A word grows to a thought – a thought to an idea – an idea to an act. The change is slow, and the Present is a sluggish traveler loafing in the path Tomorrow wants to take.
A life has to move or it stagnates.
Occasional gust of fretful
Work hard, trust in God, and keep your bowels open — Oliver Cromwell Well,
What came from him, if emanate is not the better word, was a force that bore inspiration, spread confidence in the dignity of life, and even gave sometimes a presence to silence.
Toombo. Look at the roundness of your belly. Look at the heaviness of your legs!’ Toombo looks. ‘God makes fat birds and small birds, trees that are wide and trees that are thin, like wattle. He makes...
Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance. The cloud clears as you enter it. I have learned this, but like everyone, I learned it late...
No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade,
Names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind, but nonetheless familiar in the heart.
In view of this and other things, I demand forgiveness for being so obviously impressed with my own parents.
I look at my yesterdays for months past, and find them as good a lot of yesterdays as anybody might want. I sit there in the firelight and see them all. The hours that made them were good, and so were...
I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts. They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily. A single day's growth bear...
Each humid, tropic day is stillborn, and does not breathe, however lustily pregnant the night that gave it birth.
But memory is a drug. Memory can hold you against your strength and against your will...
Bookmakers tread on each other’s toes, on mine, on anybody’s, or stand flat-footed scowling at scraps of paper clutched like passports to El Dorado.
And still it was gone. Seeing it again could not be living it again. You can always rediscover an old path and wander over it, but the best yo an do then is say, 'Ah, yes, know this turning!' --or rem...
A map says to you.
Man must seem a masterful and yet a forlorn animal; he has but two friends. In his almost universal unpopularity he points out, with pride, that these two are the dog and the horse. He believes, with...
Love thy neighbour’ is less a pious injunction than a rule for survival. If you meet one in trouble, you stop — another time he may stop for you.
Brazier over which some passing Deity will, for a casual aeon or so, warm his omnipotent hands. But until then, one can stand safely on its edge, watching the lake of pink and scarlet wings, so far be...