Tom Wilson

You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.

Elie Wiesel

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. 

Barbara Crooker

...[T]his has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.

--an excerpt from "Ordinary Life" (2001)

Mama Zara Kushandwizdom

Create positive space around you,
even if its in your mind.
You must have an environment of good energy,
in order to give that.

John Muir

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men...trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings -- many of them not so much. 

Abraham Hicks

Your work is not to make it happen, your work is to let it happen. And you let it happen by possibility thinking, not negative thinking...by hopeful thinking, not doubtful thinking...by believing it will come, rather than doubting it will come...By talking yourself into feeling good!

Paul Zimmer

Dog Music 

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.

My big dog sang with me so purely,

puckering her ruffled lips into an O,

beginning with small, swallowing sounds

like Coltrane musing, then rising to power

and resonance, gulping air to continue—

her passion and sense of flawless form—

singing with me, but mostly for the art of dogs.

We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"

"Naima," "The Trout," "Jeg elsker Dig," "Perdido."

She was a great master and died young,

leaving me with unrelieved grief,

her talents known only to a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing

but listens with discernment, requiring

skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.

When I sing her name and words of love,

Andante, con brio, vivace, adagio,

at times she is so moved she turns

to place her paw across her snout,

closing her eyes, sighing like a girl

I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.

Indeed, true strains rise only from

the rich, red chambers of a canine heart;

these melodies best when the moon is up,

listeners and singers together and apart,

beyond friendship and anger,

far from any human imposter—

songs of bones, turds, conquests,

hunts and scents, ballads of

long nights lifting to starlight.

--from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited (2007)

Manohla Dargis

Putting the world in Mr. Damon’s hands is as smart as making him the star of a big special-effects fantasia. At once preternaturally boyish and middle aged (he’s 42), Mr. Damon has become the greatest utility player in movies: No one can better vault across rooftops and in and out of genres and make you care greatly if he falls. He’s so homespun that he could have sprung wholly formed from a corn silo. But it’s the ease and sincerity with which Mr. Damon conveys moral decency — so that it feels as if it originates from deep within rather than from, say, God or country — that helps make him a strikingly contemporary ideal of what used to be regularly called the American character.

-The New York Times, The Worst is Yet to Come (review of Elysium), Aug 8 2013

Osho

If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.

Unknown

Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.

Unknown

Worry is a misuse of your imagination.

Mahatma Gandhi

Seven Deadly Sins

Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Science without humanity
Knowledge without character
Politics without principle
Commerce without morality
Worship without sacrifice.

Mahatma Gandhi

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Unknown

Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.

Unknown

Be strong; you never know who you are inspiring.