A habit of finding pleasure in thought rather than action is a safeguard against unwisdom and excessive love of power, a means of preserving serenity in misfortune and peace of mind among worries. A life confined to what is personal is likely, sooner or later, to become unbearably painful; it is only by windows into a larger and less fretful cosmos that the more tragic parts of life become endurable.”
Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness: And Other Essays
Thoughts in Solitude by Thomas Merton The solitary life, being silent, clears away the smoke-screen of words that man has laid down between his mind and things. In solitude we remain face to face with the naked being of things. And yet we find that the nakedness of reality which we have feared, is neither a matter of terror nor for shame. It is clothed in the friendly communion of silence, and this silence is related to love. The world our words have attempted to classify, to control and even to despise (because they could not contain it) comes close to us, for silence teaches us to know reality by respecting it where words have defiled it. When we have lived long enough alone with the reality around us, our veneration will learn how to bring forth a few good words about it from the silence which is the mother of Truth. Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.
Moments Of Vision That mirror That mirror That mirror That mirror
by Thomas Hardy
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?
Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
until we start?
Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?
Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it -- where?
Serge Marshennikov Art It’s good to feel you are close to me It’s good to feel you are close to me in the night, love, Withdrawn, your heart sails through dream, Rising, you will be that other, alive in the dawn, something remains, drawing us into the light of life
Pablo Neruda
invisible in your sleep, intently nocturnal,
while I untangle my worries
as if they were twisted nets.
but your body, relinquished so, breathes
seeking me without seeing me perfecting my dream
like a plant that seeds itself in the dark.
but from the frontiers lost in the night,
from the presence and the absence where we meet ourselves,
as if the sign of the shadows had sealed
its secret creatures with flame.
The innocent one is he who does not explain, for whom life is both a mystery and a total light, one who does not complain... For innocence admits of neither regret nor dispute. The innocent one assumes all responsibility. Every child is a deliberate, passionate creation of God. If you doubt that, just look into their eyes. You will find a gentle little spirit who hungers for life - and for your love. When I approach a child, he inspires in me two sentiments; tenderness for what he is, and respect for what he may become. Every child comes with the message that God is not yet tired of the man.
Jean Giraudoux
Gary Holland
Louis Pasteur
Rabindranath Tagore
A Boundless Moment He halted in the wind, and -- what was that "Oh, that's the Paradise-in-bloom," I said; We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Robert Frost
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year's leaves.
THE GENESIS OF BUTTERFLIES The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers Ah, Spring time, when we think of all the lays We dream that all white butterflies above,
Victor Hugo
(1802-1885)
Translated by Andrew Lang
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide!
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,
Written in April, and before the May time
Shredded and flown, play things for the wind’s play-time,
Who seek through clouds or waters souls to love,
And leave their lady mistress in despair,
To flit to flowers, as kinder and more fair,
Are but torn love-letters, that through the skies
Flutter, and float, and change to Butterflies.
