Our friend and fellow writer-cum-philosopher, Herman King, adds his favorite quotes here weekly.  

For the week beginning  24 February 2008—

This week our theme is the good Earth.  

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Saint Thomas Aquinas

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W. H. Auden

If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off.
Norman Ralph Augustine

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.
Marcus Aurelius

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes - The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
Buddha

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran

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This week our theme is Valentine Day the biggest day of the year for Hallmark, Godiva, and the Florist industry.

Doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.
William Shakespeare

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.”
Leo Tolstoy Prince Andrew, War And Peace

It's strange that words are so inadequate. Yet, like the asthmatic struggling for breath, so the lover must struggle for words.
T. S. Eliot

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
William Shakespeare

I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty... you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.
J. D. Salinger

Love is space and time measured by the heart.
Marcel Proust

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A forest cabin in the frozen west
Majestic mountain with frosted crest
 Two days snow against the door
 Two lost robes upon the floor
 Two tall glasses of flat champagne
 An empty plate with strawberry stain
 Firelight, candlelight and afterglow
 Coffee-flavored kisses and love to go.

Herman King, Reindeer Games

For the week beginning  3 February 2008—

This week in lieu of our usual quotes, some thoughts about Mardi Gras!

Mardi Gras or Carnival is our theme this week.

“Fat Tuesday” this year happens to fall on my birthday. This is unusual and I don’t recall the last time it happened.

Carnival is celebrated all over the world. In the US it was first held, and continues to be celebrated in Mobile. On Dauphin Island we have two parades a year. People arrive early and set up in the median on Bienville Boulevard.   They bring grills, smokers and coolers and it is much like “tailgating” at the ball game. A family oriented bash and fun for all.

In the Cajun country of Louisiana, Lafayette has many parades and St. Martinsville holds the “Grand Boucherie de Cajun,” on Domanche Gras (Fat Sunday). A Boucherie is a festival that celebrates the tradition of neighbors helping each other butcher their hogs. There’s lots of food, drink, music and they still kill and completely butcher one hog. This would not be politically correct in most areas today, but “dem Cajuns, day don’t care ‘bout dat.”

            On Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) costumed  riders on horseback gallop across the countryside near the town of Mamou  stopping at each farm to request permission to cross and begging for food which will be made into a sort of mulligan stew at the end of the ride. Farmers provide chickens, pieces of ham, boudin, sausage, and an occasional duck or goat. Many of these riders imbibe more than a little alcohol, so there are some interesting antics and an occasional spill along the route.

 In Iota things are very family oriented, lots of good food and unusual crafts; you can get that alligator tooth key chain you’ve been looking for or an interesting carving made from a cypress knee.  Many folks dress in traditional Cajun costumes and almost everyone dances to the Cajun and Zydeco music, the children dance together and with their parents. I know you won’t believe this, but I have even seen teenagers dance with their parents.  No! Really, I saw it with my own eyes. 

            New Orleans, more than any other city is associated with Mardi Gras. I have spent a great deal of time there; I even lived in the city a short time. I have written quite a bit in, and about the city.  I don’t find many quotes about Mardi Gras so, along with one of my favorite writers, I’ll share a few snapshots from my work. 

"It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he as seen Mardi-Gras in New Orleans." ~Mark Twain

She is exotic, erotic, hypnotic and neurotic

Like an expensive perfume

She lingers with you long after you leave her 

Faded a bit from her former beauty

 She is still striking, despite the makeup and face lifts.

 Her charm grips you in a way difficult to escape.

Her laughter is music

There is an air of mystery about her

 And dark secrets lurk behind her laughing eyes.

Even if you sense a bit of danger in her

When New Orleans dons her party dress for carnival

 You can't help being seduced.  

Herman King, Dark Side of the Moon

Note: written during Mardi Gras, 2005

Where is this I wake and how did I arrive?

 Coldness grips me as I find, I’m the only one alive.

Among the tombs of St Louis number one I lay

Too much absinthe, on Bourbon St. this day.

Tastes of anise and wormwood, stale on my lips,

My favorite hat is gone, my suit has rips.

My ribs are bruised, my tender jaw I feel.

Was I robbed and rolled in Storyville?

Herman King. Midnight in the City of the Dead

Note: St Louis number one is the cemetery that was used in the movie “Easy Rider”

...On his bronze horse

 General Jackson tips his hat to us

 Before the cross crowned spires of St. Louis

 Shrouded in a light veil.

