An Adventure

View from Flat Rock, NC

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.
An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”

G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936

Humor

“One doesn’t have a sense of humor. It has you.”

Larry Gelbart

Greatness

View from Unaka Mountain, looking towards Buffalo Mountain and Johnson City

“The greatness comes not when things go always good for you.
But the greatness comes when you’re really tested, when you
take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes.
Because only if you’ve been in the deepest valley
can you ever know how magnificent it is
to be on the highest mountain.”

Richard Nixon, 1913-1994
U.S. President

Enthusiasm

Rhododendron

“If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm,
you will be fired with enthusiasm.”

Vince Lombardi, 1913-1970
Football coach

 

Renewal

“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone
and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.”

Pearl Buck, 1892-1973
First woman awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

Intelligence

“There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit
than confidence in our own intelligence.”

John Calvin, 1509-1564
French theologian

 

Attitude

“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems,
but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”

Herm Albright, 1866-1944

Enthusiasm

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

Ralph Waldo Emmerson

A Pointer

View from Flat Rock, NC

“The created order is God’s handiwork
and at its best it is a pointer to the One we serve.
Even its brokenness, if we look along it. . . can tell us of him:
his grace, his mercy, his redemption.”

Duane Litfin
President, Wheaton College
“Conceiving the Christian College” (2004)

Ha Ha

“Earth laughs in flowers.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Open Mind

“Merely having an open mind is nothing;
the object of opening the mind,
as of opening the mouth,
is to shut it again on something solid.”

G.K. Chesterton

Real and Costly Love

Pine Ridge Falls, Unicoi County

“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 can 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 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, civilizations — these are 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 splendours.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn.
We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind
(and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists
between people who have, from the outset,
taken each other seriously –
no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
And our charity must be a real and costly love,
with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner –
no mere tolerance, or indulgence
which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.”

C. S. Lewis, 1898-1963

One to the Next

“The only courage that matters
is the kind that gets you
from one moment to the next.”

Mignon McLaughlin, 1913-1983
“The Second Neurotic’s Notebook”

Advice about Advice

“The true secret of giving advice is,
after you have honestly given it,
to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not,
and never persist in trying to set people right.”

Hannah Whitall Smith, 1902

Me Monsters

“The nice thing about egotists
is that they don’t talk about other people.”

Lucille S. Harper

Good Intentions

“Plans are only good intentions
unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

Peter Drucker, 1909-2005

Shame

“There smites nothing so sharp,
nor smelleth so sour as shame.”

William Langland, 1332-1400
English author

Passing Through

Doe River Gorge near Hampton, Tennessee

“All truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860
German philosopher

Doesn’t Add Up

Hunter, Tennessee, near Watauga River

“Computers can figure out all kinds of problems,
except the things in the world that just don’t add up.”

James Magary

Humorous Truth

“When a thing is funny,
search it carefully for a hidden truth.”

George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950

Truth

Kiner Creek Falls, Laurel Run Park, Church Hill, TN

“The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others
and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us,
and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak,
the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, 1815-1902
Social activist and leading figure of early woman’s movement

Learning

“The love of learning,
the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1807 – 1882

Be Gentle

“I cannot think well of a man
who sports with any woman’s feelings;
and there may often be a great deal more suffered
than a stander-by can judge of.”

Jane Austen, 1775 – 1817
Mansfield Park

One Alone

“Never refuse any advance of friendship,
for if nine out of ten bring you nothing,
one alone may repay you.”

Madame de Tencin, 1682-1749
French courtesan and author

September

“The breezes taste
Of apple peel.
The air is full
Of smells to feel-
Ripe fruit, old footballs,
Burning brush,
New books, erasers,
Chalk, and such.
The bee, his hive,
Well-honeyed hum,
And Mother cuts
Chrysanthemums.
Like plates washed clean
With suds, the days
Are polished with
A morning haze.”

John Updike, 1932-2009
“September”