Words for Wednesday: Limits

 Compassion is a wonderful virtue but don't waste it on those undeserving.

--Bruce Springsteen

Words for Wednesday: Pick One

You can't just go on being a good egg. You must either hatch or go bad.

--C.S. Lewis

Words for Wednesday: Waking

You can wake someone who is sleeping but you cannot wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

--Peter Forbes, quoting activists opposing a dam on the Narmada River, India 

Words for Wednesday: Timely

Words for Wednesday: Balancing Act

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

--E.B. White 

Words for Wednesday: Normal

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

--Frank Zappa

This native Florida beautyberry plant bears its blossoms--and its fruit--along the main stem instead of at the ends of smaller stems on the exterior of the plant. I guess it long ago decided that protecting the fruit was more important than putting it on display.

It also blooms in sequence along its branches -- buds to the right, flowers in the middle, beginnings of berries to the left in this picture.

Words for Wednesday: Passing Through

We are but the ephemera of the moment, the brief custodians of redwoods, which were ancient when Christ was born, and of the birds of the air and the animals of the forest which have been evolving for countless millenniums. We do not own the land we abuse, or the lakes and streams we pollute or the raccoons and the otters which we persecute. Those who play God in destroying any form of life are tampering with a master plan too intricate for any of us to understand.

--Sterling North

Words for Wednesday: If Life is a Ballgame

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.

--Babe Ruth

Words for Wednesday: Ain't It the Truth

Any idiot can face a crisis--it's day to day living that wears you out.

--Anton Chekhov

Words for Wednesday: Making It Simple

Simplicity can be obtained through the careful reduction of the nonessential.

--Garr Reynolds

Words for Wednesday: Making Space

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

--Socrates

Words for Wednesday: Space for Serendipity

You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea.

--Pablo Picasso

(I set out to take photos of water lilies and their interesting pods, just snapping away, sometimes without looking. This was one result.)

Words for Wednesday: Beyond the Plan

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

--E.M. Forster

Words for Wednesday: Already Smitten

I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

--Jerome K. Jerome

Words for Wednesday: Who We Were First

Far beneath the many thick layers of indoctrination about who we are and who we should be lies an original self, a person who came into this world full of possibility and destined for joyful unveiling and manifestation. It is this person we glimpse in another when we fall in love or when we idealize a leader or romanticize an artist. This is the person who comes to life in us briefly as we get married, start a course in school, or try on a new job--before worry and cynicism have set in. Chronically trying to be someone other than this original self, persuaded that we are not adequate and should fit some norm of health or correctness, we may find a cool distance gradually separating us from that deep and eternal person, that God-given personality, and we may forget both who we were and who we might be.

--Thomas Moore, Original Self

Words for Wednesday: Hero/Artist

Think like a hero; work like an artist. If the end is helpfulness, that's the hero mind. If the means is exploration and learning, that's the artist's mind. When kindly attention meets curiosity, you move gracefully through the world.

--Dale Dauten

Words for Wednesday: Sunrise at 70

I'd rather be a dysfunctional soul than a well-adjusted robot.

--Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

Words for Wednesday: The Storyteller's Creed

The Storyteller's Creed

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

That myth is more potent than history.

That dreams are more powerful than facts.

That hope always triumphs over experience.

That laughter is the only cure for grief.

And I believe that love is stronger than death.

--quoted by Robert Fulghum