FREDERICH BUECHNER. 1926-2022. “Goodrich” “Wishful Thinking”
PAY ATTENTION to the things that bring a tear to your eye or a lump in your throat because they are signs that the holy is drawing near.
OUR LIFE ON THIS EARTH is all we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.
WE FIND BY LOSING. We hold fast by letting go. We become something new by ceasing to be something old.
E.B White. “Charlotte’s Web” 1889-1985
A RIGHT IS A RESPONSIBILITY IN REVERSE.
ALWAYS BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THE PRESENCE OF WONDER.
PREJUDICE is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
LIFE is like writing with a pen. You can cross out your past but you can’t erase it.
TRUST ME, WILBUR. People are very gullible. they’ll believe anything they see in print.
THE WORLD IS FULL OF PEOPLE who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
I WOULD FEEL MORE OPTIMISTIC about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
USE THE SMALLEST WORD THAT DOES THE JOB.
HABITUALLY CREATIVE PEOPLE ARE PREPARED TO BE LUCKY.
BOOKS ARE GOOD COMPANY, in sad times and happy times, for books are people — people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.
FREDERICH BUECHNER
YOUR VOCATION IN LIFE is where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.
E.B.WHITE
I ADMIRE ANYBODY WHO HAS THE GUTS TO WRITE ANYTHING AT ALL.
A DESPOT doesn’t fear eloquent writers preaching freedom — he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
LISTEN TO YOUR LIFE. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
OLD AGE is a special problem for me because I’ve never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself — a lad of about 19.
READING is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy.
WRITING IS AN ACT OF FAITH, NOT A TRICK OF GRAMMAR.
TO ACHIEVE STYLE, BEGIN BY AFFECTING NONE.
THE BEST WRITING IS REWRITING.
LONELINESS IS A STRANGE GIFT.
WRITING IS BOTH MASK AND UNVEILING.
NO ONE can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing.
SAFETY IS ALL WELL AND GOOD: I PREFER FREEDOM.
ALL THAT I HOPE TO SAY IN BOOKS, ALL THAT I EVER HOPE TO SAY, IS THAT I LOVE THE WORLD.
GENIUS is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one.
LIFE’S MEANING has always eluded me and I guess always will. But I love it just the same.
BOOKS hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had. And when you are reading a book, you and the author are alone together — just the two of you.
GOOD DEEDS NEVER GO UNPUNISHED.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 1767-1845 6TH President
IF YOU ACTIONS INSPIRE OTHERS TO DREAM MORE, LEARN MORE, DO MORE AND BECOME MORE, YOU ARE A LEADER.
ALWAYS VOTE FOR PRINCIPLE, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
TRY AND FAIL, BUT DON’T FAIL TO TRY.
INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY IS INDIVIDUAL POWER.
WHOEVER TELLS THE BEST STORY WINS.
I AM A WARRIOR, SO THAT MY SON MAY BE A MERCHANT, SO THAT HIS SON MAY BE A POET.
HAROLD BLOOM 1930-2019 “Genius: A Mosaic of 100 exemplary Creative Minds”. “How to Read and Why” “The American Religion”
EVERYONE wants a prodigy to fail; it makes our mediocrity more bearable.
WE READ, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.
THE WORLD does not get to be a better or a worse place; it just gets more senescent.
READING WELL is one of the greatest pleasures that solitude can afford you.
IT IS HARD to go on living without some hope of encountering the extraordinary.
I AM NOT UNIQUE in my elegiac sadness at watching reading die, in the era that celebrates Stephen King and J.K. Rowling rather than Charles Dickens and Lewis Carroll.
IT IS BY EXTENDING ONESELF, by exercising some capacity previously unused that you come to a better knowledge of your own potential.
WE READ to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.
WHAT MATTERS in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.
DREAM THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM