Cicero

History is the witness of the times, the torch of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity.

Edward Everett Hale

I am only one

But still I am one.

I cannot do everything,

But still I can do something;

And because I cannot do everything

I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

Mark Twain

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. That is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

Cherry Blossom

Cherry Blossom

Edmund Burke

Society is a partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living those who are dead and those who are to be born.

Cutting And The Cutter

The Cutter

A razor

slices through

the thin sheet

and red syrup

begins to flow

down the swivel.

Cut

Cut into your wrist

watch the skin peel back

and the flesh separate

as blood begins to ooze

from the severed vein.

Watch the tension

you release today

become regret

and misery

tomorrow.

Cutter

A young girl

alone

in her room

enjoying the tingling sensation

at her wrist.

Nobody knows.

Cutting

Red droplets ooze

and drip.

Silent Night (1-2)

Silent Night #1

A man

dressed in black

sits with his head in his hands,

listens to Silent Night playing

on a distant music box

and cries.

Silent Night #2

A coarse and raspy voice

sings Silent Night

one last time.

Spring

Spring

The Recluse

Everyone has problems

and we see those problems

yet we still tend to trivialize the problems of others

while stressing and worrying over our own

making them all important.

We are filled with conceit

wanting to believe we are important.

The recluse locks himself away,

desiring seclusion; departure from the cares of the world.

Not wishing to socialize with others,

each seeking companionship,

while repeating the same old

political, religious, and trivial discussions

that have been recited countless times before,

each person believing to have insight

that others do not.

The recluse sees this and wants no part in it,

but prefers solitude unpolluted

by trivialities and false wisdom.

Sounds can be pleasant yet

silence is preferable to unpleasant noise.

Plato

There are three arts which are concerned with all things, one which uses, another which makes and a third which imitates them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist had actually expressed.

Dente Alighieri

Art, as far as it has the ability, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master, so that art must be, as it were, a descendant of God.

Carl Sandburg

The Fog comes

On little cat feet.

It sits looking

Over the harbor and city

On silent haunches

And then, moves on.

Walt Whitman

Wisdom is not finally tested in the schools,

Wisdom cannot be passed from one having it to another not having it,

Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is it’s own proof.

Richard M Nixon

Nothing matters more to the future of this Nation than insuring that our young men and women learn to believe in themselves and believe in their dreams, and that they develop this capacity that you develop this capacity, so that you keep it all of your lives.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in Color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used.

Thomas Carlyle

The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut out for him in the world, and does not go into it.