True recollection has characteristics by which it can be easily recognized. It produces a certain effect which I do not know how to explain, but which is well understood by those who have experienced it. . . . It is true that recollection has several degrees, and that in the beginning these great effects are not felt, because it is not yet profound enough. But support the pain which you first feel in recollecting yourself, despise the rebellion of nature, overcome the resistance of the body, which loves a liberty which is its ruin, learn self-conquest, persevere thus for a time, and you will perceive very clearly the advantages which you gain from it. As soon as you apply yourself to orison, you will at once feel your senses gather themselves together: they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work at the making of honey: and this will take place without effort or care on your part. God thus rewards the violence which your soul has been doing to itself; and gives to it such a domination over the senses that a sign is enough when it desires to recollect itself, for them to obey and so gather themselves together. At the first call of the will, they come back more and more quickly. At last, after countless exercises of this kind, God disposes them to a state of utter rest and of perfect contemplation.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

Henry Adams

Baseball's future? Bigger and bigger, better and better! No question about it, it's the greatest game there is!

Ted Williams

Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained.

Maurice de Vlaminck

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world

C.S. Lewis

He had to accept the fate of every newcomer to a small town where there are plenty of tongues that gossip and few minds that think.

Victor Hugo

Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who's out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.

P. J. O'Rourke

Why not seize the pleasure at once? -- How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

Jane Austen

Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of fear is a freedom.

Marilyn Ferguson

Almost all the ideas we have about being a man or being a woman are so burdened with pain, anxiety, fear and self-doubt. For many of us, the confusion around this question is excruciating.

Andrew Cohen

Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.

Don Marquis

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.

Oscar Wilde

Some tension is necessary for the soul to grow, and we can put that tension to good use. We can look for every opportunity to give and receive love, to appreciate nature, to heal our wounds and the wounds of others, to forgive, and to serve.

Joan Borysenko