tread softly

Tuesday, March 5, 2013


You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are; 
but you must approach each man by the right door. 
 ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887

a bit of duh

Monday, March 4, 2013


Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? 
I think that is how dogs spend their lives. 
~Sue Murphy

on art

Sunday, March 3, 2013


The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, 
which is life, 
by artificial means and hold it fixed
so that a hundred years later, 
when a stranger looks at it, 
it moves again since it is life. 
 ~William Faulkner

on women




Women are always beautiful. 
 ~Ville Valo

on felines

Wednesday, February 27, 2013


If cats could talk, they wouldn't. 
 ~Nan Porter

beyond the centuries




Nature chose for a tool, 
not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, 
not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, 
but the tender snow-flowers 
noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries. 
~John Muir

perspectives

Monday, February 25, 2013


The axis of the earth sticks out visibly 
through the centre of each and every town or city. 
 ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

eye of the beholder

Sunday, February 24, 2013


Beauty is not in the face; 
beauty is a light in the heart.
 ~Kahlil Gibran

the ocean and I

Saturday, February 23, 2013


Why do we love the sea? 
It is because it has some potent power 
to make us think things we like to think. 
 ~Robert Henri

enter the light

Friday, February 22, 2013


All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim. 
~Christopher Morley

the four seasons




Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, 
wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; 
there is really no such thing as bad weather, 
only different kinds of good weather. 
 ~John Ruskin

happiness

Saturday, February 16, 2013


If you want to be happy, be. 
 ~Leo Tolstoy

spring skies

Friday, February 15, 2013


The sky, a perfect empty canvas, offers clouds nonetheless. 
 They shift and drift and beg interpretation... 
such is the nature of art. 
 ~Jeb Dickerson

on youth

Wednesday, February 13, 2013


We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, 
yet we forget that she is someone today. 
~Stacia Tauscher

the long road




We wander for distraction, 
but we travel for fulfillment. 
 ~Hilaire Belloc

forever friends

Tuesday, February 12, 2013


You ask of my companions. 
 Hills, sir, and the sundown, 
and a dog as large as myself that my father bought me. 
 They are better than human beings, 
because they know but do not tell. 
 ~Emily Dickinson

steel roads




The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler
than the road built in despair,
even though they both lead to the same destination. 
~Marian Zimmer Bradley

poetry of summer

Saturday, February 9, 2013


What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, 
the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, 
and with as yet no sign to remind one 
that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. 
 ~Gertrude Jekyll

cheesecake time!




Life is uncertain. 
 Eat dessert first. 
 ~Ernestine Ulmer

wisdom

Friday, February 8, 2013


Age is a question of mind over matter.
If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. 
 ~Leroy "Satchel" Paige

Paco




From the dog's point of view, 
his master is an elongated and abnormally cunning dog. 
 ~Mabel Louise Robinson

the pack




You don't choose your family. 
They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. 
~Desmond Tutu

pat the cat

Wednesday, February 6, 2013


If cats could talk, they wouldn't. 
 ~Nan Porter

by the pier




If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, 
who would you call and what would you say? 
And why are you waiting? 
~Stephen Levine

Tourbillon




Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. 
 He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, 
he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. 
Yet he is lord of all the animals. 
 ~George Orwell, Animal Farm

Peter

Tuesday, February 5, 2013


The question is not, "Can they reason?"
 nor, "Can they talk?" 
but rather, "Can they suffer?" 
 ~Jeremy Bentham

the 4th season

Monday, February 4, 2013


There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... 
In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; 
only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches 
when you can savor belonging to yourself. 
 ~Ruth Stout

industry X




There's so much pollution in the air now 
that if it weren't for our lungs 
there'd be no place to put it all. 
 ~Robert Orben

books, sweets, a sunday afternoon

Sunday, February 3, 2013


The man who does not read good books 
has no advantage over the man who can't read them. 
 ~Mark Twain, attributed

will you adopt me?




Dogs have given us their absolute all. 
 We are the center of their universe. 
 We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. 
 They serve us in return for scraps. 
 It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made. 
 ~Roger Caras

play mist(y) for me

Saturday, February 2, 2013


The difference between friends and pets 
is that friends we allow into our company, 
pets we allow into our solitude. 
~Robert Brault