Sunday Dinner: Nostalgia II

Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof,

thinking of home.”

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  William C. Faulkner

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Colonial Williamsburg, 2016

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“It is strange how we hold on

to the pieces of the past

while we wait for our futures.”

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  Ally Condie

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Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“The Greek word for “return” is nostos.

Algos means “suffering.”

So nostalgia is the suffering caused

by an unappeased yearning to return.”

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Milan Kundera

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Colonial Williamsburg 2016

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“Memory believes

before knowing remembers.

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  William Faulkner

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Colonial Williamsburg December 2015

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“Remembrance of things past

is not necessarily the remembrance of things

as they were.”

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Marcel Prous

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Colonial Williamsburg 2015

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“There are a few moments in your life

when you are truly and completely happy,

and you remember to give thanks.

Even as it happens you are nostalgic for the moment,

you are tucking it away in your scrapbook.”

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David Benioff

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December 2016

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“For children, childhood is timeless.

It is always the present.

Everything is in the present tense.

Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them

and Christmas comes round in the end.

But they don’t feel it. Today is what they feel,

and when they say ‘When I grow up,’

there is always an edge of disbelief—

how could they ever be other than what they are?”

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Ian McEwan

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December 2016 Powhatan Creek

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“The ‘what should be’ never did exist,

but people keep trying to live up to it.

There is no ‘what should be,’

there is only what is.”

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Lenny Bruce

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Rose window, Bruton Parish, Williamsburg VA December 2017

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We each find ourselves in uncharted territory this December as we struggle to adapt to the changes swirling around us.  We are haunted by memories, sweet and sad; even as we look ahead with hope.  Let us focus on the eternal ‘Now,’ finding peace and happiness in this present moment.  One day we will look back with nostalgia at this unique time, as rich in opportunities as in limitations. 

As we approach Winter Solstice and a fresh new year, let us mine the sweetness of this moment, share the love always bubbling up in our hearts, and spread the light of understanding, one to another.

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Colonial Williamsburg, December 2016

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Woodland Gnome 2020

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December 2020

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Please visit my other site, Illuminations, for a daily photo of something beautiful and a positive thought.

 

Sunday Dinner: Finding Peace

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“We wander through our lives

not sure of what we’re searching for.

“What is my calling?” we might speak to ourselves again and again.

It’s a redundant question;

we might even shout out loud, with no return response.

The answer to our question is peacefulness.

Once we find as much as possible,

we can begin to enjoy simple pleasures, and passions,

without interruption.

Nothing will fall in line without a soft place to land.”

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  Ron Baratono

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“Silence is not absence of words.

Silence is the space where words arise and dissolve.

Without silence, words have no meaning”

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Rashmit Kalra

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“The one who has found inner silence,

stops pondering over the meaning of life

and starts living it.

That’s the journey from “going with the flow”

to “being the flow.”

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  Rashmit Kalra

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“Until he extends the circle of his compassion

to all living things,

man will not himself find peace.”

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  Albert Schweitzer

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“I have within me all that I need;

I am love and life in action.”

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  Jodi Livon

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“World peace must develop from inner peace.

Peace is not just mere absence of violence.

Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.”

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The 14th Dali Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

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“To be wise means to know when to stay silent.”
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  Kamand Kojouri

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

Please visit my other site, Illuminations, for a daily quotation and a photo of something beautiful.

Sunday Dinner: Join the Dance

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“The only way to make sense out of change

is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
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Alan Wilson Watts

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“Nothing in the world is permanent,

and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last,

but surely we’re still more foolish

not to take delight in it while we have it.”
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  W. Somerset Maugham

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“Consider the sunlight.

You may see it is near,

yet if you follow it from world to world

you will never catch it in your hands.

Then you may describe it as far away and, lo,

you will see it just before your eyes.

Follow it and, behold, it escapes you;

run from it and it follows you close.

You can neither possess it nor have done with it.

From this example you can understand

how it is with the true Nature of all things and,

henceforth, there will be no need to grieve

or to worry about such things.”
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  Huang Po

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“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever,

it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting,

the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

Generations do not cease to be born,

and we are responsible to them

because we are the only witnesses they have.”
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  James Baldwin

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Of what is the body made?

It is made of emptiness and rhythm.

At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world,

there is no solidity… there is only the dance.”
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George Leonard

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Sunday Dinner: Miraculous

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“I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search.

I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen.

I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look.

And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take.

