Sunday

Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men—go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families—re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."

--from Preface to “Leaves of Grass" (1855)

“Let not the hatred of a people swerve you away from justice. Be just, for this is closest to righteousness…” (Quran 5:8)

“O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah(God), even if it be against yourselves, your parents, and your relatives, or whether it is against the rich or the poor...” (Quran 4:135)

“The eyes of my soul were opened, and I beheld the plenitude of God, whereby I did comprehend the whole worlds, both here and beyond the sea, and the abyss and all things else; and therin I beheld naught save the divine Power in a manner assuredly indescribable, so that through excess of marveling the soul cried with a loud voice, saying: “This world is full of God!’”

~ Angela of Foligno

"the human heart has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed; the thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, whose charms were broken if revealed”

~Brontë

“The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of circumstances.”

~ Aristotle

“If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in disguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul.”

~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D.

“Adopt the customs and constitution of the country in which you live, but also be careful to follow the religion of your fathers. As well as you can, you must carry out both burdens. It is not easy, because on the one hand, people make it hard for you to carry the burden of civil life because of your faithfulness to your religion and, on the other hand, the climate of the times make keeping religious law harder that it need be in some respects. Nevertheless, you must try. Stand fast in the place you have been allocated by Providence and submit to everything that happens to you as you were commanded long ago by your law giver.”

~ Moses Mendelssohn

“We cannot learn from what we fear. To go beyond ordinary thinking and doing to virtue/power, we accept ourselves as we are, indeed we accept everything as it is.”

~ Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching