Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Center, Johnson City
“Life is a great bundle of little things.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 1809-1894
One of best regarded American poets of 19th cty.
Category Archives: Johnson City
Something to Say
Looking towards Johnson City from Horseback Ridge
“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong.
I want to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in
words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole.”
Andrew to Alexa in “The Elect Lady” (1888)
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
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
Forgiveness
“Forgiveness does not change the past,
but it does enlarge the future.”
Paul Boese, 1668-1738
Dutch botanist
Thread of Revelation
Cherokee Mountain, viewed from Mountain Home VA
“The events in our lives happen in a sequence of time,
but in their significance to ourselves,
they find their own order…the continuous thread of revelation.”
Eudora Welty, 1909-2001
Author and photographer of American South
Because I Want To
Little Things
Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Center, Johnson City
“Life is a great bundle of little things.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 1809-1894
One of best regarded American poets of 19th cty.
Congrats, Grads
View of Buffalo Mountain and Johnson City from the Beauty Spot
“Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way.”
Dr. Seuss, 1904-1991
American writer and cartoonist
Own Your Days
Red Dogwood at Mountain Home V.A., Johnson City
“You have got to own your days and live them,
each one of them, every one of them,
or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you.”
Herb Gardner, 1934-2003
Cartoonist and screenwriter
Locked in a Seed
Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site, Johnson City
“Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom,
which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies,
the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one
which calls forth faith rather than reason.”
Hal Borland, 1900-1978
Sundial of the Seasons (1964)
American author and journalist
Words
Tipton-Haynes State Historic Site, Johnson City
“In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended,
I, who live by words, am wordless when
I turn me to the Word to pray.
Amen.”
Madeleine L’Engle, 1918-2007
“The Weather of the Heart” (1978)
Something to Say
Looking towards Johnson City from Horseback Ridge
“I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong.
I want to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in
words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole.”
Andrew to Alexa in “The Elect Lady” (1888)
George MacDonald, 1824-1905
Hurt No Living Thing
Moth on a Lady Slipper, Buffalo Mountain
“Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing”
Christina Georgina Rossetti, 1830-1894
An English poet
Wet and Wildness
Water Strider, Ramsey Creek Falls, Buffalo Mountain Camp
“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet,
Long live the weeds and the wildness yet.”
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844-1889, Inversnaid
Jesuit priest and English poet
Budgets and Red Tape
Sunset from Buffalo Mountain Park, Johnson City, TN
“Sunshine has no budget, the sea no red tape.”
Jareb Teague
