Happy New Year!
May Magic Be With You!
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”
― Neil Gaiman
Art by Alphonse Mucha.
Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
– Washington Irving
Art – Evgeny Lushpin, Coming Home for Christmas (2013)
“Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.”
– Ben Okri
Art – Tavik Frantisek Simon – Vilma Reading on a Sofa, 1912.
“The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. And let us seek the love of simple, ignorant people. Their ignorance is better than all our knowledge. Let us be silent, content in our little corner, meek and gentle like them. That is the wisdom of life.”
– W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919
Art – Paul Gauguin, Coastal Landscape from Martinique
“To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Art – Henry Moret
“Call us what you will: we are made such by love.”
― Delmore Schwartz
Art – Olle Hjortzberg (Swedish, 1872–1959)
“Amaryllis in the Window”
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”
Charles Dickens – A Christmas Carol.
Art – John William Waterhouse (contemporary Christmas adaptation)
“Winter is the time for comfort,
for good food and warmth,
for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire:
it is the time for home.”
By Edith Sitwell
Art – “By the Quiet Hearth” by Maximilian Schaefer
“Green was the silence, wet was the light…”
– Neruda
Photo credit – Rooney Mara by Annie Leibovitz
“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
– Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, 1847
Art – Daido Moriyama, Love Motel, Miyagi Prefecture, 1970
