Kiss the joy as it flies

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

– William Blake

image: Sydney Long (1871-1955)

Obstacle or Opportunity

Childhood is that state which ends the moment a puddle is first viewed as an obstacle instead of an opportunity

MICHAEL K WILLIAMS

Shirley Baker 1964

In the Case of Good Books

“In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.” 
― Mortimer J. Adler

image: Lin Kristensen acquired from Wikimedia Commons

The Herd

Hence any one who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.~ Spinoza

Illumination

But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years – and it opens.

~ Marcel Proust

image – Rockwell Kent

Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside

Image: René Magritte

“Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colours. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects. Everything was there and movement as well… Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us…I could light myself…that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting…” – Jacques Lusseyran

Stargazer

Image: ‘Stargazer’ – Sam Wolfe Connelly

“There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht — I can see they have already begun.” – Hermann Hesse; Glass Bead Game

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” – Hermann Hesse; Damien

I am not absentminded

“I am not absentminded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.”
-G. K. Chesterton

image:  John Gutmann 1934

The hands that work on us

What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.

—Rainer Maria Rilke from Letters, Vol. I: 1892-1910

 

Knowing how to be Solitary..

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as an escape.” Bell Hooks