From “The Syntax of Creation” by John R Rosenberg

“Things that mater submit to the syntax of creation.  We grow day by day, line upon line, experience by experience.  Unreasonably, sometimes we seek Day Seven Privileges on Day One or Two, or we demand of ourselves expertise or excellence that more properly should be assigned to another day.  God could not put animals on the land until they had something to eat; he could not cultivate vegetation until there was dry land…what I find reassuring is what God did not do.  At the end of Day Five he did not say, “after all this work and all this time, all I have to show for my effort is fish.” What He did say was that “all things which I had created” up to that time “were good.” So it is with our education, our careers, and our relationships.  We may not be finished, but we can be acceptable - sufficient unto that day.”

"There are heartfelt moments when we are reflective, and they touch us deeply.  But they are so fleeting.  The day will come, brothers and sisters, when these reveries will not only be touching and heartfelt but everlasting in their splendor! For now, they are exceedingly brief, and we are left to press forward.  We need reflective leisure to ponder, but if there were too much of it, or if these moments were too prolonged, they would soon dissolve and lose their spiritual symmetry.  So the reveries come, but they are brief, and then it is back to class in the curriculum the Lord has for each of us." Neal Maxwell

"Educators do all in their power to prepare you to enjoy reading after college. It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research worker. In literature, we should not always read the books blessed by the majority. This trend is reflected in such absurd announcements as “the death of the novel,” “the last of the romantics,” “the last of the Bohemians,” when we know that these are continuous trends which evolve and merely change form. The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us. Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.

When we totally accept a pattern not made by us, not truly our own, we wither and die. People’s conventional structure is often a façade. Under the most rigid conventionality there is often an individual, a human being with original thoughts or inventive fantasy, which he does not dare expose for fear of ridicule, and this is what the writer and artist are willing to do for us. They are guides and map makers to greater sincerity. They are useful, in fact indispensable, to the community. They keep before our eyes the variations which make human beings so interesting. The men who built America were the genuine physical adventurers in a physical world. This world once built, we need adventurers in the realm of art and science. If we suppress the adventure of the spirit, we will have the anarchist and the rebel, who will burst out from too narrow confines in the form of violence and crime."

Anais Nin

Pascal Campion

We usually think of time as a river, a river like the Nile, with strong, swift current bearing us further and further way from what we have been and towards the time when we will be not at all…But perhaps we should think of time as a deep, still pool rather than a fast-flowing river…Instead of looking back at time, we could look down into it…and now again different features of the past–different sights and sounds and voices and dreams–would rise to the surface: rise and subside, and the deep pool would hold them all, so that nothing was lost and nothing ever went away.

- from The Long Goodbye, Meghan O’Rourke

From the loveliest of blogs: http://www.birdsofashmae.com

"The other night I told Carl that I was turning into someone who just wants to watch an episode of the Colbert Report and be in bed by 9:30 every night, and this proclamation was not without a heavy note of despair.  "What's so wrong with that?" he said.  To which I responded in my head, "nothing." but in a way, a lot of things.  I, along with every other mother of young kids, or person responsible for things other than your dreams, worry that I am watching all the grand ideas I thought I would do, slip away.  And not necessarily in the way that they are slipping through my fingers and there's nothing for me to do about it, but some in the way that I am simply waving them on with the explanation that now is not the time.  Sometimes it seems like they dance away in bright colors and turn to ask me, "are you sure you don't want to join?" and then I look at Remy, and I say to them "no thank you, I'm working on something else."  This is a both a refining and sanctifying process."

"But there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom." David Foster Wallace

"Think about your particular assignment at this time in your life.  It may be to get an education, it may be to rear children, it may be to be a grandparent, it may be to care for and relieve the suffering of someone you love, it may be to do a job in the most excellent way possible, it may be to support someone who has a difficult assignment of their own.  Our assignments are varied and they change from time to time.  Don't take them lightly.  Give them your full heart and energy.  Do them with enthusiasm.  Do whatever you have to do this week with your whole heart and soul."  Marjorie P. Hinckley

“ The Lord knows your inner landscape, no matter the painstaking efforts you make to beautify the outside. He knows …the expected yield of your personal harvest…He knows the scorched places of your unmet desire. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to invite Him into your wasteland. He wants to replant and irrigate, knowing the richness of land hidden under ruins. When He works your field, nothing is wasted…not time, not relationships, not pain, not any experience. He uses everything. The decomposition of one life can fertilize the next.”  Kristin Armstrong

“A welcoming home is where real life happens. It’s where personalities are nurtured, where growth is stimulated, where people feel free not only to be themselves but also to develop their best selves. That caring, nurturing quality – not the absence of noise or strife – is what makes a home a refuge.” ~ Emilie Barnes

 “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that We Belong to Each Other.” Mother Teresa

"I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse..."  Charlotte Bronte from Jane Eyre

Jane Hambleton

“I get worried for young girls sometimes; I want them to feel that they can be sassy and full and weird and geeky and smart and independent, and not so withered and shriveled.” —Amy Poehler

http://amelialyon.com/

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people.  Forget yourself."  Henry Miller

"I think we pay too little attention to the value of meditation, a principle of devotion.  Meditation is one of the most secret, most sacred doors through which we pass into the presence of the Lord." David O. McKay

"When we cultivate a mood of calm repose in our homes, we are scooping out a space of refelction and wonder, for contemplation and reverie.  Our children are exposed to incessant commotion in the world that exists beyond our walls.  Let home be the place where they can find the peace and quiet to make sense of it all."       Katrina Kenison

Oh to be this kind of person...

"His face was a power of peace; his presence a benediction of peace.  In the tranquil depths of his eyes were not only the 'home of silent prayer,' but the abode of spiritual strength...The strangest feeling stole over me, that I 'stood on holy ground.'" {Speaking of President Lorenzo Snow}

Friendship

"In Friendship…we think we have chosen our peer. In reality a few years’ difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another…the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting—any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances.

A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,’ can truly say to every group of Christian friends ‘You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.’ The Friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of others."

C.S. Lewis

Elizabeth Mayville

Posing Ideas {Mom and daughter}

"I didn't always know what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be." -Diane Von Furstenberg

http://miloissweet.blogspot.com

"There's much to learn from the world of children's books. It often seems to be patronised and marginalised, but is in fact at the beating heart of our culture. It is where literature is constantly regenerated – it is creative, experimental, optimistic, and it is populated by folk who really do believe that books, storytelling, reading, writing and art can change people's lives." - Children's author David Almond 

Brett L. Helquist

the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct. It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things. Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you. Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly. Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion—and those who will follow them. And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself. The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.

Because everyone is. 

-David McCullough (Wellesley Commencement)

http://www.evokingyou.com/

http://munchkinsandmohawksphotography.com/blog/

"It is aliveness that must be the guiding principle. Joy and happiness in living, a love of all existence,
a power and energy for work, and imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility...These are the forces which are the very nerve of education."     Rudolf Steiner