A Few Good Thoughts
These are just some selected thoughts to help you relax and smile.|
Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must. He drew a circle that shut me out Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in. A man lives by believing in something, not by debating and arguing about many things. From the desert I come to thee On a stallion shod with fire, And the winds are left behind In the speed of my desire. I know a little garden close, Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy morn to dewy night. Eden is that old-fashioned House We dwell in every day Without suspecting our abode Until we drive away. I praise the Frenchman, his remark was shrewd - How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! But grant me still a friend in my retreat Whom I may whisper -- solitude is sweet. Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclined, Lawless, winged, and unconfined, And breaks all chains from every mind. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. When all the world is young, lad, And all the trees are green; And every goose a swan, lad, And every lass a queen; Then hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away: Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day. But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met - or never parted - We had ne'er been brokenhearted. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more. So we'll go no more aroving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more aroving By the light of the moon. A man who seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society. Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her. Oh, when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well I did behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again. There are very few people who are not ashamed of having been in love when they no longer love each other. There is a smile of love, And there is a smile of deceit, And there is a smile of smiles In which these two smiles meet. He that loves a rosy cheek, Or a coral lip admires, Or, from starlike eyes, doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires; As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. When lovely woman stoops to folly, And finds too late that men betray, What charm can soothe her melancholy? What art can wash her guilt away? A beautiful woman is the hell of the soul, the purgatory of the purse, and the paradise of the eyes. May the Gods grant you all things which your heart desires, and may they give you a husband and a home and gracious concord, for there is nothing greater and better than this -- when a husband and wife keep a household in oneness of mind, a great woe to their enemies and joy to their friends, and wih high renown. |
When a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence. What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Better is poverty in the hand of the god, Than wealth in the storehouse; Better is bread with a happy heart Than wealth with vexation. Love Virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heav'n itself would stoop to her. What is a man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. Let him that would move the world, first move himself. In a civilized society, it is the duty of all citizens to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is the duty of all citizens to disobey unjust laws. Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace. If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man ... and only accidentally am I French. It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. So many gods, so many creeds, So many paths that wind and wind, When just the art of being kind is all this sad world needs. Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call today his own; He who, secure within, can say, Tomorrow, do thy worst, for I have lived today. Let the world slide, let the world go; A fig for care, and a fig for woe! If I can't pay, why I can owe, And death makes equal the high and low. If you would not be forgotten, As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worthy reading, Or do things worth the writing. A Woman is a foreign land, Of which, though there he settle young, A man will ne'er quite understand The customs, politics, and tongue. Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. But to see her was to love her, Love but her, and love forever. Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted We had ne'er been brokenhearted. Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. A mighty pain to love it is, And 'tis a pain that pain to miss; But of all pains, the greatest pain It is to love, but love in vain. True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen. Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joy inclined, Lawless, winged, and unconfined, And breaks all chains from every mind. A man is as good as he has to be, and a woman is as bad as she dares. 
My only books
Were woman's looks,And folly's all they've taught me. Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no! It is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height
be taken.Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and
cheeksWithin his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks,But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. |
It's a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda, Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge toll booth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me," she says with smile. One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the toll booth, dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day."
The woman in the Honda, it turned out had read something on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator:
The phrase seemed to leap out at her and she copied it down.
Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall a hundred miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said, explaining why she's taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, "like a message from above."
Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.
Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. Tall, blonde and forty, Herbert lives in Marin, one of the country's ten richest counties, where she house-sits, takes odd jobs and gets by. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper place mat, after turning it around in her mind for days. "That's wonderful!" said a man sitting nearby, and he copied it down carefully on his own place mat.
"Here's the idea," Herbert says. "Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly." Her own fantasies include:
1) breaking into depressing-looking schools to paint the classrooms,
2) leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor parts of town,
3) slipping money into a proud old woman's purse.
Says Herbert, "Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can" Now the phrase is spreading, on bumper stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards. And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla goodness.
In Portland, Oregon, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's meter just in time. In Patterson, New Jersey, a dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a rundown house and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling. In Chicago, a teenage boy may be shovelling off the driveway when the impulse strikes. What the hell, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's driveway too.
It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance. A woman in Boston writes "Merry Christmas" to the tellers on the backs of her checks. A man in St. Louis, whose car has just been rear-ended by a young woman, waves her away, saying, "It's just a scratch. Don't worry."
Senseless acts of beauty spread: a man plants daffodils along the road way, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one-man vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.
They say you can't smile without cheering yourself up a little. Likewise, you can't commit a random act of kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened if only because the world has become a slightly better place.
And you can't be a recipient without feeling sa shock, a pleasant jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers who found your bridge fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Wave someone on in the intersection? Smile at a tired clerk? Or something larger, greater? Like all revolutions, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours.
"Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly."
"Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can"
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Copyright © 1998 S. J. Coker