Hermann Zapf
We don't create heroic things
to earn fame. We put no scratches on the globe, but perhaps with
our gentle art we add a few little dabs of joy to life, in a
nicely written praise of the Lord, written with the complete
engagement of our heart.Calligraphy is a peaceful and
noble art, done by well educated human beings who do their work
with full commitment, with intense concentration. For we want
to put into our letters a little of our own feelings, of our
personality and mood. Letters should have grace and
beauty in themselves. No calligrapher pollutes rivers with his
ink, or poisons the air we breathe. Calligraphy makes no noise.
We don't fight with arms nor with our pens, but we want to convince
sometimes with a hand-lettered message of special importance
in which we believed. Of course we know we are not
the center of the world ----we merely like to make nice things
with our given talent. And we have a burden of responsibility:
the heritage of the great masters of the past, the tradition
of the scribes of the Middle Ages, of the royal and imperial
ancestors in Europe and Asia. Calligraphy is still a royal activity.
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Below is Carl Sagan's reflection on a picture of the Earth, returned to us from Voyager
2, when it was 3.7 billion miles away (it's now over 5.7 billion
miles away).
But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here.
That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you
know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever
was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering,
thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines,
every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator
and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every
young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child,
inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt
politician, every "superstar," every "supreme
leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species
lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.The Earth is a very small stage
in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled
by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph,
they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of
one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants
of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how
eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined
self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position
in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.
In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that
help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
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Einstein
A human being is part of a whole,
called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest
-- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.This delusion is a kind of prison
for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection
for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. I am enough of an artist to
draw freely upon my imagination.
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
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Mother Theresa
Life is an opportunity, benefit
from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize
it. Life is a challenge, meet it.Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life
is sorrow, overcome it.Life is a song, sing it. Life
is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life
is an adventure, dare it. Life is life, fight for it.
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(-From PBS show
from a series titled: The Secret Life of the Brain. )
"Emotion
is at the very heart of our thinking lives.
Our lives are governed by emotion and by the interaction
of emotion to our thought processes.
That's who we are!
We are emotional people!
There is no such thing as a non-emotional moment in life."
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Cheyenne Prayer
O Great Spirit Creator, all things we ask
of you. Be kind to us. Give these people the favor to
see green grasses, trees, flowers,
berries, this next spring. So we all meet again. O great Spirit, let us lead our children to a
good life and old age. Help us to be kind to us. Let us be happy on earth. These our people, give them good minds to love one another.
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Loretta Kemsley
In each of us, there is a silence,
a silence as vast as the universe. We are afraid of it. We long
for it. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are --- creatures
of the stars, created from the birth of galaxies, created from the cooling of this
planet, created from dust and gas, created from the elements, created
from time and space. Silence is the source of all
that exists, the unfathomable stillness,where vibration began, the first
oscillation, the first word, from which life emerged. Silence
is our deepest nature, our home, our common ground, our peace. Out of silence comes the fiery
burst from which the universe and our own creation
is born. Whether we yearn for the soft
warmth of silence orthe searing heat of creative
expression, we can find our inspiration in the influences
of summer---where eternal beauty and magnificent
art become one----in nature and in our soul. Strong,
and supple, our passions allow for both standing
talla nd bending to meet the forces
of life.
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THE RULES FOR BEING
HUMAN by Cherie Carter-Scott, Ph.D.
1-
You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire
period of this time around.
2-
You will learn lessons.
You are enrolled in a full time informal school called life.
Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to
learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant
or stupid.
3-
There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error: Experimentation. The
"failed" experiments are as much part of the process
as the
experiment that ultimately "works".
4-
A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you
have
learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the
next lesson.
5-
Learning lessons does not end.
There are no parts of life that do not contain lessons. If
you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.
6- "There"
is no better than "here".
When your "there" has become a "here", you
will simply obtain
another "there" that will again look better than "here".
7-
Others are merely mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless
it
reflects something you love or hate about yourself.
8-
What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with
them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9-
Your answers lie inside you.
The answers about life's questions lie inside you. All you need
to do is look, listen and trust.
10-
You will forget all this.
From:" A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES" — Diane Ackermann
When you consider something like
death, after which [there being no news flash to the contrary] we may well go out like a candle flame,then it probably doesn't matter
if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.It probably doesn't matter if,
while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life's many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children
we all are.It probably doesn't matter if
a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady's slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a
but eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn
leaf in the other, its color hitting our senses like a blow from a
stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.
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Don't listen
to those who say, 'You're taking too big a chance.' Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor, and it would
surely be rubbed out by today. Most important, don't listen when the little voice of fear inside you rears its ugly head and says: 'They're all smarter than you out there. They're more talented,
they're taller, blonder, prettier, luckier, and they have connections.' I firmly believe that if you follow a path that interests you, not to the exclusion of love, sensitivity, and cooperation with
others, but with the strength of conviction that you can move others
by your own efforts, and do not make success or failure the criteria
by which you live, the chances are you'll be a person worthy of your own respects.
- Neil Simon
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Advice is what
we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
-Erica Jong
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Life is either
a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature.
-Helen Keller
Art Quotes:
—"It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it. "-Anais Nin
—"Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures."-Henry Ward Beecher
—"The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart." - Robert Schumann
—"I believe it is the obligation of all creative people to keep creativity moving." - Ansel Adams
—"Art intensifies the presence of the world. We see it more vividly and more deeply." - Thomas Moore
—"You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul." - George Bernard Shaw
—"The artist vocation is to send light into the human heart." - Robert Schumann
- —"Anyone who says
you can't see a thought simply doesn't know art." -Wynetka Ann Reynolds
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