For Valentine Lovers Without A Valentine Line

I created this scroll for a post a couple years ago but thought there might be a few who just can’t come up with the right line for their valentine. Here are 50 from the past that you can pick and choose from. Please …don’t confine yourself to only one …wonder awaits!

I hope you enjoy 50 Shades of Love, and Happy Valentine’s Day with love to all.

50 Shades of Love from Paul Mark Sutherland

1. Life is the flower for which love is the honey. —Victor Hugo
2. Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. —Plato
3. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. —Nicholas Sparks
4. If you judge people, you have no time to love them. —Mother Teresa
5. Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.
   —Zelda Fitzgerald
6. A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you. —Elbert Hubbard
7. Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. —Robert A. Heinlein
8. You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand. —L.J. Smith
9. For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul. —Judy Garland
10. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. —Lao Tzu
11. Where there is love there is life. —Mahatma Ghandi
12. Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality. —Emily Dickinson
13. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others… —John Lennon
14. I love you, and it’s getting worse. —Joseph Morris
15. I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. —Pablo Neruda
16. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. —Aristotle
17. If you love someone, put their name in a circle not a heart, because a heart can be broken, but a circle goes on forever. —Brian Littrell
18. If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever. —Alfred Tennyson
19. Love is a game that two can play and both win. —Eva Gabor
20. I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
    —Victor Hugo
21. When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You know that your name is safe in their mouth. —Jess C. Scott
22. Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. —Ursula K. LeGuin
23. There’s this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It’s the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me. —Gretchen Kemp
24. Come sleep with me, we won’t make love, love will make us. —Julio Cortázar
25. Morning without you is a dwindled dawn. —Emily Dickinson
26. Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.
    —Maya Angelou
27. The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.
    —W. Somerset Maugham
28. Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone. —Mitch Albom
29. Where there is great love, there are always miracles. —Willa Cather
30. Sometimes it’s a form of love just to talk to somebody that you have nothing in common with and still be fascinated by their presence. —David Byrne
31. I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary. —Margaret Atwood
32. I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses…the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you in the final hour of my life…to lie in your arms as I take my last breath. —Lisa Kleypas
33. If I know what love is, it is because of you. —Hermann Hesse
34. One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love. —Sophocles
35. Even after all this time the sun never says to the earth, ‘You owe me.’ Look what happens with a love like that, it lights the whole sky. —Hafiz
36. Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing. —Mother Teresa
37. Who, being loved, is poor? —Oscar Wilde
38. Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself. —Leo Buscaglia
39. I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.
    —Paulo Coelho
40. If you have love, you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have. —James Barrie
41. Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable. —Mahatma Gandhi
42. Love is a flower that grows in any soil, works its sweet miracles undaunted by autumn frost or winter snow, blooming fair and fragrant all the year, and blessing those who give and those who receive. —Louisa May Alcott
43. The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love. —Henry Miller
44. To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three-parts dead.
    —Bertrand Russell
45. The soul that can speak through the eyes can also kiss with a gaze.
    —Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
46. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning
47. Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. —Oscar Wilde 
48. In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. —Janos Arany
49. I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
    —Roy Croft
50. I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you …and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine. —Laurell K. Hamilton

Thank Yourself

A Very Personal Act Of Thanksgiving

To achieve a life of success, no matter how you define it, gratitude is imperative …we all know this. But, our gratitude must also extend to our self. It’s easy for us to forget that. We shouldn’t.

Like me, you may have heard people express regrets as they approach the winter of their years about their shortcomings and failures. Often they are disappointed that their lives didn’t quite turn out they way they had planned, had expected, or had hoped. Most of us enter adulthood full of ideas, spirit, energy, and grand intentions. It seems at the time that we are eternal, if not immortal.

We eventually discover, however, that while life can be fun and engaging, it also becomes progressively more challenging when dealing with finances, careers, families, responsibilities, losses, and so much more. Most of us do an admirable job navigating the changes and challenges. We work hard and do what we feel is the right thing. We set goals and lay out life plans, but often find it increasingly more difficult to stay on track. We find that the years pass faster than we imagined they could. We learn to grow with our years and deal with our tears. Maybe we feel that we will never be able to make the mark that we had planned.

As I write this, the movie “Mr. Holland’s Opus”comes to mind. As Mr. Holland, portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss, approaches the end of his career, seemingly disappointed with his mundane accomplishments in work and life, he is presented with evidence that his work ethic and compassion over the years have made a mark much more meaningful than he thought. This opus ends with quite a crescendo.  (If per chance you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend that you do. It is a very moving and uplifting film.)

