The word 'Why':You won't know until you ask by Anne Frank

Ever since I was a little girl and could barely talk, the word 'why' has lived and grown along with me. It's a well-known fact that children ask questions about anything and everything, since almost everything is new to them. That is especially true of me, and not just as a child. Even when I was older, I couldn't stop asking questions. I have to admit that it can be annoying sometimes, but I comfort myself with the thought that "You won't know until you ask," though by now I've asked so much that they ought to have made me a professor.

When I got older,I noticed that not all questions can be asked and that many whys can never be answered.As a result, I tried to work things out for myself by mulling over my own questions.And I came to the important discovery that questions which you either can't or shouldn't ask in public, or questions which you can't put into words, can easily be solved in your own head.So the word 'why' not only taught me to ask, but also to think.And thinking has never hurt anyone. On the contrary, it does us all a world of good.
Anne Frank, Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex

Inspirational Nature quote by James Thomson

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;
You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace
The woods and lawns, by living stream,at eve.
James Thomson

Inspirational Love Quote by Joseph Conrad

That’s why love is so inseparable from any talk about truth and death, because we know that love is fundamentally a death of an old self that was isolated and the emergence of a new self now entangled with another self, the self that you fall in love with.
Joseph Conrad

Quotes On Sadness

There is a chord in every heart that has a sigh in it if touched aright.
Ouida( Marie Louise de la Ramee)

We never do anything, consciously, for the last time, without sadness of heart.
Thomas De Quincey

They praise my rustling show, and never see my heart is breaking for a little love.
Christina Georgina Rossetti

Dim sadness did not spare that time celestial visages; yet, mixed with pity, violated not their bliss.
John Milton

Why We Write by Anaïs Nin

Vladimir Volegov Art

We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
Anaïs Nin

Joseph Joubert Quotes

Those who never back down love themselves more than they love the truth.

In order to know men, something must be chanced. Who risks himself of nothing knows nothing.

We may convince others by our arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own.

Today & Tomorrow - From "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"

Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since “the rest of your life” won’t last forever.
Omar Khayyam

Reason & love by John Nash

I've always believed in numbers. In the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits, I ask, what truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back — and I have made the most important discovery of my career — the most important discovery of my life: It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reasons can be found.
John Nash

A Blessing of Angels* For Belonging By John o'donohue

Music:
John Sokoloff-Valleys

A Blessing of Angels
John O’Donohue

May the Angels in their beauty bless you.
May they turn toward you streams of blessing.

May the Angel of Awakening stir your heart
to come alive to the eternal within you,
to all the invitations that quietly surround you.

May the Angel of Healing turn your wounds into
sources of refreshment.

May the Angel of the Imagination enable you to stand on the true thresholds, at ease with your ambivalence and drawn in new directions through the glow of your contradictions.

May the Angel of Compassion open your eyes
to the unseen suffering around you.

May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places
where your life is domesticated and safe,
take you to the territories of true otherness
where all that is awkward in you can fall into its own rhythm.

May the Angel of Eros introduce you to the beauty of your senses
to celebrate your inheritance as a temple of the holy spirit.

May the Angel of Justice disturb you to take
the side of the poor and the wronged.

May the Angel of Encouragement confirm you in worth and self-respect, that you may live with the dignity that presides in your soul.

May the Angel of Death arrive only when your life is complete
and you have brought every given gift to the threshold where its infinity can shine.

May all the Angels be your sheltering and joyful guardians.

For Belonging
John O’Donohue

May you listen to your longing to be free.
May the frames of your belonging be generous
enough for your dreams.
May you arise each day with a voice of blessing
whispering in your heart.

May you find a harmony between your soul and your life.
May the sanctuary of your soul never become haunted.
May you know the eternal longing that lives at the heart of time.

May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.
May you never place walls between the light and yourself.
May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you,
mind you, and embrace you in belonging.

Childhood by Bret Harte

But still when the mists of doubt prevail,
And we lie becalmed by the shores of age,
We hear from the misty troubled shore
The voice of the children gone before,
Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
Bret Harte

Gedenke mein von Christina Georgina Rossettis

Gedenke mein
Übs. von Christina Georgina Rossettis
Sonett 'Remember'

Gedenke mein, wenn ich erst fort bin,
Weit fort im Land des Schweigens;
Wenn deine Hand nicht mehr die meine hält,
Noch ich, halb schon zum Gehn gewandt, doch bleibe.

Gedenke mein, wenn du mir nicht mehr Tag um Tag
Von unserer Zukunft sprichst, die du geplant:
Ich bitt dich nur, gedenke mein; du weißt,
Gebet und Ratschlag fruchten dann nicht mehr,

Wenn du mich aber doch einmal vergisst
und merkst's im nachhinein, so gräm dich nicht;
Denn stiege aus dem Hinterhalt auch nur
Ein Echo der Gedanken, die mich einst bewegt,
Da wollt ich lieber, du könntest im Vergessen lächeln
Als dass Erinnerung dich schmerzte.

