Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.
faith
“A Nation’s Strength ~ Poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
A Nation’s Strength
Ralph Waldo Emerson
What makes it mighty to defy
The foes that round it throng?
It is not gold. Its kingdoms grand
Go down in battle shock;
Its shafts are laid on sinking sand,
Not on abiding rock.
Is it the sword? Ask the red dust
Of empires passed away;
The blood has turned their stones to rust,
Their glory to decay.
And is it pride? Ah, that bright crown
Has seemed to nations sweet;
But God has struck its luster down
In ashes at his feet.
Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep,
Who dare while others fly…
They build a nation’s pillars deep
And lift them to the sky.
“Pied Beauty” Poem by Gerard Manely Hopkins
Pied Beauty
GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and
plough;
And àll tràdes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Today’s Quote by Viktor Frankl on Courage
What is to give light must endure burning.
Viktor E. Frankl
“Climbing” Poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
CLIMBING
Who climbs the mountain does not always climb.
The winding road slants downward many a time;
Yet each descent is higher than the last.
Has thy path fallen? That will soon be past.
Beyond the curve the way leads up and on.
Think not thy goal forever lost or gone.
Keep moving forward; if thine aim is right
Thou canst not miss the shining mountain height.
Who would attain to summits still and fair,
Must nerve himself through valleys of despair.”
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Today’s Quote by Dorothy Day on Hope
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There’s too much work to do.
Dorothy Day
Poem by Tagore on Grief & Love
Say not in grief that she is no more
but say in thankfulness that she was
A death is not the extinguishing of a light,
but the putting out of the lamp
because the dawn has come.
– R. Tagore
Today’s Quote by Paulo Coelho on Courage
If you must say yes, say it with an open heart. If you must say no, say it without fear.
On Love ~ Poem by Christina Rossetti
“Our heaven must be within ourselves,
Our home and heaven the work of faith
And thro’ this race of life which shelves
Downward to death.
While over all a dome must spread,
And love shall be that dome above;
And deep foundations must be laid,
And these are love.
—Christina Rossetti.”
The Madness of Love ~ Poem by Hadewijch of Antwerp
The Madness of love
The madness of love
Is a rich fief;
Anyone who recognized this
Would not ask Love for anything else:
It can unite Opposites
And reverse the paradox.
I am declaring the truth about this:
The madness of love makes bitter what was sweet,
It makes the stranger a kinsman,
And it makes the smallest the most proud.To souls who have not reached such love,
I give this good counsel:
If they cannot do more,
Let them beg Love for amnesty,
And serve with faith,
According to the counsel of noble Love,
And think: ‘It can happen,
Love’s power is so great!’
Only after his death
Is a man beyond cure.
