A Closer Look at a Picture

A head full of wanderings. No singular decision. Chaos within the peace of the silence of the mind. Chaotic meanderings of imagination. I discard the bottle again. I see if this can still me. A lasting moment envelopes me. I try to define it, but it wont stay easy. She was here for a moment and she lingered right on. A slight feeling of guilt accompanies my welcome to our connection. I mused on a future, and all I could find was the present moment. And the moment is of the heart and its feeling is true. Truth is esential. It will provide content and ease of mind, and peace within the silence. And then I meditate on the truth of the feeling being true. A certain poverty exposed in weakness, in the free expression of the wants and the needs of love. And the righteous God with his righteous love and all I can do is wonder at the connection, and the human touch and the common feeling that is shared. A distance appears, a time is gone, there is newness and difference, and I wonder at her reasons, and at her truth. But yet, I believe in her and in her beauty, and that both she and her beauty are real to me. I need to believe that she is indeed beautiful, to the oneness of my self.

The Beauty of Love

To be inside the beauty of love, kissed by truth. The angel sang of her sadness. I followed along in a musical dream, and it led me to the knowing spirit of the tender feeling. It is a lonely moment for a selfish feeling. The world is at bay. The eyes see only the feeling within, they are not empty and they then look on the outside, examining feeling, and its quality of purity. The city is crammed with madness and it is cold outside. Winter threatens to keep its promise and everywhere will be somewhere to avoid. And inside the day I felt the prescence and I told my imagination to find control and I told my imagination to be bold and free. And in the midst of the evening a song stirs. It sings to the heart as it speaks to me. I think about today and what it brought to me and the difference that I may have made to it. I turn from my vanity but stay inside somehow. There is promise in the night and last night the raging moon threatened the blackness of the sky. When I saw the morning there was ease, to be inside the beauty of love and kissed by truth.

Witchcraft Mirrors and See-Saw Opinions

Witchcraft Mirrors and See-Saw opinions. An angry silence. Victorious time, and the music wants to rest. Does she or doesn't she? And I inform myself that she mustn't, as I look through the cigarette fog toward the window. I try to remove her from my thought and from the movie going on at the cinema inside. Its a lantern evening and my book is on the shelf, discarded. It has said enough for the day. I feel the warmth of a a memory and I dwell on the idea of certain moments lasting for ever. I dismiss the idea almost immediately as being fanciful and dreamy, yet I don't convince myself. the silence seems to be gaining peace now, it has looked upon itself for understanding. It wants to reach into me and gain my approval. I will not stir. this evening, I don't want to have to befriend any kind of silence and why should I? when I have known it so recently to have been angry. and she, or a version of her comes into my mind again. Perhaps there is someone to accept. The summer reclines, decides to disappear for a while. I offer to taste its warmth, although unclear. there are voices in the silence, up for discussion, consideration. Light lives on, finds a way within. Love is lateral to the light. Black is not black and white is not white. Mystery pleads for freedom. Children play, with truth in their eyes. Colours are confused, but yet invade the world today. They have looked for meditation and understanding and no matter how confused they are they are colours nonetheless. And from witchcraft mirrors and see-saw opinions a winning hand is ready to be played, to define the colours of confusion, right here in the 'now.'

From the Jungle to the Zoo

Pretty poetry swirling around in the outskirts of the wealth of the picture of my intention. And later on there is leprosy noise after the mouth knives of self-attraction. It lingers in the heart sometimes, like a pang, like a look that controls. It fades and peace is restored and peace then allows the silence, and that special type of personal freedom where you can think what you want, and you are completely ignored. And then there becomes that time, that clockless moment of truthful isolation. Peace must be a solitary thing until it turns in on its own self-consciousness. Then there is the need for simple escape to the jungle, where the clocks tick and the lions roar right on time. And inside my head is like a museum sometimes when its late and dark and the night crawls over me. The night knows my tales. I cannot evade it. It corners me, to make me do the things that I most want to avoid. Another picture for the gallery perhaps? I protest that I no longer have the inclination, and that because of this, any art I create will be tainted in mediocrity. Day is born again, gives me freedom back to me, but suggests a plea that was heard from the night and asks for further consideration. I look at the day and think of the night and wait for the clock to stop, until the moment can live inside of me and inspire me and motion me to motion. And from the jungle to the zoo lost in her shadow, cursing the darkness of her memory, yet wondering about who and how she became.