I have learned that miracles are only called miracles

because they are often witnessed by only those

who can can see through all of life’s illusions.

I am ready to see what really exists on other side,

what exists behind the blinds,

and taste all the ugly fruit

instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.”

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Suzy Kassem

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“To love someone

is to see a miracle invisible to others.”

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François Mauriac

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“A miracle is when the whole is greater

than the sum of its parts.

A miracle is when one plus one

equals a thousand.”

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Frederick Buechner

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“Miracles are not contrary to nature

but only contrary

to what we know about nature.”

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St. Augustine

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“To live at all is miracle enough.”

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Mervyn Peake

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“There are days when I think I don’t believe anymore.

When I think I’ve grown too old for miracles.

And that’s right when another seems to happen.”

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Dana Reinhardt

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Please visit my site, Illuminations, for a daily quotation and a photo of something beautiful.

 

Sunday Dinner: Bittersweet

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“I searched among her crayons for a color that represented autumn and pulled out an orange-toned crayon, never used. It read “Bittersweet,” and I wondered why that particular name. Autumn was my favorite time of year… I was always ready for the change. I guess some people didn’t see it that way. Some people wanted to cling to summer… I loved both seasons, but I thought no one would ever call spring bittersweet, even though it was just another change, another new cycle, an end to one season and a beginning for another in an endless, never-ending spiral.”

Janet Rebhan

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“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.”

Elizabeth Lesser

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“We have a tendency to become detached observers rather than participants.  There might also be a sense of disassembling a complex, flowing process to focus on a small part of it. If we expand our focus to include emerging, one of the first changes we may notice is the bodily sense of being in the midst of something, of constant motion, lack of clarity (in the left-hemisphere sense), and unpredictability.”

Bonnie Badenoch

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“Light precedes every transition.

Whether at the end of a tunnel, through a crack in the door

or the flash of an idea,

it is always there, heralding a new beginning.”

Teresa Tsalaky

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“The best part of your story is when it changes.”

Bella Bloom

 

Visit my other site, Illuminations, for a daily quotation and a photo of something beautiful.

 

Sunday Dinner: The Known

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“Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say,

`That is an oak tree’, or `that is a banyan tree’,

the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge,

has so conditioned your mind

that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree?

To come in contact with the tree

you have to put your hand on it

and the word will not help you to touch it.”

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Jiddu Krishnamurti

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“Their life is mysterious,

it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity,

it can be comprehended, described,

but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow,

the density blinds one.

Within there is no form, only prodigious detail

that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight,

foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap,

insects, silence, flowers. And all of this, dependent, closely woven,

all of it is deceiving.

There are really two kinds of life.

There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living,

and there is the other.

It is this other which causes the trouble,

this other we long to see.”

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James Salter

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“I’m planting a tree

to teach me to gather strength

from my deepest roots.”

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Andrea Koehle Jones

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“In a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike.

And no two journeys along the same path are alike.”
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  Paulo Coelho

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Flowering Dogwood, Cornus florida

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Trees, for example, carry the memory of rainfall.

In their rings we read ancient weather—

storms, sunlight, and temperatures,

the growing seasons of centuries.

A forest shares a history, which each tree remembers

even after it has been felled.”

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Anne Michaels

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Sunday Dinner: Sabi

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“Wabi sabi is an intuitive response to beauty

that reflects the true nature of life.

Wabi sabi is an acceptance and appreciation

of the impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete

nature of everything.”

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Beth Kempton

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“But when does something’s destiny finally come to fruition?

Is the plant complete when it flowers?

When it goes to seed? When the seeds sprout?

When everything turns into compost?”

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Leonard Koren

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“Wabi is about finding beauty in simplicity,

and a spiritual richness and serenity

in detaching from the material world.

Sabi is more concerned with the passage of time,

with the way that all things grow and decay

and how ageing alters the visual nature of those things.

It’s less about what we see,

and more about how we see.”

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Beth Kempton

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“…in repairing the object

you really ended up loving it more,

because you now knew its eagerness to be reassembled,

and in running a fingertip over its surface

you alone could feel its many cracks –

a bond stronger than mere possession.”

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Nicholson Baker

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“Should we look at the spring blossoms

only in full flower,

or the moon only when cloudless and clear?”

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Beth Kempton

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“Things wabi-sabi have no need

for the reassurance of status or the validation of market culture.

They have no need for documentation of provenance.

