“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.”
William Blake, 1803 · English poet and engraver
Chapter 8
On Finding the Magic
“The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1836 · American essayist, in his first book
“Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.”
Walt Whitman, 1856 · American poet
“To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.”
Walt Whitman, 1856 · American poet
“Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”
Henry David Thoreau, 1854 · American naturalist, in the last lines of Walden
“Let today embrace the past with remembrance and the future with longing.”
Kahlil Gibran, 1923 · Lebanese American poet
“Passing away, saith my God, passing away: Winter passeth after the long delay: New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray.”
Christina Rossetti, 1862 · English poet of the Victorian age
“Just as apples when unripe are torn from trees, but when ripe and mellow drop down, so it is violence that takes life from young men, ripeness from old.”
Cicero, c. 44 BC · Roman statesman and philosopher
Examining 145 countries, researchers found the same shape almost everywhere. Well-being falls through midlife and then rises. The upswing of later years is not a local comfort but something close to a human pattern.
David Blanchflower, 2021 · economist studying well-being across 145 countries
When researchers looked for what carried the longevity benefit of a positive view of one's own aging, part of the answer was disarmingly plain. It ran through the will to live.
Becca Levy and colleagues, 2002 · Yale researchers on self-perceptions of aging
“Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure.”
Rabindranath Tagore, 1912 · Bengali poet and Nobel laureate
Free to read, always. Liking a verse or leaving a comment happens in the app, so the conversation has a name attached to it.