Today's Words of Wisdom - October 21, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834):

“Poetry: the best words in the best order.”

and

“Sir, I admit your general rule,

That every poet is a fool,

But you yourself may serve to show it,

That every fool is not a poet.”

and

“Our own heart, and not other men's opinions, forms our true honor.”

and

“Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”

Dizzy Gillespie (1917 – 1993):

"I always try to teach by example and not force my ideas on a young musician. One of the reasons we’re here is to be a part of this process of exchange."

Ursula K. LeGuin (1929 - ):

“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.”

and

“A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.”

and

“When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.”

and

“The creative adult is the child who has survived.”

Mary Blair (1911 – 1978):

“You get an education in school and in college. And then you start to work, and that’s when you learn!”

Ai (1947 – 2010):

Conversation

for Robert Lowell

We smile at each other

and I lean back against the wicker couch.  

How does it feel to be dead? I say.

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.  

And when you open your mouth,

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor  

and burns a hole through it.

Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.  

Did you ever, you start,

wear a certain kind of silk dress

and just by accident,

so inconsequential you barely notice it,  

your fingers graze that dress

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,  

you see it too

and you realize how that image

is simply the extension of another image,  

that your own life

is a chain of words

that one day will snap.

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,  

and beginning to rise heavenward

in their confirmation dresses,

like white helium balloons,

the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning,

and above all that,

that’s where I’m floating,  

and that’s what it’s like

only ten times clearer,

ten times more horrible.  

Could anyone alive survive it?

Josh Ritter (1976 - ):

“Most of all: There's uncertainty in our lives. At night, you just have to go to sleep and have faith in the fairly large certainty that you'll wake up in the morning. Fear only has as much power as we give it space.”