Respite = a short break or escape from something difficult or unpleasant.
“I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death.” –Ernest Hemingway
Art by Marianne von Werefkin – Russian-German-Swiss Expressionist painter (1860-1938).
Tenet = a principle, belief, or doctrine generally held to be true; one of the principles on which a belief or theory is based:
“Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.”
– John Keats
Art – “Lady in a Garden by Moonlight” by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836 – 1893).
Worthwhile = useful, important, or good enough to be a suitable reward for the money or time spent or the effort made.
*Does the sun ask itself, “Am I good? Am I worthwhile? Is there enough of me?” No, it burns and it shines. Does the sun ask itself, “What does the moon think of me? How does Mars feel about me today?” No, it burns, it shines. Does the sun ask itself, “Am I as big as other suns in other galaxies?” No, it burns, it shines.*
— Andrea Dworkin
Art – Enclosed Field with Rising Sun by Vincent van Gogh.
Compassion = a deep awareness of and sympathy for another’s suffering.
If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion.
– Eckhart Tolle
Art by Duy Huynh.
Glow-worm = a beetle, the females and young of which produce a green light from the tail.
“We are all worms. But I believe I am a glow-worm.”
– Winston Churchill
Art by Asako Eguchi.
Sweep = to clean especially a floor by using a brush to collect the dirt into one place from which it can be removed.
Sweep along = to make somebody very interested or involved in something, especially in a way that makes them forget everything else.
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
–Jorge Luis Borges
Art – Henri Julien Rousseau‘s tiger.
Silt = sand, soil, mud, etc., that is carried by flowing water and that sinks to the bottom of a river, pond, etc.
“Seas move away, why not lovers? The harbours of Ephesus, the rivers of Heraclitus disappear and are replaced by estuaries of silt. The wife of Candaules becomes the wife of Gyges. Libraries burn.”
― Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Michael Ondaatje’s words are plain wizardry about visible wars and the invisible, the ones we battle everyday with us, shadows, dust and smoke. Nobody has molded love and life in such astounding stories.
He was born on the 12th of September, 73 years ago, in Sri Lanka.
Art by Vincent van Gogh.
Tremendous = very great in amount or level, or extremely good:
There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet, which fails so regularly, as love.”
–Erich Fromm
Art by Christian Schloe.
Go-between = someone who takes messages between people who are unable or unwilling to meet:
“Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.”
–Vladimir Nabokov
Art by Vincent Van Gogh.
By-product = something that is produced as a result of making something else, or something unexpected that happends as a result of something else:
“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well lived.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
Art – the fantastic mix of color and light by Eugene Lushpin.