Today's Words of Wisdom - September 17, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Gail Carson Levine (1947 - ):

“A library is infinity under a roof.”

and

“There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.”

and

“When you become a teenager, you step onto a bridge. You may already be on it. The opposite shore is adulthood. Childhood lies behind. The bridge is made of wood. As you cross, it burns behind you.”

William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963):

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

and

“Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.”

and

“I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.”

and

“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

Hank Williams (1923 – 1953):

“Don't take life TOO serious; you can't get out alive anyhow.”

Ken Kesey (1935 – 2001):

 “The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer. They think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

Reinhold Messner (1944 – ):

“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.”

a poem by William Carlos Williams

"Memory of April"

You say love is this, love is that:

Poplar tassels, willow tendrils

the wind and the rain comb,

tinkle and drip, tinkle and drip--

branches drifting apart. Hagh!

Love has not even visited this country.

June 7, 2015

Good Morning! Here are your daily birthday quotations...

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000):

“Live not for Battles Won.

Live not for The-End-of-the-Song.

Live in the along.”

and

“Poetry is life distilled.”

and

“Books are meat and medicine

and flame and flight and flower

steel, stitch, cloud and clout,

and drumbeats on the air.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952 - ):

“Real museums are places where Time is transformed into Space.”

and

“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”

Louise Erdrich (1954 - ):

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

and

“We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.”

and

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”

Prince (1958 - ):

“If you don't like the world you're living in, take a look around you, at least you got friends.”

and

“Act your age and not your shoe size.”

and

“Put the right letters together and make a better day.”

May 9, 2015

Good Morning! Here are your daily birthday quotations...

J.M. Barrie (1860 – 1937):

“Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting.”

and

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”

and

“Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.”

and

“'Wendy,' Peter Pan continued in a voice that no woman has ever yet been able to resist, 'Wendy, one girl is more use than twenty boys.' ”

and

“Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.”

and

“If you have it [love], you don't need to have anything else, and if you don't have it, it doesn't matter much what else you have.”

and

“Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

Eleanor Estes (1906 – 1988):

“After a long, long time she reached an important conclusion. She was never going to stand by and say nothing again.”

Richard Adams (1920 - ):

“Whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you.”

and

“Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.”

Charles Simic (1938 - ):

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.”

and

“Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.”

and

“A poem is an invitation to a voyage. As in life, we travel to see fresh sights.”

Jorie Graham (1950 - ):

“This is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing

is to be pure. What you get is to be changed.”

Dave Gahan (1962 - ):

“I still hold on to the idea that a record can really change the way I feel.”

Paul Heaton (1962 - ):

“Old Red's in town

And sitting late at night he doesn't make a sound

Just adding to the winkles on his deathly frown

They're only red from all the tears that I should've shed

They're only red from all the women that I could've wed

So when you look into these eyes I hope you realise

They could never be blue”

Billy Joel (1949 - ):

And So It Goes

In every heart there is a room

A sanctuary safe and strong

To heal the wounds from lovers past

Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones

You answered me with no pretense

And still I feel I said too much

My silence is my self defense

And every time I've held a rose

It seems I only felt the thorns

And so it goes, and so it goes

And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave

Then that would be my worst mistake

So I will share this room with you

And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed

It's just as well for all I've seen

And so it goes, and so it goes

And you're the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you

That's if the choice were mine to make

But you can make decisions too

And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes

And you're the only one who knows