No matter what you have achieved in life …or haven’t, Max Ehrman, author of “Desiderata,” penned a poem called “A Prayer” that makes it a bit easier for us to accept ourselves for who we are, and to thank ourselves for our efforts in life.

Enjoy, and please do be thankful to yourself for yourself.

A  PRAYER
by Max Ehrman

Let me do my work each day;
And if the darkened hours of despair overcome me,
May I not forget the strength that comforted me
In the desolation of other times.

May I still remember the bright hours that found me
Walking over the silent hills of my childhood,
Or dreaming on the margin of the quiet river,
When a light glowed within me,
And I promised my early God to have courage
Amid the tempests of the changing years. 

Spare me from bitterness
And from the sharp passions of unguarded moments.
May I not forget that poverty and riches are of the spirit.

Though the world knows me not,
May my thoughts and actions be such
As shall keep me friendly with myself.

Lift my eyes from the earth,
And let me not forget the uses of the stars.
Forbid that I should judge others,
Lest I condemn myself.
Let me not follow the clamor of the world,
But walk calmly in my path.

Give me a few friends who will love me for what I am;
And keep ever burning before my vagrant steps
The kindly light of hope.

And though age and infirmity overtake me,
And I come not within sight of the castle of my dreams,
Teach me still to be thankful for life,
And for time’s olden memories that are good and sweet;
And may the evening’s twilight find me gentle still.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all. (even  if it’s not a holiday for you today)  🙂

 

 

Respect and Compassion

The only way to possess respect and compassion is to give them away. May you be blessed with an abundance of each.  —Paul Mark Sutherland

original graphic credit: unknown

Teachers vs. Babysitters

Teachers inspire the smallest hearts to grow big enough to change the world. Whether you have children in school now or you’re a grown-up who wants to send a thank-you gift to an influential teacher from your past, this short inspirational video is a great way to share a message of gratitude with, and for, educators.

 

How Is Your “Tomorrow” Shaping Up?

Enjoy!

_________________________________

                       Tomorrow

He was going to be all that a mortal should be
      tomorrow.
No one should be kinder or braver than he
      tomorrow.
A friend who was troubled and weary he knew,
who’d be glad of a lift and who needed it, too;
on him he would call and see what he could do
      tomorrow.
Each morning he stacked up the letters he’d write
      tomorrow.
And thought of the folks he would fill with delight
      tomorrow.
It was too bad, indeed, he was busy today,
and hadn’t a minute to stop on his way;
more time he would have to give others, he’d say
      tomorrow.
The greatest of workers this man would have been
      tomorrow.
The world would have known him, had he ever seen
      tomorrow.
But the fact is he died and he faded from view,
and all that he left here when living was through
was a mountain of things he intended to do
      tomorrow.
                                                  —Edgar Guest

 

A Truly Random “Random Act Of Kindness”

Three cheers for Bryant Collins!

Enjoy.

credit: USA Today

Happy Father’s Day…

to all Dads, especially those with young sons.

I never had a son.

I have one daughter; my princess…still. She always makes Father’s Day special for me. This year she gave me the best Father’s Day gift ever. Six weeks ago she and her husband gave me my first grandchild…a boy. Oh, how I intend to spoil him…with love, of course.

But, I have always wondered what kind of a Father I would have been to a boy child. I guess I’ll never know. Or will I?

For my son-in-law, and all Dads of our world with little ones, here’s a little poem of wisdom that might help you shape your fatherhood. The author is unknown (it is actually attributed to numerous individuals and I was unable to ascertain who the correct writer is).

Enjoy!

Little Eyes Upon You

There are little eyes upon you
and they’re watching night and day.
There are little ears that quickly
take in every word you say. 

There are little hands all eager
to do anything you do;
And a little boy who’s dreaming
of the day he’ll be like you.

You’re the little fellow’s idol,
you’re the wisest of the wise.
In his little mind about you
no suspicions ever rise. 

You are setting an example
every day in all you do;
For the little boy who’s waiting
to grow up to be just like you.
                 -Author Unknown

 

author credit: unknown
original graphic credit: unknown

Think You’re Too Old? Watch This!

Elisabeth Kirkby, 93, has just about done it all. She was a soap star in the 1970’s hit TV show, Number 96. She then became a member of Parliament for the Democrats and received the Order of Australia medal. Today she’s become the country’s oldest PhD. 

 

What an inspiration!

story and video credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

What Do You Think This Old Couch Is Worth?

