Year 6 Quotes:
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams
to add, divide and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself.
In the mystical, moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
- a passage from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
Assist me, Muse divine! To sing the Morn
On which the Saviour of Mankind was born
But oh! What Numbers to the Theme can rise?
Unless kind Angels aid me from the skies?
Methinks I see the tuneful Host descend
And with officious Joy the Scene attend.
Hark, by their hymns directed on the Road,
The gladsome Shepherds find the nascent God!
And view the Infant conscious of his Birth,
Smiling bespeak Salvation to the Earth!
- This Christmas hymn for metrical singing was composed by the Reverend James Marye in the early 1770s. Marye was rector of Saint George's Parish in Fredericksburg from 1768 to 1780. The hymn was composed in the form of a poem. The young George Washington wrote it out in his diary.
These are the things..
...Will make a life that's truly bless'd
A Good Esate or healthy soul,
Not Got by Vice, nor yet by toil:
Round a warm fire, a Pleasant Take,
With Chimney ever free from smoke.
...A Mind as well as body, whole
Prudent Simplicity, constant Friends,
A Merry Night [without] much Drinking,
A Happy Thought without much Thinking,
Each Quiet Night by Quiet sleep made short
A Will to be but what thou art...
These are the things..
...Will make a life that's truly bless'd
"A rain had fallen from some warmer region in the skies when the cold here below was intense to an extreme. Every drop was frozen wherever it fell in the trees, and clung to the limbs and sprigs as if it had been fastened by hooks of steel. The earth was never more universally covered with snow, and the rain had frozen upon a crust on the surface, which shone with the brightness of burnished silver. The icicles on every sprig glowed in al the luster of diamonds. Every tree was a chandelier of cut glass. I have seen the queen of France, with 18 millions of livres of diamonds upon her person, and I declare that all the charms of her face and figure added to all the glitter of her jewels, did not make an impression on me equal to that presented by every shrub. The whole world was glittering with precious stones."
- Excerpt from a letter by President John Adams, what David McCullough and I think is one of the most beautiful passages ever written by an American statesman or politician.
Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss people
~ Eleanor Roosevelt
"Mother Teresa thought the Paradoxical Commandments were important enough to put up on the wall of her children's home in Calcutta."
"I really don't know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it is because in addition to the fact that the sea changes and the light changes, and ships change, it is because we all came from the sea. And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it we are going back from whence we came."
"It's true what you have read and heard — I plan to leave this broadcast after the election later this year. Not because anyone is pushing me but because something is pulling me. I turn 70 in a few months and while there's no marker at the border — like the signs at the state line that say "Welcome to Texas" or "You're Leaving California" — I know I'm entering a different country.
Some imaginary trip wire breaks and the little odometer on your psychic dashboard starts clicking faster and faster and all of a sudden a horizon that once seemed far, far away, looms right there, in your face. You feel an irresistible urge to slow down, take your foot off the accelerator, touch it to the brake — gently, but surely, and start negotiating yourself out of the fast lane. You begin to think about that side road you never took, the country lane you once spotted in the rearview mirror and promised yourself you would return to one day and never did.
And all of a sudden you want to get to know the person who's been sitting there in the seat beside you all these years, when neither one of you noticed that the only thing zipping by faster than the traffic was life itself. You don't want to quit altogether. You keep thinking of Tennyson's poem:
"How dull it is to pause, to make an end
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!"
But slowing down is not quitting. So you think about the legendary black pitcher Satchel Paige, who spent most of his career in what was then called the Negro Baseball League. By the time the racial barriers were relaxed he didn't know anything else to do but keep on pitching, and pitching, and pitching. When a reporter asked him, "How old are you?" Satchel Paige replied, "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" One day he found out, and even Satchel Paige had to hand the ball to a younger man and leave the mound. Knowing when is the trick; timing is what counts or the ripe peach rots.
All these septuagenarians I've been interviewing through the years have taught me something. They lived long enough to turn their experience into wisdom, and to share it, which is the reason I keep wanting to talk to them.…"
I am particularly attached to the Missouri River, that ancient artery that begins in central Montana and powers its way north before beginning its long east-by-southeast trek across flat landscape of the Dakotas and along the borders of Iowa, Nebraska, and Missouri. Large dams have slowed but not completely conquered the river of Lewis and Clark, the Sioux, Crow, Omaha, and Santee tribes. Whenever I return to my home state I always try to swim in the river channel, just to feel its restless currents again, as a reminder of my earlier struggles to master them as a beginning swimmer. They taught me to understand force and use it to my advantage, taught me that to make progress often means giving a little.
-- "A Long Way from Home: Growing Up in the American Heartland" by Tom Brokaw
"G. Franklin Allee wrote how, "Years ago, a young mother was making her way across the hills of South Wales, carrying her tiny babe in her arms. When she was overtaken by a blinding blizzard. She never reached her destination alive, and when the blizzard had subsided her body was found beneath the snow. But the searchers discovered that before her death she had taken off all her outer clothing and wrapped it about her baby. And when they unwrapped the child, to their great surprise and joy, they found he was alive and well. She had given her life for her child, providing the depth of her mother love. Years later that child, David Lloyd George, grown to manhood, became prime minister of Great Britain, and without doubt one of England's greatest statesmen.
England was a better place for a time because a mother gave her life for her son...."
- Dick Innes, Daily Encounter
Life
Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realise it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is costly, care for it.
Life is wealth, keep it.
Life is love, enjoy it.
Life is mystery, know it.
Life is a promise, fulfil it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
- Mother Teresa -
One of the world's greatest musicians, Ludwig van Beethoven, began to lose his hearing when he was only 26. This was particularly tragic for someone so gifted in using sound as music. When he realised he could not be cured of his deafness, he wrote the following prayer. As we hear his words, we can pray for those who are going through difficulties at this time:
O God, give me strength to be victorious over myself. O guide my spirit and raise me up from these dark depths, so that I may fearlessly struggle upward in fiery flight. For it is you alone, Lord, who understand me and can inspire me. Amen."
"Now I say to you in conclusion, life is hard, at times as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and difficult moments. Like the ever-flowing waters of the river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. (Yeah, Yes) Like the ever-changing cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. (Yeah) And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him (Yeah, Well), and that God is able (Yeah, Yes) to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace."
Eulogy For The Young Victims Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; September 18, 1963, Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama
Death's power is limited--
It cannot eradicate memories
Or slay a love
It cannot destroy even a threadbare faith
Or permanetly hobble the smallest hope to God.
It cannot permeate the soul
And it cannot cripple the spirit
It merely seperates us for a while
That is the only power death can claim
--No more
Year 7 Quotes:
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Copyright Rexanna M. Keats 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006. All Rights Reserved.