A Franciscan Blessing

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless, peacocks and lilies, for example.

John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice

A kiss, when all is said, what is it?

...a rosy dot
Placed on the "i" in loving, 'tis a secret
Told to the mouth instead of to the ear.

Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup
And I'll not look for wine.

Ben Johnson, To Celia

Definition of a Kiss:

The anatomical juxtapositionof two orbicularis oris muscles in a state of contraction.

Dr. Henry Gibbons

I can endure my own despair, but not anothers hope.

William Walsh

If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pleasure or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

Algernon Charles Swinburne, A Match

This world that we're a' livin' in
Is mighty hard to beat;
You git a thorn with every rose,
But ain't the roses sweet!

Frank L. Stanton, This World

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Perhaps you ask why I do so. I do not know, but I feel it and I am in torment.

Catullus, Odes

Omnia vincit Amor: et nos cedamos Amori.

Love conquers all: let us too yield to love.

Virgil, Eclogues

Thou wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine-
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.

Edgar Allan Poe, To One In Paradise

There is nothing half so sweet in life, as love's young dream.

Thomas Moore, Love's Young Dream

Love is all in fire, and yet is ever freezing;
Love is much in winning, yet is more in leesing;
Love is ever sick, and yet is never dying;
Love is ever true, and yet is ever lying;
Love does not doat in liking, and yet is mad in loathing;
Love indeed is anything, yet indeed is nothing.

Thomas Middleton, Blurt

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
Or woods, or steepy mountains yield.

Marlowe, The Passionate Shepard To His Love