Tag: Quotes

Adventures · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Happy New Year!

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“The beginning is always today.”
– Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“It’s never too late to become who you want to be. I hope you live a life that you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start over.”
— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.”
— Chinese proverb

“Darkness must pass
A new day will come
And when the sun shines
It will shine out the clearer.”
— JRR Tolkien

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.” (Little Gidding)”
― T.S. Eliot

“All great beginnings start in the dark, when the moon greets you to a new day at midnight.”
― Shannon L. Alder

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday-Merry Christmas

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“…freshly cut Christmas trees smelling of stars and snow and pine resin – inhale deeply and fill your soul with wintry night…”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“Christmas ribbons decked every crystal ball knocker on every sparkling door as far as the eye could see. Through the snowy streets of the Veiled Village, Echoes and Sounds rushed to and fro, their shimmering clothes looking like pouring rain or ice or waves. Before them multi-colored parcels fluttered like strange birds carried on small see-through wings, and every once in a while two parcels would collide and rain down gifts.”
― Dew Pellucid

“Instead of protesting and cursing others because they write “X-Mas” instead of “Christmas”; try being Christmas. Live Christmas. Breathe Christmas. Act Christmas. Speak Christmas. Reflect Christmas. Listen and feel Christmas
Christ doesn’t care how you write Christmas; he cares how you live Christmas all year long.”
― Sandra Chami Kassis

“Calvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?!
Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to.
Calvin: Oh.”
― Bill Watterson, It’s a Magical World

“I don’t want Christmas season to end, because it’s the only time I can legitimately indulge in on particular addiction: glitter.”
― Eloisa James, Paris in Love

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Folklore

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“Magic
Sandra’s seen a leprechaun,
Eddie touched a troll,
Laurie danced with witches once,
Charlie found some goblins gold.
Donald heard a mermaid sing,
Susy spied an elf,
But all the magic I have known
I’ve had to make myself.”
― Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

“Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves – this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch.”
― Signe Pike, Faery Tale: One Woman’s Search for Enchantment in a Modern World

“Every ancient tale has truth at its heart,” I said. “That’s what I’ve always believed, anyway. But after years and years of retelling, the shape of those old stories changes. What may once have been simple and easily recognized becomes strange, wondrous and magical. Those are only the trappings of the story. The truth lies beneath those fantastic garments.”
― Juliet Marillier, Tower of Thorns

“Once, at the dreaming dawn of history — before the world was categorized and regulated by mortal minds, before solid boundaries formed between the mortal world and any other — fairies roamed freely among men, and the two races knew each other well. Yet the knowing was never straightforward, and the adventures that mortals and fairies had together were fraught with uncertainty, for fairies and humans were alien to each other.”
― Colin Thubron, Fairies and Elves

“There was something about the eyes. It wasn’t the shape or the color. The was no evil glint. But there was…

… a look. It was such a look that a microbe might encounter if it could see up from the bottom end of the microscope. It said: You are nothing. It said: You are flawed, you have no value. It said: You are animal. It said: Perhaps you may be a pet, or perhaps you may be a quarry. It said: And the choice is not yours.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Thankful

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“I’m thankful for weird people out there ’cause they’re some of the most creative people.”-Channing Tatum

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”
― Albert Schweitzer

“Thank you…for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.”
― Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Have the wisdom to perceive all there is to be thankful for, and then be thankful for the wisdom to perceive things so clearly.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons: Quotes, Poetry, & a few Short Stories for Every Day of the Year

“When you express thankfulness, even the almost empty tank of petrol will go the extra mile; it changes challenges into opportunities, mistakes into experiences, disappointments into celebrations, doubt into faith.”
― Malti Bhojwani

“The best way to be thankful for the gift of life is to not throw it away.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Play

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“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.-“ Carl Jung

“Play is fundamentally important for learning 21st century skills, such as problem solving, collaboration, and creativity.” – American Pediatric Association

“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Playing should be fun! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for ‘educational’ toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a ‘message.’ Often these ‘tools’ are less interesting and stimulating than the child’s natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.” – Joanne E. Oppenheim

“A lot is said about the serious by the fact that the most intelligent person around is almost always the most playful.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, Author

