The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
O Come All Ye Faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.
You never really know your friends from your enemies until the ice breaks.
There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat.
Deck the halls with boughs of holly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Tis the season to be jolly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Don we now our gay apparel,
Troll the ancient Yule tide carol,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
(S)he that has a house to put's head in has a good head-piece.
The juice of the grape is the liquid quintessence of concentrated sunbeams.
You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you.
The kitchen is a sacred space.
. . . a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
A quilt for a friend says what words cannot.
I'm a New Yorker; my oven is used for storage.
The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.Henry David Thoreau, American essayist, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.
All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.
Have nothing in your houses which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
There is something permanent, and something extremely profound, in owning a home.
There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life.
We all just take distinct paths in life, but no issue wherever we go, we get a little of each other almost everywhere.
Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
Fame has only the span of the day, they say. But to live in the hearts of people - that is worth something.
I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
'Twas very small-
Three guests in all-
Just I, myself and me.
Myself ate all the sandwiches,
While I drank up the tea;
'Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.
My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind.
Touch us, O God, through your gift of melody,
through the sounds and senses of song,
through the wordless wonder which fills our souls with heaven,
through the spirit which teaches our feet to dance
and causes our hearts to overflow.
Holy Singer of our life songs, may we be absorbed in the mystery and holiness of music,
so that, in this moment of oneness,
our lives will be bonded to each other and to you. Amen.
Anyone who tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower in the field, you'll keep it forever.
That is what the forest taught me. That you will never be mine, and that is why I will never lose you.
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Within our sitting room a table stood,
Made by my father out of cherry wood,
On which thru summer day and winter night
A basket rested full of patches bright;
And from those scraps of variegated shades
My mother planned the many quilts she made,
From muslin and cretonne by some deft spell
Forming the flowers she loved so well;
The crimson tulip and the wild rose, too,
Were fashioned, each in its own shape and hue;
The drooping lily bent its modest head,
The pink carnations' perfume seemed to shed.
Oft from the brass-bound chest her quilts I take,
And from their folds the scented herb leaves shake;
Then on her own great, square four-post bed
The cunning labor of her hands I spread;
With lingering caress I softly touch
The beauty, oddly quaint, she prized so much,
While memory brings back the homely room
Where those bright blocks of flowers flamed in bloom.
Now for long years her patient toil is o'er;
Her quilt hands create her dreams no more;
Beneath a quilt of pinks and lilies too--
The prototypes from which her patterns grew--
She rests in peace. There, while she calmly sleeps, God's mystic coverlet above her creeps.
This be my faith: That some day I shall see
Life's complex pattern growing plain to me;
That somewhere I shall clearly understand
The great design worked by the Master's hand;
And that somehow love's thread may reunite
Our broken lives into a fabric bright,
And in celestial arabesques restore
The ties that bind us here on earth no more.
All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.
