Where...

"A crowd is not company, faces are just a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there is no love."

--Sir Francis Bacon

Friend

"Of all the heavenly treasures that mortal men commend,
what trusty treasure in the world can countervail a friend?"

--Victor Hugo

Wings

"The two wings of our souls, immune to any gust of wind, are true love and faith."

--Stanislas Xavier-Touchet

Best

"The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life."

--Robert Louis Stevenson

Time again

"It is familiarity with life that makes time speed quickly. When every day is a step in the unknown, as for children, the days are long with gathering of experience..."

-George Gissing

My note: But can't it be true: that everything old can be new once more, and so time may again pass in pauses as it did in childhood? Time, and time again, it is through the fresh eyes of innocence that we gain the most valuable experience. How precious is each moment then, each one a jewel from the hand of God! To be like a little child, to look upon everything as a wonder, is truly the work of a lifetime. God grant that I may always look upon the world with childlike eyes.

Nooks

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

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Taking tea on my twenty-first birthday, Part 2

The sun illumined the snow globe effect so that all the white fleecy flakes dazzled my eyes, unaccustomed as they were to snow of any kind. Having grown up as I had in the Deep Southern United States, snow was indeed a novelty and seemed as magical to me as fairy dust. I put my tongue out just a bit to taste the delicious whiteness which was as refreshing as peppermint.

There I stood on the grounds of Blenheim Palace, Winston Churchill's birthplace and ancestral home, absorbing with every pore of my being the beauty and history which surrounded me. I was tempted to pinch myself, but decided against it: if this were a dream, I reasoned, then it was a good one, and one from which I would awaken with sorrow at seeing it end; and if it were real, so much the better! So I dreamily floated around the place, through the endless rooms with their decidedly English-style furnishings and onto the numerous paths which led to the ordered English-style gardens. The vistas were magnificent. Everywhere I turned the view was more breathtaking and beckoning. "Oh to be in England!.." wrote the poet. And there I stood--in England in April, more of Heaven than Earth; so it seemed to me.

Nota bene: Part 1 was posted on January 18, 2009.