In an Evening of Star

Dancingly dreamy words ensnare. I go to them and then I come from them. I visit them and then I leave, remembering energy and strength, I look for the strength that there is left. It corrects me, it guides me to the oneness of decision. And I saw my sense of you in shadow. Our eyes loved in an evening of star. And then you left but you had stayed anyway. I remembered. I tried to enter the moment and indeed become my own moment in time, in this time of my living. I could not be a stranger although I may not have visited this place before, or for a long time, perhaps since childhood. And I saw that I had been magnetised somehow, for you to have this attraction for me. And I wondered, as the time left, and left me alone in my truth. And yet I question the meaning and the reason why. And I ask myself for comfort. And in shadow again, I see not my sense of you. You have travelled somewheree, from some part of my feeling. Yet my feeling is warm in its memory. It does not betray you. Love trips out as it trips off of the tongue. It walks in disguise. There is fear in today sometimes, within its expression. It will be true to be true and it will be real to be real. It will not deceive. And love will not remain in shadow, as eyes will search and seek and hypnotise. And I recall now that you did not remain in shadow, with my sense of you in an evening of star.

Peace in the World

One hand clapping in time to the music within the silence. The darkness recedes although there is wind with the rain. It is attention seeking, it will not stir. The darkness now darkens, the wind recedes, the rain takes centre stage. Candles burn as if in rebellion. The eyes engage with the view. There's a church in the distance and it is asking me for prayers. I turn to the moon, its love unconquered yet. The night is alive. It has won the day. The clock ticks on, in another eternity. Silence claws for appointment. Its a psychical moment. Earth is in control and the feeling is of strength and envelopement. And still it rains, and yet it rains in the darkness with the moon watching over in supervision. A moment is born that can not be evaded. It takes itself perfectly seriously. Memories are the only life around outside of the present world. Alas, they are but memories and perhaps were always fated to be so. Angels dance, horses play, its all in movement, until the movement returns to stillness and silence re-enters the room. And the life within adheres to the silence, not waiting for an oppportunity to speak, but for fusion. The wind and the rain have died now. The silence has taken control. Even sounds in the far-off distance now seem self-conscious and attempt to still themselves. There is oneness in the night. There is peace in the world.

Circles (Time is Alive)

All in the circle. Airport tears. Long finger, never-neverland love. The figures and the faces of the Kaleidescope gaze back in turn. The moon looks. The street is alive with Jazz. Music is yet to find a voice. Other places are entering minds as other places are exiting them. Life is silent, it has come to a stop. It looks within at itself and then runs away frightened and increases movement. There's a fight going on in an inner city street. The pubs are ablaze with emptiness and horse-racing. People are in cars and buses and taxis going places while other people are home and going nowhere but home. That's where the questioning begins. Its a lot to call yourself at home. How long can it last? Circles everythere, nobody sees them, but they are there alright. Ther's a charity collector looking for change and she has no need for money. She is on stage and away from home, thinking in public for once. Its summertime and life is hot and the skies sometimes cry. There is a little more freedom in the air. There is less explaining to do. It is a shared thing. I'm stuck inside of the daytime thinking about love, and what there is to find there. Today life is neon somehow, and expressive. It sings as it doesn't speak. There's a circle going on. Time is alive. its a shared experience, open to interpretation, but its just circles, circles, circles.

