Romance

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.
- Anita Brookner

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
- Elinor Glyn, 1864 - 1943

In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes.
- Elizabeth Ashley

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.
- Erich Segal

Story writers say that love is concerned only with young people, and the excitement and glamour of romance end at the altar. How blind they are. The best romance is inside marriage; the finest love stories come after the wedding, not before.
- Irving Stone

Romance is everything.
- Gertrude Stein, 1874 - 1946

♥Happy Valentines Day♥

William Pitt

The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords, that where laws end, tyranny begins.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake - the wind may blow through it - the storm may enter - the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter! All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

Bowing, ceremonies, formal compliments, stiff civilities, will never be politeness; that must be easy, natural, unstudied; and what will give this but a mind benevolent and attentive to exert that amiable disposition in trifles to all you converse and live with?

Confidence is a plant of slow growth in an aged heart.

Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying.

Theoretical principals must sometimes give way for the sake of practical advantages.
- All from William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, 1708 - 1778

About:
William Pitt was born at Westminster, London on 15 Nov in 1708 into a family of wealth and political power. He was educated at Eton and entered Trinity College, Oxford, but left due to a hereditary gout that troubled him all his life. He developed skill at debate and after entering Parliament used it fearlessly. He was terrible in opposition, when in power he devoted himself to the advancement of the British Empire and ending France's position as a leader of Continental politics. Known as The Great Commoner, he lost much of the affection of the public when he accepted a peerage. A spate of ill-health kept him out of the main debate during the American Revolution. When health returned, George III gave him a generous pension, at which point Pitt bowed out of politics, probably what the king had in mind.

Claude Monet

Color is my day-long obsession, joy, and torment.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.

For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

Now I really feel the landscape, I can be bold and include every tone of blue and pink: it's enchanting, it's delicious.

I've caught this magical landscape and it's the enchantment of it that I'm so keen to render. Of course lots of people will protest that it's quite unreal, but that's just too bad.

I would advise young artists . . . to paint as they can, as long as they can, without being afraid of painting badly . . . . If their painting doesn't improve by itself, it means that nothing can be done - and I wouldn't do anything!
- All from Claude Monet, 1840 - 1926

About:

Oscar-Claude Monet was born at Paris on 14 Nov in 1840. His father wanted him to enter the family grocery business but he knew at a very early age he wanted to be an artist, he was selling charcoal caricatures by the time he was twelve. When he was twenty he returned to Paris and fell in with several artists who were defining Impressionism, but soon went into the Army and served in Algeria for two years before contracting typhoid. After that, through good times and bad, he kept his eyes open and painted what he saw.

Augustine

A happy life is joy in the truth.

He who conceals a useful truth is equally guilty with the propagator of an injurious falsehood.

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.

Indeed, man wishes to be happy even when he so lives as to make happiness impossible.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

God has promised forgiveness to your repentance, but He has not promised tomorrow to your procrastination.

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstances, are brought into closer connection with you

Give what you command, and command what you will

He who sings prays twice

God will not suffer man to have knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity, he would be senseless

Patience is the companion of wisdom

Faith is to believe what we do not see; and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe

He that is not jealous is not in love.

It is love that asks, that seeks, that knocks, that finds, and that is faithful to what it finds.

Repentant tears wash out the stain of guilt.

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

- All from Augustine of Hippo, 354 - 430

About:

Augustine was born at Tagaste in Roman north Africa on 13 Nov in 354 into a middle-class family. His mother Monica was a devout Christian, his father was pagan. Educated for a legal career at Carthage, he turned to dissipation and drifted away from his mother's teaching. Later he was taken up with the Manichaen heresies for some ten years, but returned to Christianity as a powerful teacher and philosopher at Rome and then Milan. Fearing additional responsibilities he avoided cities without bishops, but while visiting a friend at Hippo-Regius in 391 a crowd gathered and insisted that he be ordained a priest, he was soon consecrated as coadjutor bishop and finally Bishop of Hippo in 396. His massive written output has had a profound influence on the Church, here's a sample.

Rain

After three days men grow weary of a wench, a guest, and rainy weather.
- Benjamin Franklin, 1706 - 1790

Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man's growth without destroying his roots.
- Frank A. Clark

Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.
- Jerry Chin

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain
- William Shakespeare

In winter, when the dismal rain
Comes down in slanting lines,
And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines.
- Alexander Smith, 1830 - 1867

It wasn't raining when Noah built the ark.
- Howard Ruff

Angels

To love for the sake of being loved is human, But to love for the sake of loving is angelic.
- Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, 1790 - 1869

It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.
- Dag Hammarskjöld, 1905 - 1961

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 1819 - 1880

Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit; for without being seen, they are present with you.
- Francis de Sales, 1567 - 1622

If instead of a gem, or even a flower, we should cast the gift of a loving thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels give.
- George MacDonald, 1824 - 1905

Whenever science makes a discovery, the devil grabs it while the angels are debating the best way to use it.
- Alan Valentine

The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
- G.K. Chesterton

Be an angel to someone else whenever you can, as a way of thanking God for the help your angel has given you.
-Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
-Luciano de Crescenzo

All God's angels come to us disguised.
-James Russell Lowell