I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when, in the very ardor of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary’s force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him through his weakness.
The aim of argument,or of discussion,
Michel de Montaigne,The Complete Essays
should not be victory,but progress.
Joseph Joubert
It is curious to note the old sea-margins of human thought! Each subsiding century reveals some new mystery; we build where monsters used to hide themselves.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.
Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.
Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it.
Sandra Carey
Albert Einstein
David Starr Jordan
Let my soul, a shining tree,
Silver branches lift towards thee,
Where on a hallowed winter's night
The clear-eyed angels may alight.
Siegfried Sassoon
Everyday courage has few witnesses.But yours is no less noble because no drum beats for you and no crowds shout your name.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Anton Chekhov
Earth, my dearest, I will.Oh believe me, you no longer need your springtimes to win me over - one of them, ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.Unspeakably, I have belonged to you, from the first.
Erde,du liebe,ich will.Oh glaub,es bedürfte
nicht deiner Frühlinge mehr,mich dir zu gewinnen–,einer,
ach,ein einziger ist schon dem Blute zu viel.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Namenlos bin ich zu dir entschlossen, von weit her.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Émile Vernon Art
Spring’s Immortality
THE BUDS awake at touch of Spring
The cuckoo’s voice, from copse and vale,
The bird whom ancient Solitude
Ah, strange it is, dear heart, to know
That fresh new leaves and meadow flowers
Unchanged, unchanged the throstle’s song,
Mackenzie Bell
From Winter’s joyless dream;
From many a stone the ouzels sing
By yonder mossy stream.
Lingers, as if to meet
The music of the nightingale
Across the rising wheat—
Hath kept forever young,
Unaltered since in studious mood
Calm Milton mused and sung.
Spring’s gladsome mystery
Was sweet to lovers long ago—
Most sweet to such as we—
Bloomed when the south wind came;
While hands of Spring caressed the bowers,
The throstle sang the same.
Unchanged Spring’s answering breath,
Unchanged, though cruel Time was strong,
And stilled our love in death.
Deeds not Words: I say so too!
And yet I find it somehow true,
A word may help a man in need,
To nobler act and braver deed.
HENRY VAN DYKE, "Facta non Verba
If All The Skies
If all the skies were sunshine,
If all the world were music,
If life were always merry,
Henry Van Dyke
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling plash of rain.
Our hearts would often long
For one sweet strain of silence.
To break the endless song.
Our souls would seek relief,
And rest from weary laughter
In the quiet arms of grief.
Dulcis Memoria
Long, long ago I heard a little song,
Henry Van Dyke
(Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?)
So lowly, slowly wound the tune along,
That far into my heart it found the way:
A melody consoling and endearing;
And now, in silent hours, I'm often hearing
The small, sweet song that does not die away.
Long, long ago I saw a little flower--
(Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?)
So fair of face and fragrant for an hour,
That something dear to me it seemed to say,--
A wordless joy that blossomed into being;
And now, in winter days, I'm often seeing
The friendly flower that does not fade away.
Long, long ago we had a little child,--
(Ah, was it long ago, or yesterday?)
Into his mother's eyes and mine he smiled
Unconscious love; warm in our arms he lay.
An angel called! Dear heart, we could not hold him;
Yet secretly your arms and mine infold him--
Our little child who does not go away.
Long, long ago? Ah, memory, make it clear--
(It was not long ago, but yesterday.)
So little and so helpless and so dear--
Let not the song be lost, the flower decay!
His voice, his waking eyes, his gentle sleeping:
The smallest things are safest in thy keeping,--
Sweet memory, keep our child with us alway.
Excerpt from:The god of the open Air
These are the gifts I ask
Henry Van Dyke
Of thee, Spirit serene:
Strength for the daily task,
Courage to face the road,
Good cheer to help me bear the traveller's load,
And, for the hours of rest that come between,
An inward joy in all things heard and seen.
These are the sins I fain
Would have thee take away:
Malice, and cold disdain,
Hot anger, sullen hate,
Scorn of the lowly, envy of the great,
And discontent that casts a shadow gray
On all the brightness of the common day.
These are the things I prize
And hold of dearest worth:
Light of the sapphire skies,
Peace of the silent hills,
Shelter of forests, comfort of the grass,
Music of birds, murmur of little rills,
Shadows of cloud that swiftly pass,
And, after showers,
The smell of flowers
And of the good brown earth,--
And best of all, along the way, friendship and mirth.