The Colours of My Day

The look, the clothes, the walk. Creating one strength, a new creation in one who was created. It was on Moore Street, though there had been travelling involved. They should have built a theatre there all of those years ago when Dublin was the capital of Europe in this way. But that was long before the journey, from the east I think, that was the direction left, departed. And the traveller must have felt quite unique in this other place, a star of a show in meagre surroundings. Money was the motive of course, the reason why. I've tried to imagine that place, but I can't even seem to be able to pronounce its name. There was a visitor here, I could see the homelessness in their scare. I said 'hi' in welcome, but no-one was there. I opened the door as a friend, with a smile and a wink, I got the faintest smile back, and a city in the east came alive for a while, early in my day. I'd been shopping for some food and going nowhere and lonely grafitti told me to 'sympathise, there's separation here, you have to realise.' And blues played in an evening where I used to live before, I mainly just listened though I can't say that it spoke to me and I'm not sure if I even interpreted it as music, and I wondered about connecting the east and the blues, and the guy in the hat with my girl, I just slipped through the curtain when the scene was played out and walked into my mind again and changed the colour of my day.

A Light for the Candle

Passion doesn't tell right from wrong. It lives in the moment. Its soul is fire and the fire has no mind. Underlying dream tells its truth in the welcome slumber. Awareness is suggested. It stands in the shadows of heat. A doorbell stranger with eyes in your eyes threatens to disturb your concealment. The noise of the street is begining to be heard. A child awakes to the suckling mother. There is war in the world and madness is on the stage, and they are dancing in the aisles. Definition is unsure, understanding is impossible. Confusion screams at the overwhelmed. What once was love has become a fleeting glance, eliciting words that should not have been said, and kisses that shouldn't have been kissed. Truth has been eclipsed in the crazy nighttime, and the day has come to hide. The day where once we cared and were loving. There is not an understanding silence, but a refusal to answer. There is nowhere to run, and passion grows red when seen in the mirror, and asks for forgiveness and offers to help. The fire turns to the summer and the summer speaks to the heart from the heart of love. Somewhere there is a warm embrace and a kiss that should be kissed and the words of feelings are tacitly accepted by a grateful stranger. The world has become undead. This world is full of strangers, its the point where music brings a light to the candle.

After Sleeping on a Sleepy Day

I wonder what the magpies saw in the sleeping day of intermittent rain. There were two of them, I was sleeping in the sleeping day too, at least my mind told me so, when I had looked back on the recent past of the day. I remember that I hadn't thought about what I had been thinking. I angered inside I showed it to the congregation. The evening beckoned, the rustling leaves were dancing for me. A mighty tree, overpowering showed its strength to me. I could only wonder within its majesty. I am the moneylender and I'm closing the door. I had thought about what I was thinking, and then I thought about what I had done. The instruction book was thrown from me about the day I was born, and from my memory, but the seed within continues to grow and explain to me, perhaps like the mighty tree to its rustling leaves. There is no denying imprint. There is no way clear that is a way clear. I doubt if tomorrow will be a sleeping day. There's a cloud in my head and its raining outside.

Hunger of the Eyes

Its easier to look into the soul of an attractive woman, or try to, or pretend to. What are you doing when you gaze into the eyes of someone? What are you hoping to find? What is it possible to find there? Perhaps we get closest to those who are closest to us. Perhaps they are easier to discover. So there can be a forever stranger, someone you can't find an understanding of. You can romance their mystery, yet mystery is insincere and untruthful. But mystery is a magnet, is a lure, when it holds no answers, just possibilities. Unless of course a mystery is unravelled right before your eyes.

The Raven and The Dove

Funny how it bites when you aren't really looking nor paying much attention. The power invades you, and you don't want to even stop to wonder why, you just are, and just you are in that moment, with .............?

Dark Truth

Its a simple game but a game with many versions, like the thought behind the answer to the question, like the quality of silence in Cistercians, and the ring of life has truly no diversion. Is there sun behind the whore in the darkness??

One Saturday in June When I Had Taken a Rest from Living

There are too many people and they intermingle just a little bit too much. And then there are relational difficulties. Its a a great big roundabout where people hop on and off all the time. Perhaps everyone screws evrybody else one way or another.