Wabi-sabi-ness in no way depends

on knowledge of the creator’s background or personality.

In fact, it is best if the creator is of no distinction, invisible, or anonymous.”

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Leonard Koren

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“And therein lies a crucial observation:

Japanese beauty is discovered in the experiencing,

not just the seeing.”

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Beth Kempton

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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Sabi is beauty or serenity that comes with age,

when the life of the object and its impermanence

are evidenced in its patina and wear,

or in any visible repairs.

After centuries of incorporating artistic

and Buddhist influences from China,

wabi-sabi eventually evolved into a distinctly Japanese ideal.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

 

Visit Illuminations, for a daily quotation and a photo of something beautiful.

Sunday Dinner: Paradox

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“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.

Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”

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  Marcus Aurelius

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“Art is the lie that

enables us to realize the truth.”

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  Pablo Picasso

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“But you can’t make people listen.

They have to come round in their own time,

wondering what happened

and why the world blew up around them.

It can’t last.”

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  Ray Bradbury

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“The opposite of a correct statement

is a false statement.

But the opposite of a profound truth

may well be another profound truth.”

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Niels Bohr

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“You may choose to look the other way

but you can never say again

that you did not know.”

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William Wilberforce

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“I do not know what I may appear to the world,

but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy

playing on the sea-shore,

and diverting myself

in now and then finding a smoother pebble

or a prettier shell than ordinary,

whilst the great ocean of truth

lay all undiscovered before me.”

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Isaac Newton

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“Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth,

and if a man does not know what a thing is,

it is at least an increase in knowledge

if he knows what it is not. ”

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Carl G. Jung

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Cherish those who seek the truth

but beware of those who find it.”
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  Voltaire

Sunday Dinner: What Light We Have

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“There are two ways to be fooled.

One is to believe what isn’t true;

the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

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Soren Kierkegaard

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“Just because you don’t understand it

doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”

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Lemony Snicket

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“If you look for truth,

you may find comfort in the end;

if you look for comfort

you will not get neither comfort or truth

only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin,

and in the end, despair.”

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  C.S. Lewis

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“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.

Facts can obscure truth.”

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Maya Angelou

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“The truth is not always beautiful,

nor beautiful words the truth.”

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  Lao Tzu

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“If someone is able to show me

that what I think or do is not right,

I will happily change, for I seek the truth,

by which no one was ever truly harmed.

It is the person who continues

in his self-deception and ignorance

who is harmed.”

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  Marcus Aurelius

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“A thinker sees his own actions

as experiments and questions-

-as attempts to find out something.

Success and failure are for him

answers above all.”

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  Friedrich Nietzsche

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“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is

than to persist in delusion,

however satisfying and reassuring.”

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  Carl Sagan

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true.

I am not bound to succeed,

but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”

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Abraham Lincoln

Sunday Dinner: Looking Up!

Hibiscus moscheutos

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“In these times

you have to be an optimist

to open your eyes when you awake in the morning”

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  Carl Sandburg

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Salvia coccinea

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“There is no such thing as a problem

without a gift for you in its hands.

You seek problems

because you need their gifts.”

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Richard Bach

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“Every problem has a gift for you in its hands” (Richard Bach).

And if not every problem, then just about every one.

Even spectacular sunsets are not possible without cloudy skies.

Troubles bring a gift for those who choose to look.

And since I can’t avoid my problems,

why waste them? I should look for the gift.

My life will be far, far richer for finding it.”

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Steve Goodier

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Canna ‘Bengal Tiger’

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“Being an idealist is not being a simpleton;

without idealists there would be no optimism

and without optimism

there would be no courage to achieve advances

that so-called realists would have you believe

could never come to fruition.”

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  Alisa Dana Steinberg

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“Few things in the world are more powerful

than a positive push – a smile.

A word of optimism and hope,

a ‘you can do it!’

when things are tough”

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Richard M DeVos

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“Pessimism never won any battle.”

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  Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Solidago

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“A tiny change today

brings a dramatically different tomorrow.”

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  Richard Bach

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Senna marilandica

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“An easy life doesn’t teach us anything.

In the end it’s the learning that matters:

what we’ve learned

and how we’ve grown”

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  Richard Bach

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crape myrtle

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2020

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“Nobody knows how things will turn out,

that’s why they go ahead and play the game…

You give it your all

and sometimes amazing things happen,

but it’s hardly ever what you expect.”
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  Gennifer Choldenko

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Cleome