Betsy Horvath

Category: Quotes and Poems

  • The Unkindest Cut

     

    I had the day off today. I thought that I would spend the day thinking deep thoughts and writing glorious prose. Instead I spent it going through paperwork for my taxes and playing Mahjong.

    Ah well. The best laid plans.

    But then I found myself at the end of the day having written neither jot nor tittle for my regularly scheduled blog post. The horror! Panicked, I naturally turned to my handy Introduction to Literature book. After due consideration, I pulled out a poem that spoke directly to my day.

     

    The Unkindest Cut
    by J. Patrick Lewis

     

    Knives can harm you, heaven forbid;
    Axes may disarm you, kid;
    Guillotines are painful, but
    There’s nothing like a paper cut!

     

    Amen, brother.

    And yes, yes, I know the poem speaks on many levels and the humor of the physical is also a metaphor for how we cut each other through words and blah-blah-blah.  All I know is that paper cuts hurt!

    Here’s wishing you all a pain-free tax preparation season.

     

     

  • Wisdom From James

    I’ve been thinking a lot about James Allen this week.

    James Allen was a British philosophical writer, born in 1864. I stumbled across him originally when I found a quote from him on the back of a Celestial Seasonings tea box. As I continued reading his work, I found that a lot of what he wrote resonates with me.

    So, because I’ve been thinking about him and what he had to say, I’d like to share some wisdom from James with you. These excerpts are from his best-known work,  “As A Man Thinketh”:

     

    There is no way to strength and wisdom but by acting strongly and wisely in the present moment, and each present moment reveals its own task. The great man, the wise man does small things greatly regarding nothing as “trivial” that is necessary.

    Little kindnesses, generosities, and sacrifices make up a kind and generous character. Little renunciations, endurances, and victories over self make up a strong and noble character. The truly honest man is honest in the minutest details of his life. The noble man is noble in every little thing he says and does.
    It is a fatal delusion with men to think that life is detached from the momentary thought and act, and not to understand that the passing thought and deed is the foundation and substance of life. When this is fully understood all things are seen as sacred and every act becomes religious. Truth is wrapped up in infinitesimal details.

    Man’s mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein and will continue to produce their kind.

    Just as a gardener cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating towards perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful and pure thoughts. By pursuing this process, a man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

    Here is the full excerpt from the quote I found on the Celestial Seasonings box.  I’ve already shared it in another post, but this particular excerpt means a lot to me, and I wanted to include it again.

    As you think, you travel; as you love, you attract. You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you. You cannot escape the result of your thoughts, but you can endure and learn, can accept and be glad.

    You will always come to the place where your love (your most abiding and intense thought) can receive its measure of gratification. If your love be base, you will come to a base place; if it be beautiful, you will come to a beautiful place. You can alter your thoughts, and so alter your condition. Strive to perceive the vastness and grandeur of your responsibility. You are powerful, not powerless. You are as powerful to obey as you are to disobey; as strong to be pure as to be impure; as ready for wisdom as for ignorance. You can learn what you will, can remain as ignorant as you choose. If you love knowledge you will obtain it; if you love wisdom you will secure it; if you love purity you will realize it. All things await your acceptance, and you choose by the thoughts which you entertain.”

    Thank you, James.

     

  • Snowy Evening

    In celebration of the first significant snowfall since October at The Palatial Horvath Estate, I thought I would share one of my favorite snow poems, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.

    The thing I love best about Frost’s poems is that on the surface they sound all folksy and wholesome, but if you think about them a little more, they go so much deeper.

    I hope you enjoy it!

     

    Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
    by Robert Frost
     

    Whose woods these are I think I know.
    His house is in the village though;
    He will not see me stopping here
    To watch his woods fill up with snow.
     

    My little horse must think it queer
    To stop without a farmhouse near
    Between the woods and frozen lake
    The darkest evening of the year.
     

    He gives his harness bells a shake
    To ask if there is some mistake.
    The only other sound’s the sweep
    Of easy wind and downy flake.
     

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep.
     

     

  • Wisdom from Charles

    Thanks to a wicked Christmas cold attacking my throat and some rather stringent demands from my day job attacking my sanity, I don’t have many creative brain cells left to come up with a blog post today. So I’ve decided to share with you some wit and wisdom from Charles – Charles Dickens, that is.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes from this great novelist:

    “I admire machinery as much as any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us.  But, it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true. ”

    The Wreck of the Golden Mary

    You can encourage people through an email, but you need to be with them to hold on tight.

    “I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round…as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

    A Christmas Carol

    Just remember – we are all pink on the inside. And the fact that you can afford a great funeral for yourself won’t get you out of attending it.

    “No one is useless in this world…who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.”

    Our Mutual Friend

    It doesn’t matter what we do for a living. Our real job is to be a blessing to each other.

    “Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”

    Our Mutual Friend

    As we move into the brave New Year of 2012, this is my wish for all of you and for myself as well. May we have hearts that never harden, tempers that never tire, and touches that never hurt.

    Indeed.

     

  • Wisdom From Henry

    I had planned a rather witty blog post for today. Well, I thought it was witty. Opinions may vary. But I had a sad and difficult day at work, and I just don’t feel very witty at the moment.

    I thought I would share one of my very favorite quotes with you instead. Well, it’s more of an excerpt than a quote because it comes from Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Henry was a wise, wise man, and when I read Walden I can feel the woods all around me. This particular excerpt always makes me feel empowered and reminds me that sometimes we must wrestle with life to understand the true experience of it.

     

    “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

    Henry David Thoreau

     

    I’ll see you on Thursday, and hopefully I’ll feel more like posting something witty. In the meantime, go and suck some of the marrow of life, will you?

  • Let Us Praise the Rain

    It is raining again here at the Palatial Horvath Estate, as it has so often rained in the past two months. We in the Eastern US seem to have gotten most of the rain needed by the Mid- and South- West.  But Mother Nature has blessed with an uneven hand this year. I am sorry, my Mid- and South- Westian friends, for if I could send you some of our rain, I would. Instead I can only look out, sip a warm cup of tea, and enjoy.

    Since I have nothing else planned to post today, I thought I would share a poem in praise of rain and love and nature.

     

    Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise The Rain
    by Conrad Aiken

     

    Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
    Let us discover some new alphabet,
    For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
    The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
    The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
    And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
    Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
    Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
    There is an oriole who, upside down,
    Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
    Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
    There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
    Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
    The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
    Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
    There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
    Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
    The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
    Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
    Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
    Surveys the wet world from a watery stone…
    And still the syllables of water whisper:
    The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
    In the dark room; and in your heart I find
    One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
    Orion in a cobweb, and the World.