Me Gustas Cuando Callas de Pablo Neroda

Christina Nguyen art

Poema XV
Me Gustas Cuando Callas
Pablo Neruda

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente,
y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te toca.
Parece que los ojos se te hubieran volado
y parece que un beso te cerrara la boca.

Como todas las cosas están llenas de mi alma
emerges de las cosas, llena del alma mía.
Mariposa de sueño, te pareces a mi alma,
y te pareces a la palabra melancolía.

Me gustas cuando callas y estás como distante.
Y estás como quejándote, mariposa en arrullo.
Y me oyes desde lejos, y mi voz no te alcanza:
déjame que me calle con el silencio tuyo.

Déjame que te hable también con tu silencio
claro como una lámpara, simple como un anillo.
Eres como la noche, callada y constelada.
Tu silencio es de estrella, tan lejano y sencillo.

Me gustas cuando callas porque estás como ausente.
Distante y dolorosa como si hubieras muerto.
Una palabra entonces, una sonrisa bastan.
Y estoy alegre, alegre de que no sea cierto.

The criterion of true beauty by Lord Greville

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens. There is therefore, something in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not the mere creation of fancy.
Lord Greville

Nana Mouskouri & Julio Iglesias - Se que volveras

The angel,The beast & The son of man by Rumi

The angel is free because of his knowledge, the beast because of his ignorance. Between the two remains the son of man to struggle.
Rumi

From The quatrains of Omar Khayyám

Sweet is the breath of Spring to rose’s face,
And thy sweet face adds charm to this fair place;
To-day is sweet, but yesterday is sad,
And sad all mention of its parted grace.
Omar Khayyám

Pity by SAMUEL DANIEL

Pity is sworn servant unto love:
And this be sure, wherever it begin
To make the way, it lets your master in.
SAMUEL DANIEL

To be together by Charlotte Bronte

To be together is for us to be at once
as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.
Charlotte Bronte,Jane Eyre

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Music:
Autumn Emotions-RAUL DI BLASIO

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower;
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled,
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom, why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever
To sage or poet these responses given:
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour:
Frail spells whose utter'd charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see,
Doubt, chance and mutability.
Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame!
Depart not as thy shadow came,
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I call'd on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard; I saw them not;
When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!

I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illum'd my brow
Unlink'd with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

The Cocoon & the Butterfly :A Lesson in Patience by Nikos Kazantzakis

A Lesson in Patience
From Zorba the Greek
Nikos Kazantzakis

I remembered one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree, just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited a while, but it was too long appearing and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. Bending over it, I tried to help it with my breath. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings should be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand.

That little body is, I do believe, the greatest weight I have on my conscience. For I realize today that it is a mortal sin to violate the great laws of nature. We should not hurry, we should not be impatient, but we should confidently obey the eternal rhythm.

Hayley Westenra - Never Say Goodbye

Josh Groban - You Raise Me Up

You Raise Me Up Lyrics
written by Lovland, Rolf U. / Graham, Brendan.

When I am down and, oh my soul, so weary;
When troubles come and my heart burdened be;
Then, I am still and wait here in the silence,
Until you come and sit awhile with me.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.

You raise me up, so I can stand on mountains;
You raise me up, to walk on stormy seas;
I am strong, when I am on your shoulders;
You raise me up... To more than I can be.

There is no life - no life without its hunger;
Each restless heart beats so imperfectly;
But when you come and I am filled with wonder,
Sometimes, I think I glimpse eternity.

The Grass Is Always Greener on the Other Side of the Fence by Montaigne

I feel oppressed by an error of mind which offends me most as unjust and even more as annoying. I try to correct it, but I cannot root it out. It is that I attach too little value to things I possess, just because I possess them and overvalue anything strange, absent, and not mine.

This frame of mind extends very far. As the prerogative of authority leads men to regard their wives with monstrous disdain, and sometimes their children, so too am I afflicted. Whatever I am responsible for can never, as I see things, meet the competition. To an even greater degree, any desire for advancement and improvement clouds my judgment and closes off the path to satisfaction, just as mastery in itself breeds scorn of whatever one holds in one’s power.

Exotic societies, customs, and languages attract me, and I realize that the dignity of Latin impresses me more than it should, just as it does children and common folk. My neighbor’s house, the way he runs his affairs, his horse, though no better than my own, are all worth more than mine precisely because they are not mine.
Montaigne,"On Presumption”

To know me is to love me by Roger Ebert

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.
Roger Ebert

Claude Barzotti -Madame

Flowers by Mathurin M. Ballou

Sweet letters of the angel tongue,
I've loved ye long and well,
And never have failed in your fragrance sweet
To find some secret spell,--
A charm that has bound me with witching power,
For mine is the old belief,
That midst your sweets and midst your bloom,
There's a soul in every leaf!
Mathurin M. Ballou, Flowers

A reasonable Man by François Duc de la Rochefoucauld

He is not a reasonable man who by chance stumbles upon reason, but he who derives it from knowledge,from discernment,
and from taste.
François Duc de la Rochefoucauld

Friedrich Nietzsche Quotes On Individuality & the Crowd

Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties,
nations,and ages it is the rule.

