Notable--Quotable

I suppose that anyone who does much reading collects quotations or thoughts that are meaningful to him. I also know that reading a list of interesting or provocative or illuminative quotations is something like trying to get a drink out of a fire hose. I will, nevertheless, share a few of those I have collected in the hope that you may choose but one or two per day to ponder during the reflective pauses that the wise take time to build into their day.

• The things that matter most are not things. Possession is nine-tenths of our flaw.

• Consider this question: If your life were made into a movie, and that movie had an appropriate sound track, what kind of music would it be? What mood would it leave me in when I played it? Could I dance to it? The music of a sound track of a life will not be original, but it has passed into us and left its sound in the juke-box of the mind, becoming part of us. And we will likely pass it on.

• The most profound theological confirmations being made these days are in the photographs taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. And the most jaw-dropping picture I have ever seen is the Hubble Deep Field. It is a ten-day exposure, covering an area of the sky no larger than a grain of sand held at arm’s length. And what do we see? Galaxies beyond counting, eight to ten billion light years away. Astronomers have extrapolated the information about this tiny window in the sky to estimate that there are more than fifty billion galaxies out there. “And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose and… innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them. And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works….” (Moses 1:33, 35, 38. The Pearl of Great Price, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

• “Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answer. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer some distant day.” (Rainer Maria Rilke)

• “No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” (Helen Keller)

• “We all live under the same sky but we don’t all have the same horizon.” (Conrad Adenauer)

“The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches, but to reveal to him his own.” (Benjamin Disraeli)