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