Reflections of a Recreational Reader: Part IV

Let the beauty of love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

--Rumi

The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our own darkness and says, 'see?'

--The Artist's Way

Once you have known need it is a phantom that hangs over any luxury

--Julia Alvarez, Saving the World

We say that people are proud of being rich or clever or good looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever or good-looking, there would be nothing to be proud of

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Everything is usually so masked and perfumed in this world, and it's touching when you get to see something real and human. I think that's why most of us stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull--because when people have seen you at your worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much. And that gives us license to try on that radical hat of liberation, the hat of self-acceptanc; we're allowed to escape from underneath one of the fatwas

--Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

Our own life is the instrument with which we experience the truth

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Arguing isn't where the faith is. That just feeds the ego. It's all in the doing.

--Phil Jackson, Sacred Hoops

We are here to learn to endure the beams of love

--Blake

Haroun knew what he knew; That the real world was full of magic, so magical worlds could be real

--Haroun and the Sea of Stories

There are cracks in everything. That's how light gets in.

--Leonard Cohen

And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass, and nails and blood, will breathe it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano

--Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

She was extending a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke her fingers with my silence

--Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

In religion, as in war and everythingg else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth...in the end, only despair

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

History says don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime, the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme

--Seamus Heanly

One: out of clutter find simplicity. Two: from discord find harmony. Three: In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity

--Albert Einstein

When the work is done she forgets. That is why it lasts forever
--Tao Te Ching