… to the mind of the majority, whatever is given in one place is stolen from elsewhere; it is their dealings in the marketplace and their forgetfulness of God that have thus shaped their minds. Yet, in reality, what you give does not lessen your store; far otherwise, it augments for you the riches you can distribute. Thus he who loves all men, by grace of his love of God, loves each man vastly more than he who, loving but one of them, extends merely to his partner the paltry field of himself.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
Thus, too, love is no sure resting place if it does not transform itself from day to day, like a child in the womb. But you, my sedate friend, propose to loll in your gondola and to become the gondolier’s song for all your days; wherein you dupe yourself. For all that is neither ascent nor a transition lacks significance. And when you halt on the way, you will have no joy of it; for the landscape will have nothing more to tell you. Then you will discard the woman; whereas you should have begun by discarding your old self.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
But them I call the rabble who hang on others’ words and gestures, and, chamelon-wise, take their color from them, truckling to their benefactors, relishing applause, and making themselves the mirror of the multitude. Never do you find such men faithful wardens of their heritage, like a citadel; nor do they hand down their password from generation to generation; but rather let their children grow at random, without molding them. And everywhere they breed, like fungus, on the face of the earth.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
If the Church doesn’t disciple the nation, the nation will disciple the Church.
—Dennis Tongoi
“It is a privilege of old people to seem to know everything. But it’s an act and a mask, like every other act and mask. Between ourselves, we old ones wink at each other and smile, saying, How do you like my mask, my act, my certainty? Isn’t life a play? Don’t I play it well?”
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p. 142
Talk about a great summer read! Pick up Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine and enjoy….
The facts about John Huff, aged 12, are simple and soon stated. He could pathfind more trails than any Choctaw or Cherokee since time began, could leap from the sky like a chimpanzee from a vine, could live underwater two minutes and slide fifty yards downstream from where you last saw him. The baseballs you pitched him he hit in the apple trees, knocking down harvests. He could jump six-foot orchard walls, swing up branches and come down, fat with peaches, quicker than anyone else in the gang. He ran laughing. He sat easy. He was not a bully. He was kind. His hair was dark and curly and his teeth were white as cream. He remembered the words to all the cowboy songs and would teach you if you asked. He knew the names of all the wildflowers and when the moon would rise and set and when the tides came in or out. He was, in fact, the only god living in the whole of Green Town, Illinois, during the twentieth century that Douglas Spaulding knew of.
Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, p. 102
Build not an empire where everything is perfect. “Good taste” is a virture of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens. You will have acted like an over-squeamish man who never goes out for fear of being soiled by contact with the earth. At the core of your perfection will be emptiness, and you shall have no joy of it. Nay, rather build an empire where all is zeal.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Wisdom of the Sands
I can express no kinder sign of love
Than this kind kiss. O Lord, that lends me life,
Lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!
For thou hast given me in this beauteous face
A world of earthly blessings to my soul,
If sympathy of love unite our thoughts.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Henry VI: Part 2 (1590), 1.1.20
One of the things that most clearly divides Europeans and Americans today is a philosophical, even metaphysical disagreement over where exactly mankind stands on the continuum between the laws of the jungle and the laws of reason. Americans to not believe we are as close to the realization of the Kantian dream as do Europeans.
–Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order
“Every man has three characters—that which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.”
—Alphonse Karr