Ogden Nash poem, first spied on (and now stolen from – sorry!) this lovely blog by Alanna Boudreau.
Category: Quotations
It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us. Even an intimate human friend is ill-used if we talk to him about one thing while our mind is really on another, and even a human friend will soon become aware when we are doing so.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music…. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ – that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.’
Søren Kierkegaard
The opposite of love is possession.
Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi
ph. @Cleveland Indians Guardians game // qt. @Byron
Speaking of nostalgia:
Man, says Plato, has lost the original perfection that was conceived for him. He is now perennially searching for the healing primitive form. Nostalgia and longing impel him to pursue the quest; beauty prevents him from being content with just daily life. It causes him to suffer. In a Platonic sense, we could say that the arrow of nostalgia pierces man, wounds him and in this way gives him wings, lifts him upwards towards the transcendent.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty”
C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian