Sunbeams

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Think, when you are enraged at anyone, what would probably become your sentiments should he die during the dispute.

William Shenstone

The epitaph that I would write for history would say: I conceal nothing. It is not enough not to lie. One should strive not to lie in a negative sense by remaining silent.

Leo Tolstoy

Nothing is mine, I have only nothing but it is enough, it is beautiful and it is all mine. Do I even walk about in my own skin or is it something I have borrowed to spare my modesty?

Katherine Anne Porter

When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.

Edgar Watson Howe

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation of how it shall be spent.

Samuel Johnson

Observe things as they are and don’t pay attention to other people.

Huang Po

Fear grows out of the things we think; it lives in our minds. Compassion grows out of the things we are, and lives in our hearts.

Michael Garrison

Nothing burns in hell but the self.

Theologica Germanica

We have a long, long way to go. So let us hasten along the road, the road of human tenderness and generosity. Groping, we may find one another’s hands in the dark.

Emily Greene Balch

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.

Dodie Smith

Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts, shaking the woman. She braced herself.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Goodness me, when Giotto was painting his murals of the Life of Christ at Padua, he wasn’t thinking of me! And it certainly means something to me. I think that thinking too much about communicating and making the work mean something to others is a sure way of having it mean nothing at all to anybody.

Norman Adams

I wasn’t worried about a perfect game going into the ninth. It was like a dream. I was going on like I was in a daze. I never thought about it the whole time. If I’d thought about it I wouldn’t have thrown a perfect game. I know I wouldn’t.

Catfish Hunter

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. Somerset Maugham

By being both here and beyond I am becoming a horizon.

Mark Strand

Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God is manifest everywhere, in everything — in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without God. It’s impossible. It’s simply impossible.

Thomas Merton