Kaleidoscope

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

        - Thomas Alva Edison

Thanks to Benjamin Franklin for the quote.

The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.”

Thanks to www.thinkexist.com for the online quote; to Jean-Baptiste Greuze for the portrait of Franklin and to www.wikipedia.org for the online version of the same.

Success is the progressive realization of worthwhile, predetermined, personal goals.

      - Paul J.Meyer

On a sober sunday street, I walked, looking at the empty and beautiful buildings, wondering why thy were empty. I reached my home and as the computer hooked on to the internet, my mind was hooked on to some reading and I chose the magnificent Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Here is one of his work "Castle Builder"

A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks,
A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,
A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,
And towers that touch imaginary skies.

A fearless rider on his father's knee,
An eager listener unto stories told
At the Round Table of the nursery,
Of heroes and adventures manifold.

There will be other towers for thee to build;
There will be other steeds for thee to ride;
There will be other legends, and all filled
With greater marvels and more glorified.

Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,
Rising and reaching upward to the skies;
Listening to voices in the upper air,
Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.

Tribute to Longfellow for the work.

It is the tears of the earth

that keep her smiles in bloom

          - Thanks to Rabindranath Tagore

Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship character” - T. Alan Armstrong

After a race of activities today, where I involved myself, which seemed purposeful at the begining and where they ended up helping me raise questions on why they were purposeful after I complete it, I thought that I could read some poetry. Mary Oliver is who came to my mind. Here goes the poem, thanks to Mary Oliver- it is a thoughtful, refreshing poem.Thanks to Wikipedia for the image.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it, boldness has genius, power, and magic in it

- Thanks to Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 

   Thanks to Wikipedia for the image 

Thanks to Rabindranath Tagore.You may find this poem intriguing.

Who is This?

I came out alone on my way to my tryst.

But who is this that follows me in the silent dark?

I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not.

He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger;

he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter.

He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame;

but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

All high beauty has a moral element in it, and I find the antique sculpture as ethical as Marcus Antoninus: and the beauty ever in proportion to the depth of thought.

      - Thanks to Ralph Waldo Emerson.Thanks to Wikipedia for online version of his quote and image.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Thanks to Emily Dickinson for the poem. Thanks to Wikipedia for the image.

Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny.

       - Thanks to Mahatma Gandhi and www.mkgandhi.org

This poem by Tagore captivates my heart and refreshes my being every now and then. I might have published this already twice in this blog, and yet again a refresh. You will surely enjoy this poem.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Tribute to Tagore for such an enlightening work. Thanks to wikipedia for the 'sunrise' image.

Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.

                Thanks to Seneca, Roman philosopher mid-1st century AD.

Thanks to www.wikipedia.org for the image and quote.

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

 - Thanks to Rabindranath Tagore

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