Third-year geology student Reese Werkhoven, Mount Holyoke College graduate Cally Guasti and SUNY New Paltz graduate Lara Russo were getting cozy on their new couch for the first time, when Werkhoven rustled himself a plastic envelope from under the couch’s patchy arm.

“I almost peed,” Werkhoven said. Inside the envelope was a wad of twenties that added up to $700.

“The most money I’d ever found in a couch was like fifty cents. Honestly, I’d be ecstatic to find just $5 in a couch.”

The group began a thorough excavation, maneuvering the couch in all directions so that every linty crevice could be probed to find more money.

“Just when we thought we pulled out the last envelope we’d find another $1,000 a few minutes later,” said Guasti.

Twenty minutes after sitting on an old musky couch, three college students were now miraculously standing on $40,000 in cash.

For a while, there were no notes, no names, or anything else that could have told them who the money belonged to. For all they knew the money was fair game. 

Then there was a game changer.  Russo found a woman’s name on one of the envelopes.

“We had a lot of moral discussions about the money,” Russo said. “We all agreed that we had to bring the money back to whoever it belonged to… it’s their money– we didn’t earn it. However, there were a lot of gray areas we had to consider.”

Each of them called their parents for advice; their parents basically told them all the same thing:

Don’t spend the money. Don’t tell anyone about the money. Find the woman from the envelope. Find out if it’s her money.

Questions came into focus

What if the money belonged to a homicidal drug dealer? What if it was all counterfeit? What if the person who owned the money was dead? Who should they trust to give it in their name? What if the person is just a really bad person?

Russo pondered the last question on the phone with her mother. “My mom said that I have a good moral compass, and if I don’t think that someone is a good person, or deserving of the money, then I’m not obligated to give it to them. This really threw me off. Where do you draw the line? It’s all very subjective.”

The possibilities were endless and the group seemingly discussed them all that night. Though they weren’t banking on it, there was still a chance they’d be able to keep some or all of the money.

“I would have bought my mom a new car,” Werkhoven said; “what she drives is a piece of junk and I really wanted to surprise her with a brand new car.”

Other items high on the wish lists: paying back student loans and traveling the world.

Keeping the big secret

The next morning Russo and Guasti were at work, Werkhoven was at class and all of them had a huge secret they couldn’t share with anyone.

Then around 11 a.m. Werkhoven’s mom called and told him that she found the woman’s name in the phone book. After work Werkhoven gave the woman a call.

He asked the woman her name and told her he had just bought a couch from Salvation Army.

She immediately replied “oh, I left a lot of money in that couch.”

Werkhoven promised her that he and his housemates would be able to return the money at any time, but he was a little taken aback by her shortness with him on the phone.

Returning the money

In the late afternoon, Werkhoven, Guasti and Russo were in the car headed to the woman’s house in the Hudson Valley.

“About halfway to her house we stopped the car and had a serious discussion…what if she’s a really bad person? What can we do at this point if we meet her and decide we don’t want to give her the money?”

Not having a plan of exit, they rolled up the long driveway past three “beware of dog” signs and several mounted cameras.

It was a rustic home in a rough neighborhood. The porch was grey and chipping paint. The front door creaked open slowly, Werkhoven remembered.

“I think the part of this whole experience that cleared away my prior thoughts and worries was when I saw the woman’s daughter and granddaughter greet us at the door.” Werkhoven said. “I could just tell right away that these were nice people.”

“When we handed the money back to the woman, she told us that she felt like her husband was present in the room with us,” Guasti said.

In an interview, the woman, who asked not to be identified, explained how her money was lost.

Her husband had had a heart condition and knew his time was limited. Before he died, he gave her money each week to put away for when he passed.  For 30 years she stored her savings inside an old couch in the television room where she slept.  When her husband passed away, she remained working as a florist and continued to store her money in the couch, until she had an operation on her back and went to a rehabilitation center for several months.

Upon the woman’s doctor’s advice, the woman’s daughter and son-in-law replaced the couch she used to sleep on with a full-size bed.

The couch ended up at the Salvation Army store in New Paltz and was bought for $20 by three genuinely good young people who had the strength and wherewithal to make a commendable moral decision.

“We almost didn’t pick that couch,” Russo said. “It’s pretty ugly and smells, but it was the only couch that fit the right dimensions for our living room.”

The woman gave $1,000 to Guasti, Russo and Werkhoven  as a reward for returning the $40,000.

____________________________________________________

story credit: The Little Rebillion

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The Good, The Bad, and The Lovely

Enjoy!.

Bad News is: You cannot make people like, love, understand, validate, accept, or be nice to you. You can’t control them either. Good News Is: It  Doesn’t Matter.  —author unknown