Humble Tasks

"I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker."

- Helen Keller

Change Alone is Unchanging

"Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
Knowledge is not intelligence.
In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected.
Change alone is unchanging.
The same road goes both up and down.
The beginning of a circle is also its end.
Not I, but the world says it: all is one.
And yet everything comes in season."

- Heraklietos of Ephesos

Exits and Entrances

"All the world is a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and entrances;
Each man in his time plays many parts."

- William Shakespeare

No Advantage

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Visible Labor

A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor. - Victor Hugo

An Art Connoisseur

"The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an art education; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order." - Robert Henri, The Art Spirit, 1923

Must be the Truth

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock Holmes (by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930)

Failure to Failure

"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm."
- Winston Churchill

Sentimental View of Life

“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness” - Flannery O'Connor

True to Myself

"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
- Frederick Douglass

An Idea and Its Realisation

"Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work. " - Andy Goldsworthy

Specializing in the Impossible

"What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible."
- Theodore Roethke

Against All Odds

"At different stages in our lives, the signs of love may vary dependence, attraction, contentment, worry, loyalty, grief, but at heart the source is always the same. Human beings have the rare capacity to connect with each other, against all odds." - Michael Dorris

Sophistication & Vulnerability

"The more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our buildings and vehicles become, the more vulnerable we are." - Stephen Ambrose

Something of a Mess

"You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a little of that." - E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

Wonder and Humility

"It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility." - Rachel Carson

The Voice of Justice

"Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

First Love

"How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love?"
- Albert Einstein

Power

"We have it in our power to begin the World over again"
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)