Quotation Saturday

POETRY

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. 

~Carl Sandburg,

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. 

~Leonard Cohen

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life. 

~George Sand, 1851
 

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. 

~Plato, Ion

CHANGE
 

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. 

~Harold Wilson

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it. 

~Mary Engelbreit

Without accepting the fact that everything changes, we cannot find perfect composure. But unfortunately, although it is true, it is difficult for us to accept it. Because we cannot accept the truth of transience, we suffer. 

~Shunryu Suzuki

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril. ~Laurens van der Post

IDLENESS
 

The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest, for he has not earned it. 

~John Lubbock

There is a working class - strong and happy - among both rich and poor: there is an idle class - weak, wicked, and miserable - among both rich and poor. 

~John Ruskin

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself. 

~Samuel Johnson

Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals. 

~Voltaire

INTEGRITY
 

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day. 

~Abraham Lincoln
 

Transcend political correctness and strive for human righteousness. 

~Anthony J. D'Angelo

Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. 

~J.C. Watts

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. ~Buddha

WEATHER
 

The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. 

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
 

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. 

~Henry Ward Beecher

Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. 

~Saint Basil
 

“Wherever you may be, in storm or raging sea. Maximize, minimize is not for me.” 

~Joni Zipp, on impending hurricane Irene