scars

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

Garrison Keillor (1942 - ), in Salon.com

citizens

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead (1901 - 1978)

giving

The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892)

try

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945)

convinced

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885), Les Miserables, 1862

dimly

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)

diligence

What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), Lives of the Poets

funny

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

honey

A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.

Winnie the Pooh

play

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.

John Cleese

excellence

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

required

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

Sir Winston Churchill

road

Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.

C. S. Lewis

deserve

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

inside

There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.

Winston Churchill

necessities

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

failure

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.

Mary Pickford

perfection

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

nonsense

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

cheer

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.

John Muir

matter

No matter what is said, I will always believe that details matter.

Brian Dowd

see

Who we are, shapes what we see.

Chris Orwig

future

Show me your friends and I'll show you your future.

Unknown

borrowed

You don't take a photograph. You ask, quietly, to borrow it.

Unknown

new blog

I've started a new blog...

In the spirit of some of my favourite photography sites, I have decided to post [hopefully] daily diptychs (two images) and 30 words or less.

Please join me at a time for habit.

rest

Rest is not idleness, and to lie

sometimes on the grass on a summer

day listening to the murmur of water,

or watching the clouds float across

the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

John Lubboc

closed

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

Helen Keller

first

What I must do first of all is be faithful. If I believe that the first commandment is to love God with my whole heart, mind, and soul, then I should at least be able to spend one hour a day with nobody else but God. The question as to whether it is helpful, useful, practical, or fruitful is completely irrelevant, since the only reason to love is love itself. Everything else is secondary.

Henri Nouwen

existence

The Word became flesh to communicate to us human beings caught in the mud, the pain, the fears and the brokenness of existence, the life, the joy, the communion, the ecstatic gift of love that is the source of all love and life and unity in our universe and that is the very life of God.

Jean Vanier

look

If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment.

Georgia O'Keefe

difference

The difference between you and God is that God doesn't think He's you.

Anne Lamott

small

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is to small to be made into a burden.

Corrie ten Boom, Clippings from My Notebook

green

Fresh and green we will remain

Bearing fruit to a ripe old age

Happy to tell about Your name

A blessed endeavour

The righteous flourish like the palm

And grow like the cedars of Lebanon

Planted in the courts of God

Forever and ever

Fresh and Green, Music and Lyric by Steve Bell, adapted from Psalm 92

understand

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.

Neil Armstrong

mending

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.

Anne Lamott

precious

We must be careful with our lives, for Christ's sake, because it would seem that they are the only lives we are going to have in this puzzling and perilous world, and so they are very precious and what we do with them matters enormously.

Frederick Buechner

simply

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;

And give us not to think so far away

As the uncertain harvest; keep us here

All simply in the springing of the year.

Robert Frost

recklessly

Everything is blooming most recklessly. If it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

Rainer Maria Rilke

gladness

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.

Frederick Buechner

instrument

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the intruments, not the composer.

Geoffrey B. Charlesworth

fathomless

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

Frederick Buechner

moo

Who was the first guy that looked at a cow and said, "I think that I'll drink whatever comes out of those things when I squeeze them?"

Calvin & Hobbes

dwell

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

Rachel Carson

without

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

C.S. Lewis

reflection

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

whispers

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

C.S. Lewis

expressive

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Henry David Thoreau

dream

It is almost impossible to watch a sunset and not dream.

Bern Williams

hourglass

Seize the day, seize whatever you can

'Cause life slips away just like hourglass sand

Seize the day, pray for grace from God's hand

Then nothing will stand in your way

Seize the day

Carolyn Arends, Seize the Day

intoxicate

Flowers really do intoxicate me.

Vita Sackville-West

wild

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, My heart's in the Highlands a chasing the deer; Chasing the wild deer, and following the roe; My heart's in the Highlands, wherever I go.

Robert Burns