The Saunterer

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe on the power of beginning

    Goethe has a brilliant and important idea here:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. . . . The moment one definitely commits, then Providence comes too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. . . . What ever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

    (Quoted from page 67 of The Legacy: An elder’s vision for our sustainable future, by David Suzuki. Greystone Books, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, click here. For images of or relating to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, click here. For a brief biography of David Suzuki, click here. For images of or relating to David Suzuki, click here.

P. D. James on happiness

    That there are moments like P. D. James tells of below, and that so long as you can stay alive you can have more such moments, is reason for wanting to live:

I stood for a moment in complete silence broken only by the note of a single bird and the susurration of the breeze in the wayside grasses. It was one of those moments of happiness and contentment which give reality to death, since however long we live, there are never enough springs.

    (Quoted from page 187 of Time to Be in Earnest: A Fragment of an Autobiography, by P. D. James. Ballantine Books, 1999.)
    For a brief biography of P. D. James, click here. For images of or relating to P. D. James, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on how humans are wasting their time

    A hundred and fifty-seven years ago Henry David Thoreau wrote for the world to see the following, which still holds true:

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end.

    (Quoted from page 61 of Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. George Routledge and Sons, 1904.)

    For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here. For images of or relating to Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Phillips Brooks on solitude

    In 1850 when he was a teenager at the Latin School, Phillips Brooks received a grade of nineteen out of twenty possible points for writing an essay containing this perceptive passage:

No man can rightly perform his duties here, without many an hour of silent, solemn meditation and self-examination. In the hours of solitude, it is conscience that is the most active. That still small voice which among the more busy scenes of life is almost drowned now holds its sovereign sway. . . . And is there no pleasure to be derived from solitude? . . . Is man his own worst enemy, that he can derive no pleasure from communion with himself? No! the upright cannot fail to acknowledge that their solitary hours are often the happiest in their lives. . . . To him whose soul has been wearied by continual communion with the world, in whose mind its pleasures and its amusements awaken little else than satiety and disgust, how delightful it is to flee from its busy scenes to seek repose in solitude, to feel that no human eye can see, and no human voice can intrude to mar the quiet and the peace with which the soul is surrounded.

    (Quoted from page 15 of Phillips Brooks: Pulpit Eloquence, by David B. Chesebrough. Greenwood Press, 2001.)
    For a brief biography of Phillips Brooks, click here. For a brief biography of David B. Chesebrough, click here.