“When an elder dies, a great library and archive burns to the ground.”

~ Bruce Kidd, Dean of physical education and health at the University of Toronto. citing an Ethiopian saying

"If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up people together to collect wood
and don’t assign them tasks and work,
but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow."

~ Lawrence Clark Powell

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

~ The Moment by Margaret Atwood

"In the wilderness there is never this sense of having to move, never the feeling of boredom if nothing dramatic happens. Time moves slowly, as it should, for it is a part of beauty that cannot be hurried if it is to be understood. Without this easy flowing, life can become empty and hectic."

~Reflections from the North Country, by Sigurd Olson

"Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself"

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery author of the "Little Prince"

Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges.

~ Haiku by Australian Poet Kevin Hart in "The Ethical Imagination" by Margaret Somerville

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

~ Charles Darwin

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
I awoke and saw that life was service.
I acted and behold service was joy.

~ Rabindranath Tagore

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
~ Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
~ From Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series

"There have been joys too great to be described in words, and there have been griefs upon which I have not dared to dwell, and with these in mind I say, climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are naught without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste, look well to each step, and from the beginning think what may be the end."
~ Edward Whymper

"The highest reward for man's toil is not what he gets for it, but what he becomes by it."
~ John Ruskin

"To know thyself is the ultimate form of aggression."
~ Marion Levy Jr.

"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
~ Herbert Spencer

"Anyone can sympathize with another's sorrow, but to sympathize with another's joy is the attribute of an angel."
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

There is not much to choose between a woman who deceives us for another, and a woman who deceives another for ourselves.
~ Augier

"Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It is the aim of art to give it some."

~ Jean Anouilh, French playwright
(as quoted in the Globe & Mail)

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars:
The drift of pinions, would we harken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone, and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces
That miss the many-splendoured thing.

~Francis Thompson - 'In No Strange Land'

"The Bird of Time bas but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing."
~Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) in The Rubaiyat

"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
~William Pitt

"There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher."

"For love is but the heart's immortal thirst to be completely known and all forgiven"
~Henry Van Dyke

"There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar; it keeps the mind nimble; it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor."
~George Santayana

If you want to know your past life,
look into your present condition;
if you want to know your future
look into your present action.
~ Padmisambha

Near the foot of the mountain we visited a yogi who dwelled in a hollow tunneled beneath a boulder. He pondered our notion of climbing Shivling and said: "First travel, then struggle, finally calm."
~ Greg Child

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. "
~ Rabindranath Tagore

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
~ Blaise Pascal

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
~ ???

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
~ Plato

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
~ Goethe

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them."
~Albert Einstein