April 2013
4 posts
“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the...”
– Ernest Hemingway
“Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.”
– Mizuta Masahide, 1657–1723
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had...”
– John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
“There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become...”
– Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss
March 2013
2 posts
Well Water
What a girl called “the dailiness of life”
(Adding an errand to your errand. Saying,
“Since you’re up …” Making you a means to
A means to a means to) is well water
Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world.
The pump you pump the water from is rusty
And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel
A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny...
“Recall that whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them...”
– Barbara Kingsolver, The Future of Culture, Community, and Land
January 2013
4 posts
“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the...”
– Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn’t make any difference. ...”
– Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
“Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than...”
– Victor Frankl
“Could a greater miracle take place than to look through each other’s eyes...”
– Henry David Thoreau
December 2012
1 post
“Talent is universal; opportunity is not.”
– Half the Sky Documentary
November 2012
1 post
“I would say that learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to...”
– Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety
October 2012
9 posts
“In my walks, everyone I meet is my superior in some way, and in that I learn...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There are those who seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge; that is Curiosity....”
– St. Bernard of Clairvaux, care of Jordan Konkol
“I think we can push this further and say that when we claim the right to be...”
– Rowan Williams
“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the...”
– Nelson Mandela
“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the...”
– Viktor E. Frankel, Man’s Search for Meaning
“…Tereza discovered in herself a picture of country life originating in...”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for...”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“…there is nothing heavier than compassion. Noe even one’s own pain...”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are...”
– Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
September 2012
3 posts
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be...”
– T.S. Eliot
“There are victories that weigh heavily and overpower. There are also defeats...”
– Jean-Louis Chretien, Hand to Hand
“…but these little things begin to add up in you, and you can begin to...”
– Terry Cummins, Feed My Sheep
August 2012
6 posts
Kierkegaard on moving back home at the age of 25
“I hope that my contentment with living here at home will be like that of a man I once read about. He, too, was tired of his home—and he wanted to ride away from it. When he had traveled a little way his horse stumbled and he fell off. And when he got to his feet he chanced to see his home, which now looked so beautiful to him hat he immediately remounted his horse, rode home, and remained there....
“Tending your own garden does not, for example, confront the problem of Monsanto....”
– Revolutionary Plots | Rebecca Solnit | Orion Magazine (via ayjay)
“To be a writer in this market requires not only money, but a concept of “work”...”
– How to Succeed in Journalism when You Can’t Afford an Internship | Random House of Canada (via ayjay)
“If you’re studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of...”
– Steve Martin
“It is not enough to give. We must have a heart that gives. In order to give, we...”
– Anthony of Sourozh
“Never had man possessed so many means for making history, and for making his own...”
– Jacques Ellul, Hope in Time of Abandonment
July 2012
6 posts
“Naturally, every person wants to be active in the world in accordance with his...”
– Soren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1835
“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can...”
– Jean Paul Sartre
“Part of finding your own voice as a writer is finding your own grammar. Don’t...”
– Colin Nissan, The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do, McSweeny’s, http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-writing-better-than-you-normally-do
“There is no unemployment on the land.”
– Peter Maurin
“I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say,...”
– Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness
“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution...”
– Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness
June 2012
3 posts
“Men and women have at their disposal an array of resources for generating...”
– Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t...”
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work,...”
– Wendell Berry
May 2012
1 post
“How you spend your days is how you spend your life.”
– Annie Dillard
April 2012
4 posts
“I would not speak of this dilemma if it were only mine, but I watch many others...”
– Stillness | Scott Russell Sanders | Orion Magazine (via ayjay)
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell or a hell of...”
– John Milton
“I won’t be able to write from the grave
so let me tell you what I love:
oil, vinegar, salt, lettuce, brown bread, butter,
cheese and wine, a windy day, a fireplace,
the children nearby, poems and songs,
a friend sleeping in my bed—
and the short northern nights.”
—Fanny Howe
“We should, as our culture has warned us over and over again, give our affection...”
– Wendell Berry, Jefferson Lecture, http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
March 2012
1 post
“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave...”
– Anatole France
January 2012
1 post
“Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live...”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
December 2011
1 post
“People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always...”
– Willa Cather
October 2011
8 posts
“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly...”
– Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
“We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United...”
– Wendell Berry, Grounded Vision
