Quotes, Poems, & Sayings...

[Orema]

Give light and people will find the way. —Ella Baker

[Kätzchen]

[Genesis]

This is a quote that you can use each day to remind yourself that the best way to go is forward.
There’s no going back and there’s no standing still, onward we go.
So many times we get lulled into a sense of comfort of complacency,
but you have to keep the fires stoked and the engine moving.
This is a great way to sum up that you always want to be making progress and having fun things happen in your life.
When you choose the direction you want to go, many times you get there...

-Anonymous

[Genesis]

So many times it seems that people will try to control things that they just have no control over.
The waves are going to come to shore no matter what,
so instead of trying to stop them we need to learn how to use them to our advantage and have as much fun as we can on them.
This is a great quote that even those that don’t surf can appreciate.
This quote is left to interpretation because everyone will have a different idea of what the waves represent. Hang ten!

-Anonymous

[Genesis]

It’s so true that most people describe the thorn as being the
prickly part of the rose instead of the rose being the beautiful and sweet smell part of the thorn.
It’s really a matter of how you look at it, so why not always take the positive side of things and
give it the most magical spin you can.
It is what it is, a plant that has both positive and negative to it, much like life, so which part do you want to focus on?

-Anonymous

[Genesis]

It’s easy to think that the time has passed us by to set a new goal or have a new dream.
Maybe we’ve reached some of our goals and now we seem like we’re just coasting along.
Or maybe you think you’re too old to get started on some great work.
This is a quote for those that feel they’re past the point of starting up anything new.
It should spark a new fire and get you dreaming and goal setting again.
Always have a goal and a dream to pursue as this is when you’re at your happiest...

-Anonymous

[Genesis]

[Genesis]

[Orema]

" ... on her worst day, Hillary Clinton will be an infinitely better candidate and President than the Republican candidate on his best day." —Bernie Sanders

Source: talkingpointsmemo.com (November 8, 2015)

[Genesis]

"I am planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots."

- Andrea Koehle Jones, The Wish Trees

[Genesis]

[Orema]

We are being told that Nina Simone’s face bears no real import on the new eponymous movie about her life, starring Zoe Saldana. “The most important thing,” said Robert Johnson, whose studio is releasing Nina, “is that creativity or quality of performance should never be judged on the basis of color, or ethnicity, or physical likeness.” This is obviously false. Saldana could be the greatest thespian of her time, but no one would consider casting her as Marilyn Monroe. Indeed Nina’s producers have gone to great ends—tragicomic ends—to invoke Nina Simone’s face, darkening Saldana’s skin, adorning her with prosthetics. Neither the term blackface nor brownface is entirely appropriate here. We are not so much talking about deliberate mockery as something much more insidious.
There is something deeply shameful in the fact that even today a young Nina Simone would have a hard time being cast in her own biopic.

It’s difficult to subtract the choice to cast Saldana from the economics of Hollywood—Saldana is seen as bankable in a way that other black women in her field are not. It’s equally difficult to ignore the fact that, while it is hard for all women in Hollywood, it is particularly hard for black women, and even harder for black women who share the dark skin, broad nose and full lips of Nina Simone. This fact is not separable from this country’s racist history, nor is the notion of “darkening up” a lighter skinned black person. Producers did it to Fredi Washington in Emperor Jones. They did it to Carmen de Lavallade in Lydia Bailey. (The make-up was called “Negro Number Two.”) They did it because they wanted to use the aura of blackness while evading the social realities of blackness. It’s possible that the producers were not, themselves, personally racist. This has no bearing whatsoever on anything. In America, racism is a default setting. To do nothing, to go along with the market, to claim innocence or neutrality, is to inevitably be a cog in the machine of racist hierarchy.

The producers of Nina are the heirs of this history—not personal racists, but cogs. Jezebel’s Kara Brown researched the team behind Nina. It is almost entirely white. Doubtless, these are good, non-racist people—but not good enough. No one on the team seems to understand the absurdity at hand—making a movie about Nina Simone while operating within the very same machinery that caused Simone so much agony in the first place. I do not mean to be personally harsh here. I am not trying to hurt people. But there is something deeply shameful—and hurtful—in the fact that even today a young Nina Simone would have a hard time being cast in her own biopic. In this sense, the creation of Nina is not a neutral act. It is part of the problem. —Ta-Nehisi Coates

Source: Nina Simone's Face


(I am so over biopics of Black artists and vow not to watch this nor any others.)

[Genesis]

A life without love is a waste.
“Should I look for spiritual love, or material, or physical love?”,
don’t ask yourself this question.
Discrimination leads to discrimination.
Love doesn’t need any name, category or definition.
Love is a world itself.
Either you are in, at the center…either you are out, yearning...

~ Shams

[Bubala]

[Soon]

“There is a difference between saying goodbye and letting go. Goodbye is not permanent. You can meet years later as old friends and share what happened in your life. You can smile and laugh about all the nonsense that you both went through. However, letting go is being okay with never seeing this person ever again…being okay with never knowing how their life turned out…being okay with fifty or more years of silence… being okay with running into that person at a grocery store and having them not acknowledge your presence. This is the part of life that doesn’t sit well with me and never will. It tears my heart in pieces, robs me of gratitude, drains me of anything positive and eats at the faith that holds on. It goes against kindness.”

― Shannon L. Alder

[Genesis]

“You must learn her.

You must know the reason why she is silent.
You must trace her weakest spots.
You must write to her.
You must remind her that you are there.
You must know how long it takes for her to give up.
You must be there to hold her when she is about to.

You must love her because many have tried and failed.
And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept.

And, this is how you keep her.”

- Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

[Kobi]

[Jesse]

"There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves." Albert Guinon

I caught myself doing this very thing today. Thankfully, the person with whom I was conversing with was extremely gracious and forgiving. -Jesse

[Orema]

[LOQUI]

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

Oscar Wilde