Happiness if I am right, lies in two things: being exactly where one belongs – but what official can say that of himself? – and especially, performing comfortably the most commonplace functions, that is having enough sleep and not having new boots, that pinch. When the 720 minutes of the twelve-hour day pass without any special annoyance that can be called a happy day.
(Translation from German – William A.Cooper )
Theodor Fontane | Effi Briest, 1894
Continue reading “A Happy Day”Where is it I’ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!…
Fyodor Dostoevski |Crime and Punishment
Clarence: Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?
It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946, drama, produced and directed by Frank Capra
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others , it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always preserves.
The Bible, Corinthians 13:4-7.
… I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round – apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that – as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
My idea of good company is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.
– Jane Austin, Persuasion
Continue reading “The World Is Change, The Life – Perception”So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of yourself. Above all, no strain and stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man,like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two:
Continue reading “Get Away By Going Within”People try to get away from it all – to the country , to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away with it anytime you like. By going within.
Doctors keep their scalpels and other instrument handy, for emergency. Keep your philosophy ready too – to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do , even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthy succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
…and it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.
Jane Austin, Persuasion
Thinker's Notes 