Springing Quotes (page 21)
If we want to be Christians, we must have some share in Christ’s large-heartedness by acting with responsibility and in freedom when the hour of danger comes, and by showing a real sympathy that springs, not from fear , but from the liberating and redeeming love of Christ for all who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of his brethren, for whose sake...
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter - for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect.
Stanislaw Lem
One day God felt he ought to give his workshop a spring clean... It was amazing what ragged bits and pieces came from under his workbench as he swept. Beginnings of creatures, bits that looked useful but had seemed wrong, ideas he'd mislaid and forgotten... There was even a tiny lump of sun. He scratched his head. What could be done with all this rubbish?
Ted Hughes
in a middle of a roomstands a suicidesniffing a Paper rosesmiling to a self"somewhere it is Spring and sometimespeople are in real: imaginesomewhere real flowers, but. I can't imagine real flowers for if Icould, they would somehownot Be real"(so he smilessmiling)"but I will noteverywhere be real toyou in a moment"The is blondwith small hands"& everything is easierthan I had guessed everything wouldbe; even remembering the way wholooked at whom first, anyhow dancing
E. E. Cummings
Must be I find youtough and lusty as the life, all toil and tempo, finesse and plain fight, with values so old they startle me. Must be I think of youas I do the rugged flowersthat prove themselves over and over in the spring, that elsewhere might perish, but here master the earth, bloom into gangly lives of high color, and inhale the sun, knowing the landbetter than the land does. Hardy, savvy, they will outlive us all.
Diane Ackerman
It is not miracles that dispose realists to belief. The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the fact. Even if he admits it, he admits it as a fact of nature till then unrecognized by him. Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to...
Sarah Vowell