War

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

~ William Tecumseh Sherman ~






Image courtesy NYPL Digital Collections.

Just Walk!

I have always loved to sit in ferry and railroad stations and watch the people, to walk on crowded streets, just walk along among the people, and see their faces, to be among people on street cars and trains and boats.

~ Ella R. Bloor ~

A Big Question!

Ask yourself in the quietest hour of the night: must I write? Dig down into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be in the affirmative, if you may meet this solemn question with a strong and simple, I must, then build your life according to this necessity.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~




Sketch by Leonid Pasternak, courtesy Wikimedia.

Endure the Caterpillars

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The bone that has no marrow;
    What ultimate for that?
It is not fit for table,
    For beggar, or for cat.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Photo by swyngarden.

Tell Us How You Really Feel

I am in earnest. I will not equivocate--I will not excuse--I will not retreat a single inch--AND I WILL BE HEARD.

~ William Lloyd Garrison ~






Found in The Suffrage Cook Book, 1915.

Poetry Friday

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:
a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,
so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out
and stood in the light, lashing his tail.

~ Czeslaw Milosz from "Ars Poetica" ~
Postage stamp courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Spoken Like a True Member of the Lost Generation

Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Happy Earth Day!

Banner courtesy NASA.

Grave Danger

All over the world the wildlife that I write about is in grave danger. It is being exterminated by what we call the progress of civilization.

~ Gerald Durrell ~



Photo courtesy www.durrell.org.

Spring People

People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

~ Ernest Hemingway ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

There will be other days,
there will be other voices.
You will smile alone.
The cats will know.

~ Cesare Pavese from "The Cats Will Know" ~
"Girl With Cat" by Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoi, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Promises

April is a promise that May is bound to keep.

~ Hal Borland ~

Poetry Friday

Great art is an instant arrested in eternity.

~ James Huneker ~







[Hanging poems on a cherry tree]. Woodcut print courtesy Library of Congress.

Privileged

Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr. ~






[Note: the sad part is, in the 2010s, those challenged privileged groups are now claiming they're the ones being mistreated! --KK]

1962 photo by O. Fernandez, courtesy Library of Congress.

Sign Language

Poster courtesy Action Deafness.

Adapt!

In the game of life, less diversity means fewer options for change. Wild or domesticated, panda or pea, adaptation is the requirement for survival.

~ Cary Fowler ~




Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Nature-Deficit Disorder

The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need.

~ Richard Louv ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

the cat's bell tinkling
in the peonies
here and there

~ Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue.

Photo by cwgreeny.

Amen to That!

If you don't like gay people, take it up with the manufacturer, because God keeps creating them around the world!

~ John Fugelsang ~

Poetry Friday

...a poem is a chunk of language to be used for purposes seen as important by government-hired experts. It’s irrelevant whether these have anything to do with what poets try to do, but then who cares if this test runs counter to what poets think?

~ Michael Rosen ~

Don't Stop!

When you stop having dreams and ideals--well, you might as well stop altogether.

~ Marian Anderson ~
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Rethinking Wall Treatments

I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her.

~ Ellen DeGeneres ~
Photo by Curtis Cobb, courtesy Wikimedia.

Cross-Stitch Wisdom

Courtesy crossstitch.com.

Keep Moving!

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

~ Walt Disney ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Happy Easter!

How True Is This?

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

~ Mark Twain ~
Photo by amseaman.

Poetry Friday

I think there's one thing which distinguishes our art--we don't consider. We don't think. We write a little verse because it comes to us.

~ Howard Nemerov ~



Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Love a Book!

When I was 10 years old, I loved--I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

~ Jane Goodall ~

It's April Fools' Day!

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

~ William Shakespeare ~
Illustration courtesy openclipart.