“Irreverenceis the champion of liberty and its only sure defense.”

MarkTwain

She carries her children

for only a little while,

but her heart will

hold them

forever.

From Leonard Cohen:

"Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in."

and from Deuteronomy:

"So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

My Favorite quote most generally credited to Mark Twain;

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you’ve never been hurt and live like it’s heaven on Earth."

When our son was younger I taught this to him and he uses this quote often (he is 22 now). 

This poem by Dorothy Brown Thompson means a lot to me.   It is titled Unlearned Lesson

Veteran’s Day of every year

The little valiant flags appear

On every fallen soldier’s  grave

Symbol of what each died to save

And we who see and still have breath

Are we no wiser for their death?

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass….it’s about learning to dance in the rain! 

I don’t know where I read this but it stuck.

This is not "words to live by" as so many of these wonderful posts are…just a little excercise I have for days when I think my brain might be turning to rust…. A little shot o’ dubya-dee-fawty for the mind…..

                                Scarlatti

Hemidemisemiquavery,

Thinsinuous schematic mice

With contrapuntal bravery

Skate on architectured ice.

They quiver neat

Allegro eyes and pizzicatti feet,

Climb frozen scales,

Slide down cadenza trails

Adlibitum and sit

With frugal rodent wit

On rallentando tails. 

Then teasing, luring

     and amazing purring Tempo-Tom,

They skip and scamper cadence-laden home.

          ———Francis Pledger Hulme   "Come Up The Valley" 

A quote by Loren Eiseley has been my favorite for many years.  "Make no mistake.  Everything in the mind is in rat’s country.  It doesn’t die.  They are merely carried; these desparate memories, back and forth in the desert of a billion neurons, set down, picked up, and dropped again by mental pack rats.  Nothing perishes, it is merely lost till a surgeon’s electrode starts the music of an olld player piano whose scrolls are dust.  Or you yourself do it, tossing in the restless nights, or even in the day on a strange street when a hurdy-gurdy plays.  Nothing is lost, but it can never be again as it was.  You will only find the bits and cry out because they were yourself." Joan M Watkins

"We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence is not an art - but a habit."  Aristotle

"Suffering is not ennobling - Recovery is."  Dr. C. Barnard

"It’s not the triumph - but the struggle."  From The Olympic Creed

"Patience is the companion of Wisdom."  St. Augstine

"When it gets dark enough, the stars come out."  Albert Camus 

The one that comes to mind first I first discovered in Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, but I later found is from a poem title "Solidarity Explained" by James Duke, an Australian poet:

When the axe first came into the forest
The trees said to each other
The handle is one of us.

Golden girls & boys all must, like chimney sweepers, go to dust  - Shakespeare -

A bit funereal, but it sticks - for a quip I like Theodore Roosevelt’s

Do what you can where you are, with what you have!

To add on only, to this lovely, growing list of spectacular inspiration and remembrances:

From my babysitter when I was 7 or 8 years old, in my autograph book, because I so admired her and in fact she has been one of the greatest influences of my artistic life, a quote by the Beatles (I believe originally penned by John Lennon): "The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful, and so are you"

From the great novelist Stephen King:

"The most important things are the hardest to say.  Theyare the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.  But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.  And you may make revelations that cost you dearly onlyto have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you though it was so important that you almost cried while  you were saying it.  That’s the worst, I think.  When the secret stays locked within, not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear."

The incomprable W.H. Auden:

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

Another musical icon, David Bowie:

"And these children that you spit on, as they try to change their world, are immune to your consultation, they’re quite aware of what they’re going through."

And the words I live by daily, most often attributed to the late, great Nat King Cole (who indeed sang them beautifully), but were really written by one Eden Ahbez (aka George McGrew, George Alexander Eberle):

" …The greatest thing you’ll ever learn

Is just to love, and be loved in return" 

 Moody Blues Night is White Satin

Breathe deep in the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day’s useless energy’s spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
And we decide which is right
And which is an illusion?