Those who devote their lives to the purpose of proving that there is no purpose, constitute an interesting subject for study.
A. N. Whitehead, The Function of Reason
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| Taken by Scott Danielson |
Miss Bates…had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal goodwill and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body’s happiness and quick-sighted to every body’s merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body and a mine of felicity to herself.Would that I could do as well as Miss Bates under similar circumstances. She would have driven me just as crazy as she drove Emma with her non-stop twittering. But it helped keep everyone around her both kind in return and generous against her poverty and need. And gave them an excellent example for their own lives.
Jane Austen, Emma
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| Library Cat, Belinda DelPesco |
My trusty studio assistant, Scout. He’s all about being helpful, especially if you need things like fur in the paint, shoe laces untied while carving details on a block, paint brushes scattered to the floor, or a lap warmer.She's always got interesting information about how each piece was created. Click on the link to go to Belinda's blog.
"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.This first line has made me try several times to read the book but, alas, I've just never been able to stick with it. That line though is so evocative. I can just see Aunt Dot and that camel! I believe she has a parasol.
Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond
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| Unglazed camel and Sogdian rider, taken by I, Sailko |
The bitterness of boyish distresses does not lie in the fact that they are large; it lies in the fact that we do not know that they are small. About any early disaster there is a dreadful finality; a lost child can suffer like a lost soul.
It is currently said that hope goes with youth, and lends to youth its wings of a butterfly; but I fancy that hope is the last gift given to man, and the only gift not given to youth. Youth is pre-eminently the period in which a man can be lyric, fanatical, poetic; but youth is the period in which a man can be hopeless. The end of every episode is the end of the world. But the power of hoping through everything, the knowledge that the soul survives its adventures, that great inspiration comes to the middle-aged; God has kept that good wine until now. it is from the backs of the elderly gentlemen that the wings of the butterfly should burst. There is nothing that so much mystifies the young as the consistent frivolity of the old. They have discovered their indestructibility. They are in their second and clearer childhood, and there is a meaning in the merriment of their eyes. They have seen the end of the End of the World.
G.K. Chesterton, Dickens
A religion is a thing which, by its nature, does not think of men as more or less valuable, but of men as all intensely and painfully valuable, a democracy of eternal danger. For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.
G. K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens
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| Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge, 1897–99, Claude Monet |
...you must work to earn your salvation, in anxious fear. Both the will to do it and the accomplishment of that will are something which God accomplishes in you, to carry out his loving purpose. Do all that lies in you, never complaining, never hesitating, to shew yourselves innocent and single-minded, God's children, bringing no reproach on his name. You live in an age that is twisted out of its true pattern, and among such people you shine out, beacons to the world, upholding the message of life.This phrase, You live in an age that is twisted out of its true pattern, really struck me. Because there is nothing new under the sun. Paul lived in those times and so do we. I needed that reminder and also his encouragement, do all that lies in you, never complaining, never hesitating. Good stuff.
Philippians 2:12-15, Knox translation
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