Through the Darkening Hall

Lyra and her daemon moved through the darkening hall, taking care to keep to one side, out of side of the kitchen. The three great tables that ran the length of the hall were laid already, the silver and the glass catching what little light there was, and the long benches were pulled out ready for the guests. Portraits of former Masters hung high in the gloom along the walls. Lyra reached the dais and looked back at the open kitchen door, and, seeing no one, stepped up beside the high table. The places here were laid with gold, not silver, and the fourteen seats were not oak benches, but mahogany chairs with velvet cushions.

-The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Compass-Dark-Materials-Book/dp/0345413350

Wonderfully Interactive

"The whole system was invented to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is based on two ideas: Number one that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were probably steered benignly away when you were a kid from things you liked on the ground you would never get a job doing that...And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it the whole system of education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they're not because the thing they're good at at school wasn't valued or was actually stigmatized."

"It's wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into compartments. Creativity, which I define as having original ideas which have value, more often than not comes about as the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeing things."

-Ken Robinson

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

The Letters are Flying

And in another place, the story is told of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradyon that he was wrapped in a scroll of the Torah and burned at the stake. Moments before his death, his students cried out, "Master! What do you see?" He answered, "The parchment is burning, but the letters are flying toward the heavens!"

-The Book of Letters, Lawrence Kushner

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Letters-Mystical-Alef-Bait-Kushner/dp/1879045001

The Wordless White Stone

I felt its calm power as I held it

and wished a wish I cannot tell.

It fit in my hand like a hand gently

holding my hand through a sleepless night.

A stone so like, so unlike

all the others it could only be mine.

The wordless white stone of my life!

-"Truro" from Worlding, Elizabeth Spires

http://www.amazon.com/Worldling-Elizabeth-Spires/dp/0393316289

Whatever Returns

You who do no remember

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice:

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater.

-From "The Wild Iris" in The Wild Iris, Louise Gluck

http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Iris-Louise-Gluck/dp/0880013346

Easy to be Proud

How can people have no feelings

How can they ignore their friends

Easy to be proud

Easy to say no

And especially people who care about strangers

Who care about evil

And social and justice

Do you only care about the bleeding crowd?

How about a needing friend?

I need a friend

-Easy to be Hard, Hair

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCs1rkAXZ9o&feature=related

Our Citadel Cannot Fall

It is hardly surprising if we are driven by blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men. And though their numbers are great, we can afford to despise them because they have no one to lead them them and are carried along only by ignorance which distracts them at random first one way then another. When their forces attack us in superior numbers, our general conducts a tactical withdrawal of his forces to a strong point, and they are left to encumber themselves with useless plunder. Safe from their furious activity on our rampart above, we can smile at their efforts collect all the most useless boot: our citadel cannot fall to the assaults of folly.

-Ancius Boethius, trans. Victor Watts, The Consolation of Philosophy

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anicius_Manlius_Severinus_Boethius