QOTD - Sylvia Plath

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

QOTD - Mabel W. Clapp

“There will always be stars through the window bars – if we look to see them shine.” – Mabel W. Clapp

QOTD - Jennifer Coolidge

“The fear is gone when you’re so used to losing. There’s some freedom in that.” – Jennifer Coolidge

QOTD - Mark Twain

“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” – Mark Twain, Following the Equator, Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar

QOTD - James Deacon

“What you see depends not on what you look at, but also, on where you look from.” – James Deacon

QOTD - W. Somerset Maugham

“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

QOTD - Winston Churchill

“I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.” – Winston Churchill

QOTD - Joyce Kilmer

Trees

by Joyce Kilmer

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

QOTD - Carl Sandburg

"There is an eagle in me that wants to soar." – Carl Sandburg

QOTD - F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

QOTD - Mary Oliver

“All things are inventions of holiness. Some more rascally than others.” – Mary Oliver, The Wren From Carolina

QOTD - Walter Cronkite

“Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” – Walter Cronkite

QOTD - Regina Brett

“Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.” – Regina Brett

QOTD - Albert Einstein

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.” – Albert Einstein

QOTD - Mary Oliver

 “The song you heard singing in the leaf when you were a child is singing still.” – Mary Oliver

QOTD - John Muir

"In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks." – John Muir

Balance Wouldn't Be Law Of Nature If Extremes Were Good Things For Us by Robert Quillen (1937)

I spent most of last Friday perusing thrift stores and found a lovely vintage copy of The Book of Courage: A Little Book of Brave Thoughts, edited by Edwin Osgood Grover, published in 1924. The little book had been a Christmas gift from or to a Jule many years ago. Somewhere along the way, this newspaper clipping had been tucked inside.

BALANCE WOULDN’T BE LAW OF NATURE IF EXTREMES WERE GOOD THINGS FOR US

By ROBERT QUILLEN

“WHY DOES a just and merciful God permit evil men to prosper while better people live in want?”

The question seems to assume that the earth is a kind of WPA project, supported by heavenly relief, which frequently rewards the undeserving through carelessness or clerical error.

If that is true, the wonder is that anybody gets enough to eat; for none can claim heaven’s bounty on the basis of his merit alone. The “good” who receive little are good only by comparison with the evil.

People are permitted to make money or remain poor for the same reason that they are permitted to be selfish or unselfish, good or bad, lazy or industrious. They are not helpless automatons, pushed around by invisible angels, but free agents, possessed of reason, privileged to do well or ill as they choose and get such reward as they can for their labors.

We cannot know God’s plan or purpose except by inference and logical deduction. That we are expected to use this process seems logical, for God gave us brains and the natural inference is that He expected us to use them.

This complicated, man-made civilization, which we have not yet learned to manage, confuses our thinking and hides fundamental truths. The scheme of things will be easier to understand if we picture man in his natural state, when he got his living by wresting it from nature, as the true farmer does today.

It is logical to assume that God loves His creatures, from which it follows that whatever is good for us is God’s will.

Since He provided natural abundance and made it possible for every creature to supply its needs by moderate effort, it is clear that He wishes us to have plenty.

But since no man, in a natural state, could get great wealth by his own effort, without cheating or imposing on others, it is equally clear that He does not wish us to have riches.

If this is true, it follows that neither want nor wealth is good for us.

Middle-class people in all ages are the custodians of morality. And moderation is the essence of virtue. So the happiest people and the best are those too poor to be corrupted by wealth and too rich to be degraded by want and suffering.

When our civilization provides that happy medium for all, it won’t be an offense to heaven.

(Copyright, 1937.)

QOTD - Frances Hodgson Burnett

“Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.” – Frances Hodgson Burnett

QOTD - Edgar A. Guest

Keep Going
by Edgar A. Guest

Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit—
It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

QOTD - William Henry Davies

“As long as I love Beauty I am young” – William Henry Davies, Seeking Beauty

QOTD - Henry Austin

“Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, is oft but perseverance in disguise.” – Henry Austin, Perseverance Conquers All

QOTD - William Wordsworth

“One impulse from a vernal wood may teach you more of man, of moral evil and of good, than all the sages can.” – William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned 

QOTD - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

QOTD - Nora Roberts

“Even if I’m not writing well, I write through it. I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank one.” – Nora Roberts

QOTD - John Donne

“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” – John Donne, No Man is an Island

QOTD - Coco Chanel

“The best things in life are free. The second best are very, very expensive.” – Coco Chanel

QOTD - Sir John Lubbock

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” – Sir John Lubbock

QOTD - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“It is only goodness which gives extras. And so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

QOTD - Carly Dugmore

“It doesn’t matter where you go, or who you meet along the way, carry kindness in your heart, and practice it each day.” – Carly Dugmore

QOTD - Virginia Woolf

"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack." – Virginia Woolf

QOTD - Rush

“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” – "Freewill" by Rush

QOTD - Sylvia Plath

 “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery – air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar