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A Beautiful Year:...
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Dec 24, 2025 08:34AM

 
Van Gogh: The Life
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J.R.R. Tolkien
“Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness, and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo...and it's worth fighting for.”
J.R.R. Tolkien

David Whyte
“You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.”
David Whyte

Annie Dillard
“You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
Annie Dillard

Jo Walton
“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”
Jo Walton

Francis Spufford
“God doesn't want your careful virtue, He wants your reckless generosity.”
Francis Spufford, Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense

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