That I am I

"This is what I believe:
That I am I.
That my soul is a dark forest.
That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.
That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.
That I must have the courage to let them come and go.
That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.
There is my creed."

- D.H. Lawrence

I Love Thee

"I love thee, I love but thee
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars grow old..."

- Bayard Taylor

It Behooves All of Us

"There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the rest of us."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Valuable Knowledge

"All schools, all colleges, have two great functions: to confer, and to conceal, valuable knowledge. The theological knowledge which they conceal cannot justly be regarded as less valuable than that which they reveal. That is, when a man is buying a basket of strawberries it can profit him to know that the bottom half of it is rotten. - Mark Twain

Paying Attention

"I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics." - Barack Obama

Exchange These Ideas

"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." - George Bernard Shaw

Eyes to See

"Art does not solve problems but makes us aware of their existence. It opens our eyes to see and our brain to imagine."
- Magdalena Abakanowicz

All Perceiving

"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention." - Rudolph Arnheim

Estranged

"If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Believe

"Believe nothing just because a so-called wise person said it. Believe nothing just because a belief is generally held. Believe nothing just because it is said in ancient books. Believe nothing just because it is said to be of divine origin. Believe nothing just because someone else believes it. Believe only what you yourself test and judge to be true."
- Buddha

The Thankless Position

"That is the thankless position of the father in the family -- the provider for all, and the enemy of all. - J. August Strindberg

Balanced by Sadness

"There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness." - Carl Jung

Doing Your Duty

"Do something every day that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain."

- Mark Twain

Causes and Return

"We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results." - Herman Melville

Magical Effect

"Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish"

-John Quincy Adams