Warm Summer Rain

Loving someone , you step outside of yourself, losing yourself in the midst of a picture you can recognise without seeing. Haunted by the moon and the demon pulls you open to a torture of the soul. SoI played my guitar and I sang songs to Venus and the songs were made of clay, when I had thought them living. I knew that I was a fool to be so foolish, and I ran away into another corner, finished the drink and threw the glass away, and she stood there crying in the wild jukebox evening and the day grew dark, and she consoled me with her care, and then there was fire, and the fire was a mountain, and as it tried to break its way into magic, the shepherd came with the memory of the ring, and she aligned herself with the feelings of the shepherd and she erased me. I walked into the deserted day, when it was indifferent and unknowing and it walked to the side of the world we had been in, and I picked up a candle in the flickering daylight and I was cornered by the years and they forced me to recognise them and know they were speeding and I smiled in my soul without tomorrow, and the moment grasped me and stopped me and I was passive, but recognised the moment without ever having seen it, and I was thankful of time anthe clock was silent and the day stood still but I was getting older and I saw the past, and the past ignored me and all I had left was a dream that I could not remember and I closed my eyes to mystery and blew the candle out and walked into the warm rain of the summer

Raining on the Day

Its hard to understand the day when it is raining.

Spirit of Light

Spirit of Light: The dam bursts into the open arms of the waiting nighttime, where the cold is dark and forbidding. Her name is like the wind and the cover of the sky, and she is in motlion. her eyes suggest a tranquil sound and I meet them in a storm of passion and I feel suspicious as I look upon my feelings. Somewhere someone is making love tonight and all that I can think about is consideration. its a subliminal world whre the conversation isn't really conversation, where fantasy is more fantastic and truth is imposssibkle to feel. And the daytime is like a magnet for the barren darkness, a present future where change is not for sale. The passive time of the present moment must be blown up into tommorrow when and where all at once a spirit of light will reveal.

The Poet and the Coalman

Poetry as deviation, disguise, deception, appearance, and then the 'poet' who really shouldn't be there, from an outside point of view at least. And the blinding vocabulary and truth staring with the look that only truth has and the 'poet' must squirm and face the reality. Perhaps he should have been a Coalman!

A Fortunate Photograph

A fortunate photograph, in a day that betrayed reality. Could've been another person, a series of persons, a type. And she loses herself in style until she is only a part of a group picture and she doesn't want to be herself anymore. And I gaze from the side and identify her from before. I think that I know who she really is.

A World Reborn

Suddenly, the world became transformed and remembered what it was and where it was, and it gazed inwardly and all around noted the changes. In turn the changes became a mirror until the mirror lost its power of reflection. And the skies smiled on the day and the day was still and and at peace with itself.

A New Moment

In the birth of a moment a world arises. Its dawn seeking, its view all-encompassing. It lands on the wheel of fortune, as you arrive there, and if you look at it, it may just look back at you, and smile.......

Colour of a Feeling

Inside is like a colour. How are you supposed to colourise a feeling? How are you supposed to express in words what it is? I think this explains to me about just how personal life is.

Moore Street Satuday Morning Moment

Just in a moment, someone took notice. Their world in a change from some vague kind of action. I looked inside of me trying to understand why, and I still couldn't see it from the other point of view. It seems sometimes there is no such thing as innocence. Differences is a word for universal thought.

The Royal Wedding

The question is: How much can you magnify a simple wedding, until it takes on the 'appearance' of an event of world changing proportions. Now I have met a lot of people over there in England that I would gladly number as friends, but I have to ask: Check yourselves out for God's sake!