So let me keep
These treasures of the humble heart
In true possession, owning them by love;
And when at last I can no longer move
Among them freely, but must part
From the green fields and from the waters clear,
Let me not creep
Into some darkened room and hide
From all that makes the world so bright and dear;
But throw the windows wide
To welcome in the light;
And while I clasp a well-beloved hand,
Let me once more have sight
Of the deep sky and the far-smiling land,--
Then gently fall on sleep,
And breathe my body back to Nature's care,
My spirit out to thee, God of the open air.
Sometimes you look up and there just seems to be so many more stars that ever before. More. They burn brighter and they shine longer and they never vanish into your periphery when you turn your head. It's as if they come out for us and to remind us that their light took so long to come to us, that if we never had the patience to wait, we never would have seen them here, tonight, like this.
That as much as it hurts, sometimes it's all you can do, wait, endure and keep shining, knowing that eventually, your light will reach where it is supposed to reach and shine for who it is supposed to shine for.
It is never easy, but it is always worth it.
Tyler Knott Gregson,Chasers of the Light
We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what’s left is who we truly are.
Arianna Huffington
We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.
Henry ward beecher
One hope no sooner dies in us but another rises up in its stead. We are apt to fancy that we shall be happy and satisfied if we possess ourselves of such and such particular enjoyments; but either by reason of their emptiness, or the natural inquietude of the mind, we have no sooner gained one point, but we extend our hopes to another. We still find new inviting scenes and landscapes lying behind those which at a distance terminated our view.
JOSEPH ADDISON
No me llames extranjero
No me llames extranjero, por que haya nacido lejos,
No me llames extranjero, ni pienses de donde vengo,
Y me llamas extranjero por que me trajo un camino,
No me llames extranjero, traemos el mismo grito,
No me llames extranjero que es una palabra triste,
No me llames extranjero piensa en tu hermano y el mío
Rafael amor
O por que tenga otro nombre la tierra de donde vengo
No me llames extranjero, por que fue distinto el seno
O por que acunó mi infancia otro idioma de los cuentos,
No me llames extranjero si en el amor de una madre,
Tuvimos la misma luz en el canto y en el beso,
Con que nos sueñan iguales las madres contra su pecho.
Mejor saber donde vamos, adonde nos lleva el tiempo,
No me llames extranjero, por que tu pan y tu fuego,
Calman mi hambre y frío, y me cobije tu techo,
No me llames extranjero tu trigo es como mi trigo
Tu mano como la mía, tu fuego como mi fuego,
Y el hambre no avisa nunca, vive cambiando de dueño.
Por que nací en otro pueblo, por que conozco otros mares,
Y zarpé un día de otro puerto, si siempre quedan iguales en el
Adiós los pañuelos, y las pupilas borrosas de los que dejamos
Lejos, los amigos que nos nombran y son iguales los besos
Y el amor de la que sueña con el día del regreso.
El mismo cansancio viejo que viene arrastrando el hombre
Desde el fondo de los tiempos, cuando no existían fronteras,
Antes que vinieran ellos, los que dividen y matan,
Los que roban los que mienten los que venden nuestros sueños,
Los que inventaron un día, esta palabra, extranjero.
Que es una palabra helada huele a olvido y a destierro,
No me llames extranjero mira tu niño y el mío
Como corren de la mano hasta el final del sendero,
No me llames extranjero ellos no saben de idiomas
De límites ni banderas, míralos se van al cielo
Por una risa paloma que los reúne en el vuelo.
El cuerpo lleno de balas besando de muerte el suelo,
Ellos no eran extranjeros se conocían de siempre
Por la libertad eterna e igual de libres murieron
No me llames extranjero, mírame bien a los ojos,
Mucho más allá del odio, del egoísmo y el miedo,
Y verás que soy un hombre, no puedo ser extranjero.
Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common everyday beauty.
John Muir
Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one's mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips--a name which comes up continually, rising, like the water in a spring, from the depths of the soul to the lips, a name which one repeats over and over again, which one whispers ceaselessly, everywhere, like a prayer.
Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised.
<
Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant,Miss Harriet
And, oh, how blessed is it thus to meet! To feel that vanished years have not estranged us, distance has not diminished love, that we are to each other even as we parted; to feel again the fond kiss, to hear once more the accents of a voice which to us has been for years so still,--a voice that brings with it the gush of memory! Past days flit before us; feelings, thoughts, hope, we deemed were dead, all rise again, and summoned by that secret witchery, the well-remembered though long silent voice.