When a hundred men stand together,each of them
loses his mind and gets another one.

Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen,
few in pursuit of the goal.
Friedrich Nietzsche

To The Mothers by Tyler Knott Gregson(Inspirational Mother poem)

Music:
Richard Clayderman-Lettre à ma mère(letter To my Mother)

Alena Root Photography

To The Mothers
Tyler Knott Gregson

This is an ode to all of those
that have never asked for one.
A thank you in words to all of those
that do not do what they do so well
for the thanking.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the ones who match our first
scream with their loudest scream;
who harmonize in our shared pain and joy
and terrified wonder when life begins.

This is to the mothers.
To the ones who stay up late and wake up early
and always know the distance between
their soft humming song and our
tired ears.To the lips that find
their way to our foreheads and know,
somehow always know, if too much heat
is living in our skin.
To the hands that spread the jam
on the bread and the mesmerizing
patient removal of the crust we just
cannot stomach.

This is to the mothers.
To the ones who shout the loudest
and fight the hardest and sacrifice
the most to keep the smiles glued
to our faces and the magic spinning through
our days.To the pride they have for us
that cannot fit inside after all they
have endured.To the leaking of it
out their eyes and onto the backs of their
hands, to the trails of makeup left behind
as they smile through those tears and somehow
always manage a laugh.This is to
the patience and perseverance and
unyielding promise that at any moment
they would give up their lives
to protect ours.

This is to the mothers.
To the single mom’s working four jobs
to put the cheese in the mac and
the apple back into the juice
so their children,like birds in
a nest, can find food in their mouths
and pillows under their heads.To the dreams
put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement
of all priority.
This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that
find the energy to go to work every day;to the widows and the happily married.To the young mothers and those
that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new
arrival far later than they ever anticipated.

This is to the mothers.
This is to the sack lunches
and sleepover parties,to the soccer games
and oranges slices at halftime.This is
to the hot chocolate after snowy walks
and the arguing with the umpire at the
little league game.To the frosting of
birthday cakes and the candles that are
always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts
the slip-n-slides and the iced tea
on summer days.

This is to the ones that show us the way
to finding our own way.To the cutting
of the cord, quite literally the first time
and even more painfully and metaphorically
the second time around.To the mothers
who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers
and if time is gentle enough,live to see
the children of their children have
children of their own.To the love.

My goodness to the love that never stops
and comes from somewhere only mothers
have seen and know the secret location of.
To the love that grows stronger as their
hands grow weaker and the spread of jam
becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier
to find and sack lunches no longer need making.
This is to the way the tears look falling from
the smile lines around their eyes
and the mascara that just might always be
smeared with the remains of their pride for
all they have created.
This is to the mothers.

On Woman by Lord Byron

The very first of human life must spring from woman's breast; your first small words are taught you from her lips, your first tears quenched by her, and your last sighs too often breathed out in a woman's hearing.
Lord Byron

The joy of Motherhood by Khalil Gibran

There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.
Khalil Gibran

The Things You Are To Me -Secret Garden(Elaine Paige)

On Liberty & Freedom by Benjamin Franklin

God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, "This is my Country".
Benjamin Franklin

On love by Peter Ustinov

Love is an act of endless forgiveness,
a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov

Flowers Love’s Truest Language by Park Benjamin

Flowers are Love's truest language; they betray, Like the divining rods of Magi old, Where precious wealth lies buried, not of gold, But love--strong love, that never can decay!
Park Benjamin

Inspirational Thoughts,Quotes & Poems on Friendship :On Lifelong Friendships by C.S. Lewis *Friendship by Ella Wheeler Wilcox*Travelling by William Wordsworth

Music:
SENS - Like a Wind

On Lifelong Friendships
C.S. Lewis

You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that.

Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side?

Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it.

All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.

FRIENDSHIP
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Dear friend, I pray thee, if thou wouldst be proving
Thy strong regard for me,
Make me no vows. Lip-service is not loving;
Let thy faith speak for thee.

Swear not to me that nothing can divide us--
So little such oaths mean.
But when distrust and envy creep beside us,
Let them not come between.

Say not to me the depths of thy devotion
Are deeper than the sea;
But watch, lest doubt or some unkind emotion
Embitter them for me.

Vow not to love me ever and for ever--
Words are such idle things;
But when we differ in opinions, never
Hurt me by little stings.

I'm sick of words: they are so lightly spoken,
And spoken, are but air.
I'd rather feel thy trust in me unbroken
Than list thy words so fair.

If all the little proofs of trust are heeded,
If thou art always kind,
No sacrifice, no promise will be needed
To satisfy my mind.

Travelling
William Wordsworth

This is the spot:—how mildly does the sun
Shine in between the fading leaves! the air
In the habitual silence of this wood
Is more than silent: and this bed of heath,
Where shall we find so sweet a resting-place?
Come!—let me see thee sink into a dream
Of quiet thoughts,—protracted till thine eye
Be calm as water when the winds are gone
And no one can tell whither.—my sweet friend!
We two have had such happy hours together
That my heart melts in me to think of it.