Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy.
Peace does not dwell in outward things,
but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him
who has all things safely in His hands.
~~ Elisabeth Elliot
It’s funny how beetles
and creatures like that
can walk upside down
as well as walk flat.
They crawl on a ceiling
and climb on a wall
without any practice
or trouble at all.
While I have been trying
for a year (maybe more)
and still I can’t stand
with my head on the floor.
~~ Aileen Fisher
It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.
~~ Charles Spurgeon
This old village–
Not a single house
Without persimmon trees.
— Matsuo Basho (Translated by Robert Hass)
Heat waves shimmering
one or two inches
above the dead grass.
— Matsuo Basho (Translated by Robert Hass)
The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.
~~ Robert Ingersoll
God has promised to supply all our needs. What we don’t have now, we don’t need now.
~~ Elizabeth Elliot
I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.
~~ Mother Teresa
But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are “on” concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.
~~ C.S. Lewis
The oak tree:
not interested
in cherry blossoms.
— Matsuo Basho (Translated by Robert Hass)
All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
~~ Saint Francis of Assisi
Zephaniah 3:17
The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.
Moonlight slanting
through the bamboo grove;
a cuckoo crying.
— Matsuo Basho (Translated by Robert Hass)
The dragonfly
can’t quite land
on that blade of grass.
— Matsuo Basho (Translated by Robert Hass)
Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.
~~ Francis Chan
But for a woodpecker
Tapping at a post, no sound
At all in the house
— Matsuo Basho
With every gust of wind,
The butterfly changes its place
On the willow.
— Matsuo Basho
The banana tree
Blown by winds pours raindrops
Into the bucket
–Matsuo Basho
No one can tell me,
Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.
It’s flying from somewhere
As fast as it can,
I couldn’t keep up with it,
Not if I ran.
But if I stopped holding
The string of my kite,
It would blow with the wind
For a day and a night.
And then when I found it,
Wherever it blew,
I should know that the wind
Had been going there too.
So then I could tell them
Where the wind goes…
But where the wind comes from
Nobody knows.
— A. A. Milne
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
— William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
The rain comes in sheets
Sweeping the streets,
Here, here, and here,
Umbrellas appear.
Red, blue, yellow, green,
They tilt and they lean,
Like mushrooms, like flowers,
That grow when it showers.
— Elizabeth Coatsworth
