And so to bed...

I finish each night with a quote on Facebook, and for those who have missed them, here are some recent picks. My rules for choosing them are that they must be short, but not one-liners, and must say something inspiring and joyful, or reflecting the sorrow and pain of the world.

Mainly I choose them because I like them, and I hope you, gentle reader, will like them too. On the blog I've also taken the opportunity to add a few extra pictures of the writers themselves as I think it is rather nice to see the authors as well as their quotes

And so to bed...

And so to bed... signs of Spring are in my quote from William Wordsworth:

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

And so to bed... after a day of coughing fits... quote for tonight comes from John Gay:

Nor love, nor honour, wealth nor pow'r,
Can give the heart a cheerful hour
When health is lost. Be timely wise;
With health all taste of pleasure flies.
Thus said, the phantom disappears.
The wary counsel waked his fears:
He now from all excess abstains,
With physic purifies his veins.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Madeleine L’Engle:

Sometimes the very walls of our churches separate us from God and each other. In our various naves and sanctuaries we are safely separated from those outside, from other denominations, other religions, separated from the poor, the ugly, the dying…The house of God is not a safe place. It is a cross where time and eternity meet, and where we are – or should be – challenged to live more vulnerably, more interdependently.

And to to bed... quote for tonight is from John O'Donohue:

The search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.

And so to bed... quote for tonight (on a Spring clean, rubbish clearance evening!) is from Ivan Klíma:

Rubbish is immortal, it pervades the air, swells up in water, dissolves, rots, disintegrates, changes into gas, into smoke, into soot, it travels across the world and gradually engulfs it.... Rubbish is like death. What else is there that is so indestructible?

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Kamand Kojouri:

Make no mistake about it.
We are born blind, deaf, and mute.
It is neither these eyes that give us sight,
nor these ears that give us sound.
It is not even these lips that give us voice.
It is only love.

Love makes us seek beauty and truth.
Love yearns to connect. To experience.
To understand.

So close your eyes at once.
Don’t utter a word.
Perk up your ears and listen
to that silent sound inside you
where all this is found.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Susan Cooper:

Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them, Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening - and then, in a swift flash of movement like dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star. Then another, and another, here, there, all around.... Wish on a star, said; a tiny voice in his head from some long-departed day of early childhood: Wish on a star - the cry of a pleasure and faith as ancient as the eyes of man.

And so to bed... quote for tonight is from Frank Herbert:

She rides the sandworm of space!
She guides through all storms
Into the land of gentle winds.
Though we sleep by the snake's den,
She guards our dreaming souls.
Shunning the desert heat,
She hides us in a cool hollow.
The gleaming of her white teeth
Guides us in the night.
By the braids of her hair
We are lifted to heaven!
Sweet fragrance, flower-scented,
Surrounds us in her presence.