Eoin Dhoiminic OhAirtri | Create your badge

Goldfish Candles

Goldfish Candles in the evening of the regained spirit, I look across my memories to see a face that is clouded in my view, and I ultimately, turn back to the evening in its present honesty thinking about how the day is brightening and the heart and mind open for the righteous now

Some Quotes that I had no Input into Whatsoever

It is a defect in language that words suggest permanent realities and people do not see through this deception. But mere words cannot create reality. Thus people speak of a final goal and believe it is real, but it is a form of words and the goal as such is without substance. The one who realizes the emptiness of objects and concepts does not depend on words. Perfect wisdom is beyond definition, and pathlessness is the way to it. The wise one treads this path for the direct realization of impermanence and for the direct realization of understanding. This, then, is perfect wisdom. Such a one should tread this path knowing that attachment and attractions are neither good nor harmful, even enlightenment is neither good nor harmful, because perfect wisdom is not meant to promote good or harm for that person. However, even though there is no intention of good or harm, it does confer endless blessing.




Greatness is always humble. But pettiness is self-adorned with words of praise. Greatness abides in the absence of arrogance. Smallness proudly parades its haughtiness. Greatness conceals through silence the weaknesses of others. But pettiness proclaims such things to all.

- Tirukkural 98:978-980


Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism and falsehood. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel, "On Prayer

Don't go by gossip and rumor, nor by what's told you by others, nor by what you hear said, nor even by the authority of your traditional teachings. Don't go by reasoning, nor by inferring one thing from another, nor by argument about methods, nor from liking an opinion, nor from awe of the teacher and thinking he must be deferred to. Instead, when you know from within yourselves that certain teachings are not good, that when put into practice they lead to loss and suffering, you must then trust yourselves and reject them.

- Anguttara Nikaya


We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation. ~Francois De La Rochefoucauld


A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. ~Lee Segall


Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop. ~Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland


Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ~Andre Gide


Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. ~Aesop


Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. ~Baba Ram Dass


I am a part of all that I have met. ~Alfred Lord Tennyson


There's more to the truth than just the facts. ~Author Unknown


The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. ~Edward R. Murrow


Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day. ~Polish Proverb


Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. ~Ludwig Börne


If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky? ~Stanislaw J. Lec


We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. ~Albert Szent-Györgyi


Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. ~Edward Albee


When the student is ready, the master appears. ~Buddhist Proverb


A gun gives you the body, not the bird. ~Henry David Thoreau


Before enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment - chop wood, carry water. ~Zen Buddhist Proverb


Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. ~Henry David Thoreau


Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams


I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. ~Charles C. Finn


Oh, Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry a future Ghost within us; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! ~Thomas Carlyle


Knock on the sky and listen to the sound. ~Zen Saying


The fish trap exists because of the fish. Once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can talk with him? ~Chuang Tzu


By daily dying I have come to be. ~Theodore Roethke


There are some remedies worse than the disease. ~Publilius Syrus


You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough. ~William Blake, Proverbs of Hell


It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos. ~John L. McClenahan


What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Book II, chapter 1


Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us. ~Soren Kierkegaard


One man's quiet is another man's din. ~Carrie Latet


Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science. ~Henry David Thoreau


Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. ~Henri Louis Bergson


If you think you're free, there's no escape possible. ~Ram Dass


The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter. ~G.C. Lichtenberg


Don't miss the donut by looking through the hole. ~Author Unknown


You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. ~Navajo Proverb


Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death. ~Heraclitus, Eustathius ad Iliad


To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. ~John Burroughs


Whatever I take, I take too much or too little; I do not take the exact amount. The exact amount is no use to me. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind. ~John Lancaster Spalding


The map is not the territory. ~Alfred Korzybski


No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. ~Terry Josephson


Would there be this eternal seeking if the found existed? ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form. ~Marcus Aurelius


If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one. ~Russian Proverb


The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. ~Bertrand Russell


Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. ~Roger Miller


The obstacle is the path. ~Zen Proverb



It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. ~James Thurber


It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch. ~Chang Ch'ao


You cannot step into the same river twice. ~Heraclitus, in Diogenes Laertius, Lives


You are fastened to them and cannot understand how, because they are not fastened to you. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, "Is it half full or half empty?" So I drank the water. No more problem. ~Alexander Jodorowsky


Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? ~George Gordon, Lord Byron, Child Harold's Pilgrimage


Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases. ~Hippocrates, Aphorisms


Seeking is not always the way to find. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


It takes all the running you can do just to keep in the same place. ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1872


We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. ~Author Unknown


I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning. ~Aleister Crowley, Book of Lies


Tomorrow always comes, and today is never yesterday. ~S.A. Sachs


Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects. ~Thomas Carlyle


You can see a lot by just looking. ~Yogi Berra, also often quoted as "You can observe a lot by just looking." (original wording as yet unverified)


Proverbs often contradict one another, as any reader soon discovers. The sagacity that advises us to look before we leap promptly warns us that if we hesitate we are lost; that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. ~Leo Rosten


Reason and faith are both banks of the same river. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada


Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. ~Dr Seuss


Who depends on another man's table often dines late. ~John Ray


[T]hings are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing. ~Jean Paul Sartre, Nausea


You become responsible forever for what you've tamed. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French by Richard Howard


When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960


A thousand men can't undress a naked man. ~Greek Proverb


May your passion be the kernel of corn stuck between your molars, always reminding you there's something to tend to. ~Jeb Dickerson, www.howtomatter.com


I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


We often repent the good we have done as well as the ill. ~William Hazlitt, Characteristics, 1823


When I die, I will not see myself die, for the first time. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The scars you can't see are the hardest to heal. ~Astrid Alauda


The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish. ~Evelyn Waugh


It's very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes. ~Terri Minsky, Sex and the City, "The Baby Shower


The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground. ~Buddha


We become aware of the void as we fill it. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


If I make the lashes dark
And the eyes more bright
And the lips more scarlet,
Or ask if all be right
From mirror after mirror,
No vanity's displayed:
I'm looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.
~W.B. Yeats


Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it. ~Santayana, Essays


The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~Niels Bohr


How often one sees people looking far and wide for what they are holding in their hands? Why! I am doing it myself at this very moment. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. ~Eric Hoffer, Passionate State of Mind, 1955


Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill


I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced. ~Henry David Thoreau, "Solitude," Walden, 1854


Because they know the name of what I am looking for, they think they know what I am looking for! ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


There are things I have wanted so long that I would only consent to have them if I could keep wanting them. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Eggs cannot be unscrambled. ~American Proverb


A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The road was new to me, as roads always are going back. ~Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country Road of Pointed Firs, 1896


Admiration and familiarity are strangers. ~George Sand


I am not certain of the hereafter. Frankly, I'm not all that certain of the here. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about "and." ~Arthur Stanley Eddington


To know the hight [sic] of a mountain, one must climb it. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place. ~Zen


The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. ~Eric Berne


Nearly all men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses. ~Jean Baptiste Molière, Le Malade Imaginaire


The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different. ~Aldous Huxley


Will localizes us; thought universalizes us. ~Henri Frederic Amiel


I've observed that there are more lines formed than things worth waiting for. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. ~Georg Hegel


When I break any of the chains that bind me I feel that I make myself smaller. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


We are spirits clad in veils. ~Christopher P. Cranch


If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am? ~John Lancaster Spalding


Before I travelled my road I was my road. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. ~Francis Bacon


To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. ~Stanislaus I of Poland


The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth - that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. ~H.L. Mencken


The future influences the present just as much as the past. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


When a watch goes ill, it is not enough to move the hands; you must set the regulator. When a man does ill, it is not enough to alter his handiwork, you must regulate his heart. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. ~John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1911


One does what one is; one becomes what one does. ~Robert von Musil, Kleine Prosa


In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me? ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


You can't fall off the floor. ~Author Unknown


A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. ~Author Unknown


In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it - the present, that is to say, must have become the past - before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future. ~Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion


The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. ~Robert M. Pirsig


A stumble may prevent a fall. ~English Proverb


When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. ~Friedrich Nietzche


What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. ~Matsuo Basho