger pull...!!

Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. ~Rumi

Now is the time...

Now is the time to unite the soul and the world. Now is the time to see the sunlight dancing as one with the shadows. ~Rumi

One night...

This world's existence is one night long. There's a great lively gathering that night, but some people sleep through it. ~Rumi

Secret...

Love's secret is always lifting its head out from under the covers - "Here I am!" ~Rumi