licking honey off a thorn

“My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.”

[Louis Adamic]

the reader's soul

"A novel is like a bow, and the violin that produces the sounds is the reader's soul."

[Marie-Henri Beyle / Stendahl]

brief and bitter / few and evil

"Then Joseph brought in Jacob his father and stood him before Pharaoh, and Jacob blessed Pharaoh. And Pharaoh said to Jacob, "how many are the days of the years of your life?" And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life..." 

[Genesis 47:7-9]

"Thetis answered [Apollo] then letting the tears fall: "Ah me, my child. Your birth was bitterness. Why did I raise you? If only you could sit by your ships untroubled, not weeping, since indeed your lifetime is to be short, of no length. Now it has befallen that your life must be brief and bitter beyond all men's." 

[from The Iliad by Homer (Book I:413-418)]

breaks the spirit

"A gentle tongue is a tree of life,
but perverseness in it breaks the spirit." 

[Proverbs 15:4]

to gray hairs I will carry you

"In the LORD all the offspring of Israel shall be justified and shall glory...
Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel,
who have been born by me from before your birth,
carried from the womb;
even to your old age I am he,
and to gray hairs I will carry you.
I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save." 

[Isaiah 45:25; 46:3-4]

to win us to our harm

"And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths..."

[Lord Banquo in Shakespeare's Macbeth]

Biscuit by Jane Kenyon

The dog has cleaned his bowl
and his reward is a biscuit,
which I put in his mouth
like a priest offering the host.

I can't bear that trusting face!
He asks for bread, expects
bread, and I in my power
might have given him a stone.

[Jane Kenyon]

it's worse to judge

"In our day it’s worse to judge evil than to do evil." (Os Guinness)

anything less

"O my soul, thou art capable of enjoying God; woe to thee if thou art contented with anything less than God."  

[Frances de Sales]

a divine choice

"Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are...a divine choice."  

[Henry Nouwen]