Nice Things :)

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and
lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days,
such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even.
Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious
persona putting on its celebrated imitation
of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact
of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you,
sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and
self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.

— Aldous Huxley, Island

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

[...] No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

— Martha Graham (American dancer and choreographer regarded as one of the foremost pioneers of modern dance)

Meek young men grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar

• Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.
• The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
• There is another world, but it is in this one.
• In dreams begin responsibilities.

— William Butler Yeats, various

I might add more sometime in the future, let me know anytime during class if you found this helpful :>