Let years, long, lingering, saddening years drag on their chain, let youth have given place to manhood, manhood to age, still will it be the same--the voice we once have loved, and deemed to us forever still--oh, time, and grief, and blighted hope will be forgotten, and youth, in its undimmed and joyous beauty, its glow of generous feelings, its bright anticipations, all, all again be ours.
Grace Aguilar ,The Mother's Recompense
Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear. Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat—your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me ... I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive. I should not shrink from you with disgust : in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Love
And in Life’s noisiest hour,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart’s Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
And to the leading Love-throb in the Heart
Thro’ all my Being, thro’ my pulse’s beat ;
You lie in all my many Thoughts, like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve
On rippling Stream, or cloud-reflecting Lake.
And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the Lot that made me love you.
It is well to have visions of a better life than that of every day, but it is the life of every day from which elements of a better life must come.
Many a happiness in life, as many a disaster, can be due to chance, but the peace within us can never be governed by chance.
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are. We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them. It seems to me that the grass hates us when we confess our love for it. Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.
Margaret Fuller
Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.
How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?
Girls we love for what they are; men for what they promise to be.
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me:
I am a free human being with an independent will.
Be not ashamed women, … You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions;their reasons are always different.
Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,
I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.
The great living experience for every man is his adventure into the woman. The man embraces in the woman all that is not himself, and from that one resultant, from that embrace,comes every new action.
Virginia Woolf
Anaïs Nin
Johann Wolfgang Von Goeth
Charlotte Brontë
Walt Whitman
George Santayana
'Tis woman's whole existence.
LORD BYRON,Don Juan
Charlotte Brontë,Jane Eyre
D. H. Lawrence
Deep within every human being there still lives the anxiety over the possibility of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the millions and millions in this enormous household. One keeps this anxiety at a distance by looking at the many round about who are related to him as kin and friends, but the anxiety is still there, nevertheless, and one hardly dares think of how he would feel if all this were taken away.
Søren Kierkegaard
Give My Soul a Heavenly Hush
Let me tarry as I go:
Gail McCoig Blanton
if not my feet, my heart be slow.
As I run from rush to rush
give my soul a heavenly hush --
That I may touch instead of shove,
That I may see those needing love.
In passing may I leave a glow;
of kindly words that help peace grow.
L’homme et la mer
Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer !
Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image ;
Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets :
Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Charles Baudelaire
La mer est ton miroir ; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n'est pas un gouffre moins amer.
Tu l'embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
Homme, nul n'a sondé le fond de tes abîmes,
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets !
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remord,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables !
Der spirituelle Weg bringt den Körper zum Scheitern
und danach läßt er ihn wieder gesunden.
Er zerstört das Haus um irdischen Reichtum
in nichtirdischen zu wandeln,
und mit diesem Reichtum baut es sich besser als vorher.
There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
Vincent van Gogh
The intellectual quest,
The spiritual path wrecks the body
though fine as pearl or coral,
is not the spiritual search.
That spiritual search is on another level.
Spiritual wine is a different substance.
and afterward restores it to health.
It destroys the house to unearth the treasure,
and with that treasure
builds it better than before.
Rumi
Bring the sky beneath your feet and listen to celestial music everywhere.
We rarely hear the inward music,
The strumming and the flute notes rise
So the candle flickers and goes out.
Poems reach up like spin drift and the edge
but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless
directed by the one who teaches us,
the pure joy of the sun,
our music master.
Rumi
These songs are flecks of foam upon the surface of the sea, To find where pearls are grown you must dive down into the deep, But in the graceful dancing of these shining floating swirls, We see a faint reflection of the beauty of the pearl.
Adapted From"Rumi/hidden music
By sean Shea Songs
oceandropsmusic.com
We have been part of a harmony before, so these moments of treble and bass keep our remembering fresh. Hearing the sound, we gather strength. Love kindles with melody. Music feeds a lover composure, and provides form for the imagination. Music breathes on personal fire and makes it keener.
Rumi
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
into the atmosphere, and even if the whole
world’s harps should burn up,there will
still be hidden instruments playing.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see. Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
Rumi
REMEMBERED MUSIC
'Tis said, the pipe and lute that charm our ears
We, who are parts of Adam, heard with him
Oh, music is the meat of all who love,
Rumi
Derive their melody from rolling spheres;
But Faith, o'erpassing speculation's bound,
Can see what sweetens every jangled sound.
The song of angels and of seraphim.
Out memory, though dull and sad, retains
Some echo still of those unearthly strains.
Music uplifts the soul to realms above.
The ashes glow, the latent fires increase:
We listen and are fed with joy and peace.
