"Facebook" (20 November 2017)
“We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France.”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman
As quoted in Wellington and His Friends (1965) by Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington, p. 138, and in The Economist (16 June 2005) http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4079435
Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to reach out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if it means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)
Context: For all of us, life presents challenges and suffering -- accidents, illnesses, the loss of loved ones. There are times when we are overwhelmed by sudden calamity, natural or manmade. All of us, we make mistakes. And at times we are lost. And as we get older, we learn we don’t always have control of things -- not even a President does. But we do have control over how we respond to the world. We do have control over how we treat one another.
