The Saunterer

Paul Tillich on feeling

    The opposite of the Saunterer is the Hurrier. Hurry not through life nor art museums. For as Paul Tillich put it:

    People in a hurry cannot feel.

    (Quoted from page 119 of Managing Vulnerability: The Underlying Dynamics of Systems of Care, by Tim Dartington. Karnac Books, 2010.)
    For a brief biography of Paul Tillich, click here. For images of or relating to Paul Tillich, click here. For a brief biography of Tim Dartington, click here. For images of or relating to Tim Dartington, click here.

Bernard Shaw on love

    There is some sense in Bernard Shaw’s way of seeing love:

    Love lacks personal interest. Love is the most impersonal of all passions. It is a vital experience in actual fact; but on paper it is redeemed from intolerable boresomeness only as a subject of biological science. Even Shakespeare could not make love interesting. Everybody yawns at Romeo and Juliet when Mercutio and the Nurse leave the stage.
    All great love stories, like Francesca da Rimini, are equally tiresome. Every man is the same sort of idiot when he is in love.

    (Quoted from page 15 of Glimpses of the Great, by George Sylvester Viereck. The Macaulay Company, 1930)
    For a brief biography of George Bernard Shaw, click here. For images of or relating to George Bernard Shaw, click here.
    For a brief biography of George Sylvester Viereck, click here. For images of or relating to George Sylvester Viereck, click here.

Carol Burnett on her cats

    At the library the other day, we discovered Carol Burnett’s new book, in which is this:

    It took me a while, but I began to think about getting another cat – not to replace Roxy, but to give another little critter my love. . . . So along came Mabel. I named her after Nanny. She’s a beautiful cat with jade-green eyes, tiger-like stripes, and a personality that makes me howl with laughter.
    That was ten years ago. Mabel talks, fetches (!), and curls up on my lap when I’m reading the paper or watching television. She follows Brian and me around the house, and will come to us when we call her. My favorite Mabel quirk occurs when it’s time to eat: if she hasn’t been fed yet, she lifts the receiver off the telephone. “Hello, room service?”
    I look at it this way: Roxy gave me everything she could in her short lifetime. And she opened my heart to the possibility that became Mabel.
    God bless our furry loved ones.

    (Quoted from page 252-253 of This Time Together: Laughter and Reflection, by Carol Burnett. Harmony Books, 2010.)

    And next to Carol Burnett’s book was Making Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat, by David Dosa (Hyperion, 2010), with its chapters headed by these observations:

Animals are such agreeable friends –
they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
-- George Eliot

What greater gift than the love of a cat?
-- Charles Dickens

There are two means of refuge from
the miseries of life: music and cats.
-- Albert Schweitzer

Time spent with cats is never wasted.
-- Colette

Which is more beautiful, feline movement or feline stillness?
-- Elizabeth Hamilton

Two things are aesthetically perfect
in the world – the clock and the cat.
-- Emile Auguste Chartier

I love cats because I enjoy my home:
and little by little,
they become its visible soul.
-- Jean Cocteau

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
-- Leonardo da Vinci

You can’t own a cat.
The best you can do is be partners.
-- Sir Harry Swanson

A cat makes all the difference between coming
home to an empty house and coming home.
-- Unknown

    For a brief biography of Carol Burnett, click here. For images of or relating to Carol Burnett, click here.
    For a brief biography of David Dosa, click here. For images of or relating to David Dosa, click here.