I know I’m not the only person struggling with what’s happening in the wider world at the moment and locally to be honest, as strategic parts of our city are being covered in flags in order to intimidate. There’s some sort of march most weeks and I’m constantly waiting to be annihilated by whichever geriatric white man loses his mind first! So sometimes the only thing to do is concentrate on your own little bubble, do the things you love that bring you peace, switch off the TV and shut it out for a while. I was thinking about this post and the things that make me happy, inspire me and keep me going. Of course first and foremost that’s literature, but I also love taking photographs of my surroundings. So, bearing in mind we had the spring equinox at the weekend, I thought I’d share with you some of my favourite hopeful literary quotes and photographs that make me happy. Hope you find them inspiring too.
“Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.”
From The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
“Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in noiseless streams, opened petals, and sucked out scents in invisible jets and breathings.”
From Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
That sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all”
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
‘I am no bird and no net ensnares me: I’m a free human being with an independent will.”
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
From Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”
From Dracula by Bram Stoker
“I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”
From Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
“Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.”
From The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
“Your sorrow will become smaller, like a star in the daylight that you can’t even see. It’s there, shining, but there is also a vast expanse of blue sky.”
From Survival Lessons by Alice Hoffman
“What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them! Yet my town acquaintances look upon it as imprisonment, and I don’t know what besides, and would rend the air with their shrieks if condemned to such a life. Sometimes I feel as if I were blest above all my fellows in being able to find my happiness so easily. I believe I should always be good if the sun always shone, and could enjoy myself very well in Siberia on a fine day. And what can life in town offer in the way of pleasure to equal the delight of any one of the calm evenings I have had this month sitting alone at the foot of the verandah steps, with the perfume of young larches all about, and the May moon hanging low over the beeches, and the beautiful silence made only more profound in its peace by the croaking of distant frogs and hooting of owls?”
From Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth Von Armin
See you next week ❤️📚
The Lotus Readers 