Priscilla

“I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don’t mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don’t want to be clever or great or “significant” or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain. The essences. Not the things themselves. Swimmings of light on the smallest things. Or am I being sentimental? Depressed. I’m so far from everything. From normality. From light. From what I want to be.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“As long as we are in this life, whenever we foolishly turn our attention to those we deem not to be on a spiritual path, our Lord God tenderly touches us and blessedly calls to us, speaking to our souls: Let me be the only object of your attention, my beloved child. Focus on me alone, for I am enough for you. Rejoice in your savior and your salvation.”
― Julian of Norwich, The Showings of Julian of Norwich

“Quietude

Nothing visits me;
my heart is quiet.

It was Sunday’s roofed school paths,
- everyone gone to the meadow.

The floorboards have a cold shine,
small birds are singing in the garden.

The half-shut tap’s
droplet blinks!

The earth is rose-coloured, larks in the sky;
the sky is a beautiful April.

Nothing visits me;
my heart is quiet.”
― Chūya Nakahara, The Poems of Nakahara Chuya

“When children are trained, they learn how to train others in turn. Children who are lectured to, learn how to lecture; if they are admonished, they learn how to admonish; if scolded, they learn how to scold; if ridiculed, they learn how to ridicule; if humiliated, they learn how to humiliate; if their psyche is killed, they will learn how to kill--the only question is who will be killed: oneself, others, or both.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence