Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.
Benjamin Franklin
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2023 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
Happy New Year 2023!
Happy New Year 2022!
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something.
So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before. Don’t freeze, don’t stop, don’t worry that it isn’t good enough, or it isn’t perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you’re scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
Neil Gaiman
I wish you a very, very Happy New Year! May 2022 bring you and yours much joy and happiness!
Happy Halloween!
Halloween shadows played upon the walls of the houses. In the sky the Halloween moon raced in and out of the clouds. The Halloween wind was blowing, not a blasting of wind but a right-sized swelling, falling, and gushing of wind. It was a lovely and exciting night, exactly the kind of night Halloween should be.
Eleanor Estes, The Witch Family
Eleanor Estes (1906-1988), American children’s author and a children’s librarian.
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All Things on Earth Point Home in Old October
All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.
Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938), American novelist.
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I Shall Be Content with Silence
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Ansel Adams (1902-1984), American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West.
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If One Wants To Be Active, One Mustn’t Be Afraid To Do Something Wrong Sometimes
“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good — many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm — and that’s a lie, and you said yourself in the past that it was a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity…
You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter, “You can’t do anything.” The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares — and who has once broken the spell of “You can’t.”
Life itself likewise always turns towards one an infinitely meaningless, discouraging, dispiriting blank side on which there is nothing, any more than on a blank canvas. But however meaningless and vain, however dead life appears, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, and who knows something, doesn’t let himself be fobbed off like that. He steps in and does something…“
Vincent van Gogh, from Ever Yours: The Essential Letters
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Certain Things Can Never Be Realized
I shall never have the garden I have in my mind, but that for me is the joy of it; certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them.
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book)
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The Beautiful Spring Came
The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also. – Harriet Ann Jacobs
You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming. – Pablo Neruda
I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen. – Anne Lamott
With the coming of spring, I am calm again. – Gustav Mahler
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. – Hal Borland
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Spend It All
One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.
– Annie Dillard (b. 1945), American author. Her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a “sustained nonfiction narrative about the fields, creeks, woods, and mountains near Roanoke, Virginia,” won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
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This Is My Wish for You
This is my wish for you: Comfort on difficult days, smiles when sadness intrudes, rainbows to follow the clouds, laughter to kiss your lips, sunsets to warm your heart, hugs when spirits sag, beauty for your eyes to see, friendships to brighten your being, faith so that you can believe, confidence for when you doubt, courage to know yourself, patience to accept the truth, Love to complete your life.
by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American essayist, Transcendentalist poet, and popular philosopher.
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