| Muffy's Page |
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| Serenity "Speak to me of serenity, of treasures yet to be found, of peace that flows like a river. Tell me of tranquil places that no hand has marred, no storm has scarred. Give me visions of standing in sunglight or the feeling of spring mist against my cheek as I live and move and breathe. Show me paths that wind through wild lilies and beds of buttercups. Sing me songs like the mingled voices of wrens and meadowlarks, the lowing of gentle cows, the soft mother-call of a mare to her colt...Find me a place in the sunlight to sit and think and listen to the sweet inner voice that says so quietly, 'Peace, be still.'" ~Joyce Sequichie Hifler |
| Goose Cove |
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| Ribe |
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| Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and scared. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. (Rumi, Sufi mystic) |
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| Alan Paton's Liberalism (Alan Paton is the author of Cry the Beloved Country). "By liberalism, I don't mean the creed of any party or any century. I mean a generosity of spirit, a tolerance of others, an attempt to comprehend otherness, a commitment to the rule of law, a high ideal if the worth and dignity of man, a repugnance of authoritarianism, and a love of freedom." 1953 |
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| "They say to be a writer you must first have an unhappy childhood. I don't know if unhappiness is necessary, but I think maybe some children who have suffered a loss too great for words grow up into writers who are always trying to find those words, trying to find a meaning for the way they have lived."
--- Cynthia Rylant, But I'll Be Back Again |
| Why/How I Teach Miss Hicks, in The Human Comedy by William Saroyan, states, "What my children appear to be on the surface is no matter to me. I am fooled neither by gracious manners nor by any bad manners. I am interested in what is truly beneath each kind of manners. Whether one of my children is rich or poor, brilliant or slow, genius or simple-minded, is no matter to me, if there is humanity in him -- if he has a heart -- if he loves truth and honor -- if he respects both his inferiors and his superiors. If children of my classroom are human, I do not want them to be alike in their manner of being human. If they are not corrupt, it does not matter to me how they differ from one another. I want each of my children to be himself. I don't want [them] to be like somebody else just to please me or to make my work easier. I would soon be weary of a classroom full of perfect little ladies and gentlemen. I want my children to be people -- each one separate -- each one special --each one a pleasant and exciting variation of all the others." |
| �When you have a great and difficult task, something perhaps almost impossible, if you only work a little at a time, every day a little, suddenly the work will finish itself.� Karen Blixen |
| "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." ---Mark Twain |
| "I prepared excitedly for my departure, as if this journey had a mysterious significance. I had decided to change my mode of life. "'til now," I told myself, "you have only seen the shadow and been well content with it; now, I am going to lead you into the substance."
Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek |