"Peace is not the absence of war." Spinoza said it, but it is mindlessly quoted out of context, for he added, "It is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice."
~ from A LITTLE COMPENDIUM ON THAT WHICH MATTERS by Frederick Franck
We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet, our silence.
I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot. When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast. We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.
~ from "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" by William Yeats
While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness That I was blessed, and could bless.
