Silence

I catch the pattern
Of your silence
Before you speak.

I do not need
To hear a word.

In your silence
Every tone I seek
Is heard.


Langston Hughes

Autumn verses in the spring

En la tarde lluviosa
mi corazón aprende
la tragedia otoñal
que los árboles llueven.

...

In the rain-swept afternoon
my heart discovers
the tragedy of autumn
raining from the trees.


Federico García Lorca

Confidence

Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.
Tennessee Williams

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
Mark Twain

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
John Leonard

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.
Helen Keller

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Paul Engle

Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.

Pablo Neruda

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
George Bernard Shaw

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive.
When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.

Jean Baudrillard

...
Some time if we’re not yet,
if we’re not gone, if we’re not coming,
under seven layers of dust…
we’ll be together, love,
strangely confused together…

Pablo Neruda

Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
Jean Baudrillard

There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.
Nick Flynn

Why should I be bitter
About someone who was
A complete stranger
Until a certain moment
In a day that has passed.

SAIGYÔ (12th century)

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.
Søren Kierkegaard

At Christmas, all roads lead home.
Marjorie Holmes

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde

The seeming defeat by the mist

The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
Rabindranath Tagore

As the end of the century approaches, all our culture is like the culture of flies at the beginning of winter. Having lost their agility, dreamy and demented, they turn slowly about the window in the first icy mists of morning. They give themselves a last wash and brush-up, their oscillated eyes roll, and they fall down the curtains.
Jean Baudrillard

The knowledge of autumn

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.
Yutang Lin

(Beautiful photo by Luisa)

We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.
Lauryn Hill

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.
Muriel Rukeyser

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