Saturday, February 28, 2015

Behold the View






Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.

~ David McCullough ~

Friday, February 27, 2015

Poetry Friday








As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~








Photogravure courtesy Library of Congress.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Discoveries







The very nature of science is discoveries, and the best of those discoveries are the ones you don't expect.

~ Neil deGrasse Tyson ~






Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Pets








Pets don't do the human things of guilt and anger and recrimination that we do. They come and go with great acceptance.

~ Jon Katz ~

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Birds


It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds.

~ Aesop ~

Illustration from Three Hundred Aesop's Fables.

Monday, February 23, 2015

Me, Neither!


I can't picture going to a beach, or anywhere on vacation, without a couple of books as companions.

~ Rosecrans Baldwin ~

Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote


In the long run even a dog will compromise with the cat.

~ Hungarian proverb ~

Photo by Leslie Jones, courtesy Boston Public Library.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

Words from a Bibliophile

There will always be non-readers, bad readers, lazy readers--there always were. Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader.

~ Julian Barnes~

Friday, February 20, 2015

Poetry Friday


The irony is, going to work every day became the subject of probably my best poetry.

~ Philip Levine ~

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Wild Animals





Wild animals would not stay in a country where there were so many people. Pa did not like to stay, either. He liked a country where the wild animals lived without being afraid.

~ Laura Ingalls Wilder ~





Photo courtesy Wikimedia.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Museums


Outside museums, in noisy public squares, people look at people. Inside museums, we leave that realm and enter what might be called the group-mind, getting quiet to look at art.

~ Jerry Saltz ~

Print courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Winter

Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.

~ Willa Cather ~

Cather is buried here in NH, so she should know!

Monday, February 16, 2015

Happy Birthday George!







If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

~ George Washington ~

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote





As a child I parleyed with animals, stuffed and real.
Making my kitten pilot of a boot, I guided
from one end of a string the dizzy flight and collapse.

~ Carol Frost from "The Fearful Child" ~







Painting by Suzanne Valadon, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Friday, February 13, 2015

Poetry Friday





In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.

~ Erica Jong ~



Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

And Sometimes They Work Together

Visual art and writing don't exist on an aesthetic hierarchy that positions one above the other, because each is capable of things the other can't do at all. Sometimes one picture is equal to 30 pages of discourse, just as there are things images are completely incapable of communicating.

~ William S. Burroughs ~

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Bicycles




The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

~ Christopher Morley ~

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Snow!


One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

~ Susan Orlean ~

Photo by Jack Delano (1940), courtesy Library of Congress.

Monday, February 9, 2015

Like Cherries Jubilee


You can't serve up hearts like cherries jubilee.

~ Leonard Bailey ~

[Interesting quote! I thought it a rather appropriate quote for Valentine's Day week, until I looked up Leonard Bailey. It seems that Leonard Bailey is a heart surgeon famous for infant heart transplants! Gives a whole 'nother meaning to the quote, doesn't it?]

Photo courtesy CBC (also includes a recipe).

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote





The breeze and the dawn
will flourish again
when you return,
as if beneath your step.
Between flowers and sills
the cats will know.

~ Cesare Pavese from "The Cats Will Know" ~





"Edith with Lierre" by Lilla Cabot Perry, courtesy The Athenaeum.

Saturday, February 7, 2015

Do More by Doing Less

Fear less, hope more; eat less, chew more; whine less, breathe more; talk less, say more; love more, and all good things will be yours.

~ Swedish proverb ~

Friday, February 6, 2015

Poetry Friday



Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.


~ Jack Kerouac ~


Photo by Diamondmagna, courtesy Wikimedia.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Happy Birthday, Hank Aaron!

I never doubted my ability, but when you hear all your life you're inferior, it makes you wonder if the other guys have something you've never seen before. If they do, I'm still looking for it.

~ Hank Aaron ~

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Television





Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

~ T. S. Eliot ~





Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Requires Supreme Art of Common Sense





The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

~ Sun Tzu ~





Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Monday, February 2, 2015

What Is Your Closet Celebrating?


Your closet needs to be a place of joy and celebration of who are you now--not who you were.

~ Stacy London ~

I couldn't resist this illustration of a closet! It's from a 1884 children's book, courtesy NYPL Digital Library.

Sunday, February 1, 2015

Sunday's Kat Kwote








It doesn't do to be sentimental about cats; the best ones don't respect you for it.

~ Susan Howatch ~






Painting by Suzanne Valadon (1919), courtesy The Athenaeum.