Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Winston S. Churchill

Beautiful, dark days of autumn rain

My Sorrow, when she's here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Robert Frost, from My November Guest

A day is a miniature eternity.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.
Nadia Boulanger

Readers

I divide all readers into two classes: Those who read to remember and those who read to forget.
William Lyon Phelps

I will be back

I will be away in the next couple of weeks, but I will be back in a month with more new quotes for you.
Have a great september everyone!

From a poem

Times in the morning early
when it rained and the long gray
buildings came forward from darkness
offering their windows for light.

Mary Oliver, from Some Things The World Gave

Everything has been figured out

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Measuring life

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Maya Angelou

Special days

It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
Wallace Stevens

A poem

My heart born naked
was swaddled in lullabies.
Later alone it wore
poems for clothes.
Like a shirt
I carried on my back
the poetry I had read.

So I lived for half a century
until wordlessly we met.

From my shirt on the back of the chair
I learn tonight
how many years
of learning by heart
I waited for you.

— John Berger

A pause

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
Guillaume Apollinaire

Arrival

...the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
— T.S. Eliot

A good poem

If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one—and the same goes for paintings.
Elizabeth Bishop

All we have to do

All we have is to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.
J.R.R. Tolkien

We can never know

We can never possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time.
— Carl Sandburg

Counting

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Comfortable eyes

Our eye finds it more comfortable to respond to a given stimulus by reproducing once more an image that it has produced many times before, instead of registering what is different and new in an impression.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Poetry

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
Thomas Gray

Used up

I want to be all used up when I die.
George Bernard Shaw

We just keep asking

So we keep asking, over and over,
Until a handful of earth
Stops our mouths --
But is that an answer?

Heinrich Heine

From a sonnet...

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you as straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Pablo Neruda, from Sonnet XVII

Boredom

In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.
Richard Bach

Monotony of a decorous age

Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Present

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present'.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Pleasure or happines

Pleasure can be supported by an illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort

The obvious

There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Profound simplicity, part 2

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.
Milan Kundera

True dreams

Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
 Alfred Tennyson