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Healing

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“Hearts are breakable,” Isabelle said. “And I think even when you heal, you’re never what you were before”.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“do not look for healing
at the feet of those
who broke you”
― Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey

“Time didn’t heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.”
― P.D. James, Innocent Blood

In the east,” she says after a time, her gaze still downcast, “there is a tradition known as kintsukuroi. It is the practice of mending broken ceramic pottery using lacquer dusted with gold and silver and other precious metals. It is meant to symbolize that things can be more beautiful for having been broken.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
At last she looks at me. Her irises are polished obsidian in the moonlight. “Because I want you to know,” she says, “that there is life after survival.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

“When we ignore these quintessential dimensions of humanity, we deprive people of ways to heal from trauma and restore their autonomy. Being a patient, rather than a participant in one’s healing process, separates suffering people from their community and alienates them from an inner sense of self.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Adventures · Party Posts · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Tolkien Edition

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“I sit beside the fire and think
Of all that I have seen
Of meadow flowers and butterflies
In summers that have been

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
In autumns that there were
With morning mist and silver sun
And wind upon my hair

I sit beside the fire and think
Of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring
That I shall ever see

For still there are so many things
That I have never seen
In every wood in every spring
There is a different green

I sit beside the fire and think
Of people long ago
And people that will see a world
That I shall never know

But all the while I sit and think
Of times there were before
I listen for returning feet
And voices at the door”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Animals

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“Animals had carried me all my life. I was a crossover–carried along in the generous and instructive slipstream of other species. And I had always navigated my life with them in mind, going between the human and animal worlds–a crossover myself. By including animals in my life I was always engaging with the Other, imagining the animal mind and life. For almost half a century, my bond with animals had shaped my character and revealed the world to me. At every turning point in my life an animal had mirrored or influenced my fate. Mine was not simply a life with other animals, but a life because of animals.

It had been this way since my beginning, born on a forest lookout station in the High Sierras, surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness and many more animals than humans. Since infancy, the first faces I imprinted, the first faces I ever really loved, were animal.”
― Brenda Peterson, Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals

“Research suggests that the earliest flying reptiles swallowed small pieces of volcanic rock and could breathe out flammable gases like hydrogen produced in their own bodies. It is hypothesized that their ingenious “fire breath” was used as a defense against predatory reptiles.”
― Karen Shanor, Bats Sing, Mice Giggle: The Surprising Science of Animals’ Inner Lives

“Just so you know,’ I explained, remembering my own earlier arrogance, ‘if you’ve ever owned a cat and therefore think you know how to handle a puma, you don’t. It would be like playing with sharks because you once owned a goldfish.”
― Peter Allison, How to Walk a Puma: And Other Things I Learned While Stumbling through South America

“The evening before I departed I stood on the rim of a lagoon on Isla Rabida. Flamingos rode on its dark surface like pink swans, apparently asleep. Small, curved feathers, shed from their breasts, drifted away from them over the water on a light breeze. I did not move for an hour. It was a moment of such peace, every troubled thread in a human spirit might have uncoiled and sorted itself into a graceful order. Other flamingos stood in the shallows with diffident elegance in the falling light, not feeding but only staring off toward the ocean. They seemed a kind of animal I had never quite seen before.”
― Barry Lopez, About This Life

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Relaxation

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“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.”-Thich Nhat Hanh

“Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.”-Barbara Kingsolver

“Meditation is to be aware of every thought and of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong, but just to watch it and move with it. In that watching, you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling. And out of this awareness comes silence.”-Jiddu Krishnamurti

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou

“Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.” —Chinese Proverb

Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Stars Above

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“In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet.”
― Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
― Isaac Asimov

“I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two million years to reach the earth.[Having identified Uranus (1781), the first planet discovered since antiquity.]”
― William Herschel

“Few of us have seen the stars as folk saw them then – our cities and towns cast too much light into the night – but, from the village of Wall, the stars were laid out like worlds or like ideas, uncountable as the trees in a forest or the leaves on a tree.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust

“Winter is the time for stories, staying fast by the glow of fire. And outside, in the darkness, the stars are brighter than you can possibly imagine.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth