Diva

“The different religions confused me. Which was the right one? I tried to figure it out but had no success. It worried me. The different Gods - Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Mohammedan - seemed very particular in the way in which they expected me to keep on good terms with them. I couldn't please one without offending the others. One kind soul solved my problem by taking me on my first trip to the planetarium. I contemplated the insignificant flyspeck called Earth, the millions of suns and solar systems, and concluded that whoever was in charge of all this would not throw a fit if I ate ham, or meat on Friday, or did not fast in the daytime during Ramadan. I felt much better after this and was, for a while, keenly interested in astronomy.”
― Richard Erdoes, Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

“Though [Abraham Lincoln] never would travel to Europe, he went with Shakespeare’s kings to Merry England; he went with Lord Byron poetry to Spain and Portugal. Literature allowed him to transcend his surroundings.”
― Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Even animals of the same kind- two deer, two owls - will behave differently from each another. Even your daughter's pet hamsters, they all have their own ways. I have studies many plants. The leaves of one plant, on the same stem -none is exactly alike.On all the earth there is not one leaf exactly alike. The great spirit likes it that way. He only sketches out the path of life roughly for all the creatures on earth, shows them where to go ,where to arrive at , but leaves them to find their own way to get there.He wants them to act independently according to their nature , to the urge in each of them.”
― Lame Deer

“we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and manifold though they be.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances