« December 2005 | Main | February 2006 »
Be wise today; 't is madness to defer;
next day the fatal precedent will plead;
thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.
Procrastination is the thief of time.
Year after year it steals, till all are fled,
and to the mercies of a moment leaves
the vast concerns of an eternal scene.
Of man's miraculous mistakes this bears
the palm, "that all men are about to live,"
forever on the brink of being born....
--Dr Edward Young (1683-1765)
| | |
| | |
You and I, the French and the English, are like those old couples who never stop quarreling but whose perfect marriage is praised when one of them dies.
--Pierre Daninos (1913-2005), in Les Carnets de Major Thompson
| | |
| | |
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened...ambition inspired, and success achieved.
--Helen Keller (1880-1968)
| | |
| | |
Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and films you've been to.
--Hugo Hamilton (1953-), in The Speckled People
| | |
| | |
The deep remembrance of the sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless, of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart....cannot be written. My whole nature was so penetrated with grief and humiliation that even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander desolately back to that time in my life.
--Charles Dickens (1812-1870), in his autobiography. His father had been jailed for debt and at age 12 the boy was sent to work for 12 hours a day in a rat-infested shoe-polish factory. When the father inherited enough money to pay his debt, he moved the rest of the family into a house and left Charles to work.
| | |
| | |
There is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking....you are not that voice, the thinker, but the one who is aware of it. Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom.
--Eckhart Tolle (1948-), Stillness Speaks (2003)
| | |
| | |
The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.
--Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) in Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial, Chapter V.
| | |
| | |
Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue.
--Francis Bacon (1561-1626), in his essay Of Adversity
| | |
| | |
The correction of prose, because it has no fixed laws, is endless, a poem comes right with a click like a closing box.
--William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
| | |
| | |
