And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A being breathing thoughtful breath,
A traveller between life and death:
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of an angel light.
William Wordsworth
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? Respect the feminine — it is higher, certainly higher, than the male qualities. ... the male mind has tried to repress the feminine and of course because the male is aggressive... he can repress it. The feminine is receptive, surrendering; it knows how to let go, it knows how to adjust, so it has become adjusted even to the male chauvinist attitude. The whole past of humanity is ugly and the reason is that we have not allowed the feminine qualities to blossom. So become more and more receptive, sensitive, creative, loving, dancing, singing — and that’s how you will go on becoming more and more meditative. And the more meditative you are, the more you will find feminine qualities blossoming in you. The moment the male energy becomes feminine a Buddha is born, a Christ is born. We will have a more beautiful world if all women — and women are half of the world — are allowed to grow their talents, their genius. It is not a question at all… nobody is higher, nobody is lower. Women are women, men are men; they have differences, but differences don’t make anybody higher or lower. Their differences create their attraction.
Mahatma Gandhi
Osho
Osho
Your armor, it shields you from any woman who would destroy
you, sure enough. But unless you let it go, it will shield
you as well from the only one who can love you, nourish
you, save you from your own protection. There is one perfect woman for you. She is singular, not plural.
Richard Bach
... marvelling at her intelligence,and hearing the stillness Every visit gave me a new meaning to her beauty and a new A woman whom Providence has provided with beauty
of sorrow. I felt an invisible hand drawing me to her.
insight into her sweet spirit, Until she became a book whose
pages I could understand and whose praises I could sing,
but which I could never finish reading.
of spirit and body is a truth, at the same time both open
and secret, which we can understand only by love, and
touch only by virtue; and when we attempt to describe
such a woman she disappears like a vapor.
Khalil Gibran,From The White Torch
Writers and poets try to understand the truth about
woman. But until this day they have never understood
her heart because, looking upon her through the veil
of desire, they see nothing except the shape of her body.
Or they look upon her through a magnifying glass
of spite and find nothing in her but weakness and submission.
Khalil Gibran
A woman's heart A woman's heart will not change with time or season;
Khalil Gibran
even if it dies eternally, it will never perish.
A woman's heart is like a field turned into a battleground;
after the trees are uprooted and the grass is burned and
the rocks bones and skulls, it is calm and is silent as if
nothing has happened; for the spring and autumn come at their intervals and resume their work.
It presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing. The characteristic note of our time is the dire truth that, the mediocre soul, the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be mediocre, has the gall to assert its right to mediocrity, and goes on to impose itself where it can.
Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages. Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality … the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else. If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms.The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time. loving another means letting go of all expectations. It means full acceptance, even celebration of another's personhood.
Marcel Proust
José Ortega y Gasset
Paz Octavio
Karen Casey
Canción hacia adentro ¡No me recuerdes! ¡Siénteme! Mis dos ojos navegan Tu arco-iris de sueños en mí tiene Una vez se perdieron mis sollozos, ¡No me recuerdes! ¡Siénteme! Los ríos que me traje de mis riscos, Hay confusión de vuelos en el aire? ¡No me recuerdes! ¡Siénteme!
Poema de Julia de Burgos
Hay un sólo trino entre tu amor y mi alma.
el mismo azul sin fin donde tú danzas.
siempre pradera abierta entre montañas.
y los hallé, abrigados, en tus lágrimas.
Un ruiseñor nos tiene en su garganta.
desembocan tan sólo por tus playas.
¡El viento que nos lleva en sus sandalias !
Mientras menos me pienses, más me amas.
Do not stand at my grave and weep Do not stand at my grave and weep When you awaken in the morning's hush
Mary Elizabeth Frye
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.
Simone de Beauvoir, After the War
The Thing Is to love life, to love it even
by Ellen Bass
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
Hope Our lives, discoloured with our present woes,
Joseph Addison
May still grow white and shine with happier hours.
So the pure limped stream, when foul with stains
Of rushing torrents and descending rains,
Works itself clear, and as it runs refines,
till by degrees the floating mirror shines;
Reflects each flower that on the border grows,
And a new heaven in it's fair bosom shows.
Life LIFE, believe, is not a dream
by Charlotte Bronte
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?
Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !
What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway ?
Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.
Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair !
To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Look to this day For yesterday is but a memory Look well, therefore, to this day....
Ralph Waldo Emerson
At any given moment, life is completely senseless. But viewed over a period, it seems to reveal itself as an organism existing in time, having a purpose, trending in a certain direction.
Aldous Huxley
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than the ones you did. So throw off the bow lines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Live.
Mark Twain
for it is life
the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all
the realities and truths of existence
the joy of growth
the splendor of action
the glory of power.
And tomorrow is only a vision.
But today well lived
makes every yesterday a memory
of happiness
and every tomorrow a vision of hope.
ancient Sanskrit poem
Rembrandt Van Rijn Art Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest. Reason deserves to be called a prophet; for in showing up the consequence and effect of our actions in the present, does it not tell us what the future will be? To the man who studies to gain a thorough insight into science, books and study are merely the steps of the ladder by which he climbs to the summit; as soon as a step has been advanced he leaves it behind. - The majority of mankind, however, who study to fill their memory with facts do not use the steps of the ladder to mount upward, but take them off and lay them on their shoulders in order that they may take them along, delighting in the weight of the burden they are carrying. - They ever remain below because they carry what should carry them.