Beneath a newspaper blanket

 A wine expert

 Sleeps on a bench

Guarded by a brace of cannon

A ghost freighter moves fog cloaked

 Slowly down river

 Moaning a long lonely howl

The ferry from Algiers Point appears

 Like a specter from the mist

Strains against the current

 Drifting sideways

Like last night’s drunk

Crossing Bourbon Street...

Herman King Vieux Carre

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For the week beginning 27 January 2008—

This week we take to the skies!

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.
Buddha

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.
Victor Hugo

It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.
Helen Keller

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

For age is opportunity no less Than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The newborn morning crowned within torn cotton clouds, setting crests ablaze against an azure sky. It’s a day just like every other day before, only completely unique… and all mine. I'll let you be in my day, if I can be in yours.

Herman King

I thought to glean a quote from Pilot Officer Magee’s sonnet, but felt as if I would be cutting a flower from a bush; the blossom may have beauty, but it pales before  the harmony of the whole.

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For the week beginning 20 January 2008—

This week we go to sea!

Would you learn the secret of the sea? Only those who brave its dangers, comprehend its mystery!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
Lord Byron 

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.
George Herbert

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline. Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
Hunter S. Thompson

Those who are captivated by her beauty, beguiled by her mystery, and awed by her fury, have a bond with the sea, and are forever drawn to her.

Herman King

2007

For the week beginning 16 December 2007—

This week’s Christmas quotes.

I'm sending a second set of Christmas Quotes.  I thought I would send them to all of you as my Christmas Card. May you all Have a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Herman 

We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, the historical encounter, the decisive encounter, between God and mankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let him rejoice.
Pope Paul VI 

Christmas! 'Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial fire of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
Norman Vincent Peale

Somehow not only for Christmas but all the long year through, the joy that you give to others is the joy that comes back to you. And the more you spend in blessing the poor and lonely and sad, the more of your heart's possessing returns to make you glad.
John Greenleaf Whittier

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow, we hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago, and etched on vacant places are half-forgotten faces of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I am not alone at all, I thought. I was never alone at all. And that, of course, is the message of Christmas. We are never alone. Not when the night is darkest, the wind coldest, the word seemingly most indifferent. For this is still the time God chooses.
Taylor Caldwell

Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won't make it "white".
Bing Crosby

There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
Erma Bombeck

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!
Charles Dickens

Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store.
Theodor Geisel

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For the week beginning 10 December 2007—

This week we have cartoonists, you know them, they put what is worth reading in the paper; the rest is for the bird cage.

Success is following the pattern of life one enjoys most.
Al Capp - Little Abner

In less enlightened times, the best way to impress women was to own a hot car. But women wised up and realized it was better to buy their own hot cars so they wouldn't have to ride around with jerks.
Scott Adams – Dilbert

It's kind of fun to do the impossible. .
Walt Disney

All parents believe their children can do the impossible. They thought it the minute we were born, and no matter how hard we've tried to prove them wrong, they all think it about us now. And the really annoying thing is, they're probably right.
Cathy Guisewite– Cathy

Establishing goals is all right if you don't let them deprive you of interesting detours.
Doug Larson

Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Bill Watterson – Calvin & Hobbes

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
Charles M. Schulz – Peanuts

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 For the week beginning 2 December 2007—

If we take matrimony at its lowest, we regard it as a sort of friendship recognized by the police.
Robert Louis Stevenson 

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.
Miguel de Cervantes 

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein 

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
Omar Khayyam 

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran 

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
Hunter S. Thompson

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Special Salute - Quotes to honor our Venerable Veterans - 11 November 2007-

I encourage you to thank a vet for their service, past and present!

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.

Norman Schwarzkopf

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

George S. Patton

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the light of every passing ship.

Omar N. Bradley

Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less.

Robert E. Lee

    "...This story shall the good man teach his son;

    And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

    From this day to the ending of the world,

    But we in it shall be remembered-

    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

    Shall be my brother..."

            William Shakespeare

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For the week beginning 2 November 2007--

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

Steven Wright

Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times.

Rita Rudner

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"

Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."

Charles M. Schulz - Peanuts

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

Woody Allen

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Kurt Vonnegut

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Quotes of Note – 29 October 2007

We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.
W. H. Auden

God help thee, old man, thy thoughts have created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus makes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that vulture the very creature he creates.
Herman Melville

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
James A. Michener

 Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

 Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.
Henri Frederic Amiel

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Week of 22 October 2007 -

This week we share our balcony with philosophers:

Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the plough share of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring.
Henri Frederic Amiel

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.
Francis Bacon

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.
Friedrich Nietzsche