Clergyman's

Photos of yesterday give good evidence of how yesterday was and they are a true prove of history!
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.
— Vladimir Nabokov

I was always singing and dancing and reciting poems -- that was how I used to do my crying over my father. There were a lot of negotiations between the US and Cuban governments over the next couple of years . , and eventually my dad was released. It was wonderful to have him home -- it was probably the happiest time in my life. For once, the whole family was together, living a normal life. That was when my sister, Becky, was born , and it was also when I started guitar lessons. I would lock myself away in my room for days, learning how to play. Even then I was beginning to work out that music was a way to cut throught all the BS.
- Gloria Estefan

I can replace things, but I could never replace my wife and kids.
— Pablo Escobar

Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
- Vaclav Havel

Grandpa would go for strolls alone through the pastures where meadowlarks and grasshoppers flew like broken-winged birds, where rabbits constructed their havens, and where thick-coated coyotes and red-tailed foxes sniffed and searched them out.
— James Russell Lingerfelt

For moral reasons I am an atheist — for moral reasons. I am of the opinion that you would recognize a creator by his creation, and the world appears to me to be put together in such a painful way that I prefer to believe that it was not created by anyone than to think that somebody created this intentionally.
- Stanisław Lem

The popish religion is now unknown to the law of this country.
- "Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon"

It is no fault of Christianity that a hypocrite falls into sin.
- Jerome

Some stories won't have a happy ending, but there's always hope that the next one will. Hope is everything. Even when there's nothing else. Especially when there's nothing else.
— Clara Kensie

Prayer leads you to see new paths and to hear new melodies in the air. Prayer is the breath of your life which gives you freedom to go and to stay where you wish and to find the many signs which point out the way to a new land. Praying is not simply some necessary compartment in the daily schedule of a Christian or a source of support in time of need, nor is it restricted to Sunday mornings or mealtimes. Praying is living. It is eating and drinking, action and rest, teaching and learning, playing and working. Praying pervades every aspect of our lives. It is the unceasing recognition that God is wherever we are, always inviting us to come closer and to celebrate the divine gift of being alive.
- Henri Nouwen

It is remarkable of the simple substances that they are generally in some compound form. Thus oxygen and nitrogen, though in union they form the aerial envelope of the globe, are never found separate in nature. Carbon is pure only in the diamond. And the metallic bases of the earths, though the chemist can disengage them, may well be supposed unlikely to remain long uncombined, seeing that contact with moisture makes them burn. Combination and re-combination are principles largely pervading nature. There are few rocks, for example, that are not composed of at least two varieties of matter, each of which is again a compound of elementary substances. What is still more wonderful with respect to this principle of combination, all the elementary substances observe certain mathematical proportions in their unions. It is hence supposed that matter is composed of infinitely minute particles or atoms, each of which belonging to any one substance, can only associate with a certain number of the atoms of any other.
- "Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802)"