Riches I hold in light esteem Riches I hold in light esteem Yes, as my swift days near their goal
Emily Jane Brontë
And Love I laugh to scorn
And lust of Fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn–
And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is–'Leave the heart that now I bear
And give me liberty.'
'Tis all that I implore
Through life and death, a chainless soul
With courage to endure!
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line...To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes and in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the substance of its truth -- disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the visible world.
Joseph Conrad
The House of Clouds I would build a cloudy House Cloud-walls of the morning's grey, Build the entrance high and proud, Build a spacious hall thereby: In the mutest of the house, Poet's thought,-not poet's sigh! Let them! Wipe such visionings
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(1806-1861)
For my thoughts to live in;
When for earth too fancy-loose
And too low for Heaven!
Hush! I talk my dream aloud
I build it bright to see,
I build it on the moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee.
Faced with amber column,
Crowned with crimson cupola
From a sunset solemn!
May mists, for the casements, fetch,
Pale and glimmering;
With a sunbeam hid in each,
And a smell of spring.
Darkening and then brightening,
If a riven thunder-cloud,
Veined by the lightning.
Use one with an iris-stain,
For the door within;
Turning to a sound like rain,
As I enter in.
Boldly, never fearing.
Use the blue place of the sky,
Which the wind is clearing;
Branched with corridors sublime,
Flecked with winding stairs
Such as children wish to climb,
Following their own prayers.
I will have my chamber:
Silence at the door shall use
Evening's light of amber,
Solemnising every mood,
Softemng in degree,
Turning sadness into good,
As I turn the key.
'Las, they come together!
Cloudy walls divide and fly,
As in April weather!
Cupola and column proud,
Structure bright to see
Gone---except that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with thee!
From the Fancy's cartel
Love secures some fairer things
Dowered with his immortal.
The sun may darken,-heaven be bowed-
But still, unchanged shall be,
Here in my soul,---that moonlit cloud,
To which I looked with THEE!
I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.
D.H. Lawrence
Nydia Lozano Art The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.”
C. JoyBell C.
Can human nature be so entirely transformed inside and out? Can man, created by God, be made wicked by man? Can a soul be so completely changed by its destiny, and turn evil when its fate is evil? Can the heart become distorted, contract incurable deformities and incurable infirmities, under the pressure of disproportionate grief, like the spinal column under a low ceiling? Is there not in every human soul a primitive spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world and immortal in the next, which can be developed by goodness, kindled, lit up, and made to radiate, and which evil can never entirely extinguish.
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Things That Never Die The pure, the bright, the beautiful
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
that stirred our hearts in youth,
The impulses to wordless prayer,
The streams of love and truth,
The longing after something lost,
The spirit's longing cry,
The striving after better hopes-
These things can never die.
The timid hand stretched forth to aid
A brother in his need;
A kindly word in grief's dark hour
That proves a friend indeed;
The plea for mercy softly breathed,
When justice threatens high,
The sorrow of a contrite heart-
These things shall never die.
Let nothing pass, for every hand
Must find some work to do,
Lose not a chance to waken love-
Be firm and just and true.
So shall a light that cannot fade
Beam on thee from on high,
And angel voices say to thee-
"These things shall never die."
Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.
Victor Hugo
A Prayer For Growing Old Gracefully Lord, Thou knowest better than I myself that
Unknown
I am growing older and will someday be old.
Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking
I must say something on every subject and on
every occasion.Release me from craving to
straighten out everybody's affairs.
Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but
not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it
seems a pity not to use it all; but Thou
knowest, Lord, that I want a few friends at
the end. Keep my mind free from the recital
of endless details; give me wings to get to
the point.
Seal my lips on my aches and pains; they are
increasing, and love of rehearsing them is
becoming sweeter as the years go by.I dare
not ask for improved memory, but for a growing
humility and a lessening cock-sureness when
my memory seems to clash with the memories of others.
Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally
I may be mistaken.Keep me reasonably sweet,
for a sour old person is one of the crowning
works of the devil. Give me the ability to
see good things in unexpected places and talents
in unexpected people; and give, O Lord,
the grace to tell them so.
May all beings be filled with joy and peace.
May all beings everywhere,
The strong and the weak,
The great and the small,
The mean and the powerful,
The short and the long,
the subtle and the gross:
May all beings everywhere,
Seen and unseen,
Dwelling far off or nearby,
Being or waiting to become:
May all be filled with lasting joy.
Let no one deceive another,
Let no one anywhere despise another,
Let no one out of anger or resentment
Wish suffering on anyone at all.
Just as a mother with her own life
Protects her child, her only child, from harm,
So within yourself let grow
A boundless love for all creatures.
Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;
Your life will bring heaven to earth.
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot
know for certain where it will end. Nor do
I really know myself, and the fact that I think
I am following your will does not mean that
I am actually doing so. But I believe that
the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am
doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart
from that desire. And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road, though I may
know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust
you always though I may seem to be lost and in
the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you
are ever with me, and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
