Archives - December 2001

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

Language is the archives of history.

No one wants advice -- only corroboration.

Piety is like garlic: a little goes a long way.

Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.

Practical politics consists of ignoring facts.

We have wakened a sleeping giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve.

One sits uncomfortably on a too comfortable cushion.

In darkness, be light! And in your light preserve a spark of darkness, a spark of the Mystery from which light grows.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

I am younger each year at the first snow.

Heirlooms we don't have in our family. But stories we've got.

Once and for all you must know that there's a universe of people outside, and you're responsible to it.

Spilling your guts is just exactly as charming as it sounds.

Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down.

Shouting has never made me understand anything.

No emotion is ever the final one.

Three may keep a secret if two of them are dead.

What orators lack in depth, they make up in length.

Our country: In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be right; but our country right or wrong.

Every situation -- no every moment -- is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

The fragrance always remains in the hand that gives the rose.

A perfectly managed Christmas correct in every detail is, like basted inside seams and letters answered by return, a sure sign of someone who hasn't enough to do.

When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow/We hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago.

One half the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.

I do not mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.

I could almost wish myself a dormouse or a she-bear, to sleep away the rest of this cold, cold winter.

If you have to be in a soap opera, try not to get the worst role.

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.