sunshine through the fog

Patience! Patience! The world is a vast and ghastly

intricacy of mechanism, and one has to be very wary,

not to get mangled by it.

  

~ taken from "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence

Success.

 

"Success, the bitch-goddess,... ... , that was a permanent necessity. You couldn't spend your last sou, and say finally: So that's that! No, if you lived even another ten minutes, you wanted a few more sous for something or other. Just to keep the business mechanically going, you needed money. You had to have it. Money you have to have. You needn't really have anything else. So that's that!

Since, of course, it's not your own fault you are alive. Once you are alive, money is a necessity, and the only absolute necessity. All the rest you can get along without, at a pinch. But not money. Emphatically, that's that!"

 

 

Prostitution.

 

"The bitch-goddess! Well, if one had to prostitute oneself, let it be to a bitch-goddess! One could always despise her even while one prostituted oneself to her, which was good. "

 

 

Appetites...

 

"He realized now that the bitch-goddess of Success had two main appetites: one for flattery, adulation, stroking and tickling such as writers and artists gave her; but the other a grimmer appetite for meat and bones. And the meat and bones for the bitch-goddess were provided by the men who made money in industry.

 

Yes, there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitch-goddess: the group of the flatterers, those who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed, those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The well-groomed showy dogs of amusement wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favours of the bitch-goddess. But it was nothing to the silent fight-to-the-death that went on among the indispensables, the bone-bringers."

 

 

Whores we are. All of us.

 

~ taken from "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence

"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen."

 

~ D.H. Lawrence - opening paragraph of "Lady Chatterley's Lover"

 

Beautiful, ain't it?

 

"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods"

 

 

~ C.S. Lewis

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."

~ Antoine Saint-Exupery

God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
At the risk of sounding like some man-hating feminist (I'm not, in case you're still doubtful), I just had to put this here as it made me smile as I read it. This actually came from a mass joke mail, most of which jokes I've already seen before, all but the last sentence. And I think that made it worthwhile to warrant a space on my page. Enjoy!

WIFE VS. HUSBAND
A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position. As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the husband asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?" "Yep," the wife replied, "In-laws."

WORDS
A husband read an article to his wife about how many words women use a day... 30,000 to a man's 15,000.
The wife replied, "The reason has to be because we have to repeat everything to men... The husband then turned to his wife and asked, "What?"

CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, "I don't know how you can be so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time."
The wife responded, "Allow me to explain. God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me; God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!

WHO DOES WHAT
A man and his wife were having an argument about who should brew the coffee each morning.
The wife said, "You should do it, because you get up first, and then we don't have to wait as long to get our coffee."
The husband said, " You are in charge of cooking around here and you should do it, because that is your job, and I can just wait for my coffee."
Wife replies, "No, you should do it, and besides, it is in the Bible that the man should do the coffee."
Husband replies, "I can't believe that, show me."
So she fetched the Bible, and opened the New Testament and showed him at the top of several pages, that it indeed says.......... "HEBREWS"

THE SILENT TREATMENT
A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment. Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me at 5:00 AM." He left it where he knew she would find it. The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed. The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up."

Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests. God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.

The rose is a rose,
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple's a rose,
And the pear is, and so's
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only know
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose--
But were always a rose

~ Robert Frost

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

On Hope,

Hope is a waking dream ~ Aristotle

We'd never know how high we are till we are called to rise; and then, if we are true to plan, our statures touch the sky. ~ Emily Dickinson

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~ Charles A Beard

On luck...

Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow's good luck. ~ Og Mandino

Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will, but remember it didn't work for the rabbit. ~ R. E. Shay

We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? ~ Jean Cocteau

I am realistic - I expect miracles. ~ Wayne Dyer

On life...

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. ~ E.E. Cummings

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~ Ivy Baker

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. ~ A. W. Pinero

Every person’s life is a fairytale written by God’s fingers. ~ Hans Christian Anderson

We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. ~ Anne Frank

不去愛一個人可以很容易

但是不去思念一個人卻很難

~ 張維哲 2005/6/13 12:40 am

"... ... Flowers are weak, they are naive. They reassure themselves as best they can. They think they are being frightening, with their thorns."

... ... ... ... ...

"For millions of years flowers have been growing thorns . For millions of years sheep have been eating flowers nonetheless. And is it not a serious matter, to try and understand why flowers go to so much trouble producing thorns that will never be of any use to them? ... ... And if I personally know a flower which is unique in the world, which exists nowhere except on my planet, but which one little sheep can destroy in a single bite, just like that, one morning, without even noticing what he is doing - well, I suppose that, too, is of no importance!"

... ... ... ... ...

"If someone loves a flower, of which just one single blossom grows in all the millions and millions of stars, it is enough to make him happy when he looks up at the night sky. He can say to himself, 'Somewhere out there is my flower.' But if a sheep eats the flower, it's as though all the stars have suddenly gone out..."

... ... ... ... ...

"One never ought to listen to the flowers. One should simply look at them and breathe their fragrance. Mine perfumed all my planet. But I did not know how to take pleasure in all her grace. This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity."

... ... ... ... ...

"In those days I understood nothing! I should have judged by her deeds and not by her words. She cast her fragrance around me and brightened my life. I should never have run away! I should have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little strategems. Flowers are so contradictory! And I was too young to know how to love her..."

... ... ... ... ...

"... If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers..."

In its original language:

"... Les fleurs sont faibles. Elles sont naïves. Elles se rassurent comme elles peuvent. Elles se croient terribles avec leurs épines..."

... ... ... ... ...

"Il y a des millions d'années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d'années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n'est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien? ... ... Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n'existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu'un petit mouton peut anéantir d'un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu'il fait, ce n'est pas important ça!"

... ... ... ... ...

"Si quelqu'un aime une fleur qui n'existe qu'à un exemplaire dans les millions et les millions d'étoiles, ça suffit pour qu'il soit heureux quand il les regarde. Il se dit: 'Ma fleur est là quelque part...' Mais si le mouton mange la fleur, c'est pour lui comme si, brusquement, toutes les étoiles s'éteignaient! Et ce n'est pas important ça! "

... ... ... ... ...

"... ...il ne faut jamais écouter les fleurs. Il faut les regarder et les respirer. La mienne embaumait ma planète, mais je ne savais pas m'en réjouir. Cette histoire de griffes, qui m'avait tellement agacé, eût dû m'attendrir..."

... ... ... ... ...

"Je n'ai alors rien su comprendre ! J'aurais dû la juger sur les actes et non sur les mots. Elle m'embaumait et m'éclairait. Je n'aurais jamais dû m'enfuir ! J'aurais dû deviner sa tendresse derrière ses pauvres ruses. Les fleurs sont si contradictoires ! Mais j'étais trop jeune pour savoir l'aimer."

... ... ... ... ...

"... Si tu aimes une fleur qui se trouve dans une étoile, c'est doux, la nuit, de regarder le ciel. Toutes les étoiles sont fleuries"

Quoted from: ~ Le Petit Prince ~ d'Antoine de Saint Exupéry