Summer inspirations and soulful thoughts
Leonard Cohen finishing his last album with his son’s help, unable to go to the studio, in a chair especially designed so he could sleep in it, work in it, and rest in it.
George Orwell painfully typed out 1984 from his hospital bed as he was dying of tuberculosis.
If you asked me to do a reflection on The Lord’s Day, Suffering and Trials, Love and the Soul, Religion, Art and Imagination, Creativity, Artful Living, Soulful living, and Living with Inspiration… It would be a challenge. With the help of several other writers I could do it.
Do not let Sunday be taken from you.
If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.
- Albert Schweitzer
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experiences of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened,
vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.
- Helen Keller
For it was not into my ear you whispered,
but into my heart.
It was not my lips you kissed,
but my soul.
- Judy Garland
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul,
and paints his own nature into his pictures.
- Henry Ward Beecher
If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had
known what was hidden within him,
he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.
- Khalil Gibran
Every time a student walks past a really urgent,
expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college,
it can help reassure him that he does have that mind,
does have that soul.
- Louis Kahn
Every single soul is a poem.
- Michael Franti
To know what you prefer
instead of humbly saying Amen
to what the world tells you you ought to prefer,
is to have kept your soul alive.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
True religion is real living;
living with all one's soul,
with all one's goodness and righteousness.
- Albert Einstein
Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years.
We grow old by deserting our ideals.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
- Samuel Ullman
“Fear not for I have redeemed you.” Isaiah 43:1.
And that is my pick for this summer’s soulful thoughts.
(378 words)
