No.1

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Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
- Guillaume Apollinaire 1880-1918

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I want to give you something, my child,

for we are drifting in the stream of the world.

Our lives will be carried apart,

and our love forgotten.

But I am not so foolish as to hope that

I could buy your heart with my gifts.

Young is your life, your path long, and

you drink the love we bring you at one draught

and turn and run away from us.

You have your play and your playmates.

What harm is there if you have no time

or thought for us.

We, indeed, have leisure enough in old age

to count the days that are past,

to cherish in our hearts what our

hands have lost for ever.

The river runs swift with a song,

breaking through all barriers.

But the mountain stays and remembers,

and follows her with his love.

- Rabindranath Tagore 1861-1941

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from Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Certain faculties of men are directed towards the Unknown; thought, meditation, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, meditation, prayer, these are the great mysterious pointings of the needle. Let us respect them. Whither tend these majestic irradiations of the soul? into shadow, that is, towards the light.

To proffer thought to the thirst of men, to give to all, as an elixir, the idea of God, to cause conscience and science to fraternise in them, and to make them good men by this mysterious confrontation - such is the province of true philosophy. Morality is truth in full bloom. Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practical. The ideal must be made air and food and drink to the human mind.

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Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
- Dorothy Parker 1893-1967

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and finally, this little image is also poetry . . .

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THE NEXT POST HERE WILL BE ON WEDNESDAY

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