Quotations

“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.”     Isaac Asimov

Shaking your head?  Here are my honest unvarnished impressions.  Although I nearly suffered a traumatic death, which in the ER we all have imagined as a horrible way to die, I can say from experience when you don't see it coming, and it strikes in an instant as John Donne remarked - it may not be all that bad a way to pass from this world.  Yet as a survivor of a sudden change, an alteration to worse, I have found it is the transition that is indeed most troublesome.  In my case, thankfully, it was a transition back to finding life, a life that is again (mostly) pleasant!

To follow this are quotes from all sources, on a variety of topics, presented hereafter without any additional comments...

"Life is getting up one more time than you've been knocked down."     John Wayne  

 

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."     Edith Wharton

 

"There is only one thing that I dread:  Not to be worthy of my sufferings."     Fyodor Dostoevsky

 

“The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it’s unfamiliar territory.”     Paul Fix, actor

 

"I am not what I ought to be.  I am not what I want to be.  I am not what I hope to be.  But still, I am not what I used to be.  And by the grace of God, I am what I am."     John Newton (1725-1807)

 

"Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and what a beautiful image it is.  They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer.  They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings.  We have not yet begun to use kind words in such abundance as they ought to be used."     Blaise Pascal

 

"I found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ.  My temper for the rest of the day was mistrust of my own great, but before unknown weakness.  I saw that by faith I stood; by the continual support of faith, which kept me from falling, though of myself I am ever sinking into sin.  I want to be still sensible of my own weakness...yet confident of Christ's protection."     Charles Wesley

 

"My son, oftentimes a man vehemently struggleth for somewhat he desireth, and when he hath arrived at it, he beginneth to be of another mind; for man's affections do not long continue fixed on one object, but rather do urge him from one thing to another."     Thomas a` Kempis

 

"God hath thus ordered it, that we may learn to bear one another's burdens; for no man is without fault...no man is sufficient of himself; no man is wise enough of himself; but we ought to bear with one another, comfort one another, help, instruct, and admonish one another.  Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath.  For occasions do not make a man frail, but they show what he is."     Thomas a` Kempis

 

"What is it, therefore, to believe in him?  It is in believing to love, in believing to delight, in believing to walk towards him, and be incorporated amongst the limbs or members of his body."     St. Augustine

 

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.  All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations.  It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.  There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal.  Nations, cultures, arts, civilization--these are all mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.  But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.  This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.  We must play.  But our merriment must be of that kind (and, indeed, it is the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously.  Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."     C. S. Lewis

 

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."     Albert Einstein

 

"The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it."     James T. Adams

 

More to come...time now to read and discover more to share.