David Larsson's

I never had any large respect for good spelling. That is my feeling yet. Before the spelling-book came with its arbitrary forms, men unconsciously revealed shades of their characters, and also added enlightening shades of expression to what they wrote by their spelling, and so it is possible that the spelling-book has been a doubtful benevolence to us.

"Because judgments inevitably affect the lives of real people, we have every right to insist that judges - however extensive their professional qualifications - be excellent human beings. And this excellence must include the ability to understand the human condition." - Seymour I.

"None of us has time for any but the most beautiful music, the greatest music, played and heard with everything inside us." Bill Holm of Minneota, Minnesota, from his article“Long Hair Music for an America at War,” originally published in Ruminator (November/December 2004)

— Bill Holm

When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive—don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,

At the last moment, he went to the printers and stopped the presses. The article never appeared. I was frustrated and angry. But I was also extremely interested in why they cared enough to ban my article.

If you can sit quietly after difficult news, if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm, if you can see your neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy, if you can happily eat whatever is put on your plate and fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill, if you can always find contentment just where you are, you are probably a dog.

So now I say this is a good age, and we need not quarrel with it. We must understand it, if we can. At least we must do our work in it.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

... And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
Not even stooping from its sphere,
It asks a little of us here.
It asks of us a certain height,
So when at times the mob is swayed
To carry praise or blame too far,
We may choose something like a star
To stay our minds on and be staid.

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge.