SUCCESS IN COMMON HOURS

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,

and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined,

he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

- Henry David Thoreau

THE SUBLIME

"For the happy man, prayer is only a jumble of words

until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the

sublime language by means of which he speaks to God." 

Author Unknown

SHALL I COMPARE THEE

 Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed.

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade

When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

- William Shakespeare

THE INDEPENDENCE OF CHARACTER

"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion.

It is easy in solitude to live after one's own.

But the great man is he who,

in the midst of the crowd, 

keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of

his character."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

LIKE A BIRD

"Be like the bird who,

Halting in his flight on a limb too slight

Feels it give way beneath him,

Yet sings knowing he hath wings."

- Victor Hugo

AN OVERWHELMING CONVICTION

"I have been driven many times to my knees

by the overwhelming conviction 

that I had nowhere else to go."

- Abraham Lincoln

PATHLESS WOODS

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and the music in its roar.

I love not man the less, but nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel,

What I can ne'er express, 

yet cannot all conceal.

- Lord George Gordon Byron

THE BEAUTY OF DREAMS

The future belongs to those

who believe in the 

beauty of their dreams.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

TODAY

Today we live, 

we serve, we love,

Nor of the future borrow

And yesterday's a worn out glove

We cannot wear tomorrow.

- Renie H. Littlewood

I DARE NOT ASK

I dare not ask your very all:

I only ask a part.

Bring me - when dancers leave the hall -

Your aching heart.

Give other friends your lighted face,

The laughter of the years:

I come to crave a greater grace -

Bring me your tears!

- Edwin Markham