"What you make a child love and desire is more important than what you make him learn."
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--Alice O'Grady

Art credit: The Arabian Nights by Lionel Percy Smythe

"Rivers do not drink their own water; trees do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves.
Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other.
No matter how difficult life is...
Life is good when you are happy; but much better when others are happy because of you."

--Pope Frances

Art Credit: Beerensammler by Fritz Ebel

"Fortunate is the person who has been educated to the perception of beauty; he possesses a heritage of which no reverses can rob him...

"A great scientist tells us that there is no natural object in the universe which, if seen as the Master sees it, coupled with all its infinite meaning, its utility and purpose, is not beautiful.

"Beauty is God's handwriting. Just as the most disgusting object, if put under a magnifying glass of sufficient power, would reveal beauties undreamed of, so even the most unlovely environment, the most cruel conditions, will, when viewed through the glass of a trained and disciplined mind, show something of the beautiful and hopeful.

"A life that has been rightly trained will extract sweetness from everything; it will see beauty everywhere."

--Orison Swett Marden

Art credit: Sommarang by Fanny Brate

“When the multitudes cease to flow into the sanctuary to bathe themselves in God’s divine ether, to wash the grime from the soul’s garments, to sharpen the dulled instrument of the spirit, that moment the bloom and beauty will begin to pass from our arts, our literature, our music, our laws, and the very springs of civilization will dry up.”

--President Hopkins of Williams College

Art credit: A Prayer by Frederick Daniel Hardy

"It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

--Vincent Van Gogh

Art credit: 12 Sunflowers in a Vase by Van Gogh

"Outward circumstances do not determine the course of our lives as much as the thoughts that habitually occupy our minds."

--Howard W. Hunter

Art credit: Summer by Jules Breton

"No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such."

--Marcus Aurelius

Art credit: The Two Brothers by Firim Baes

Books are keys to wisdom's treasures;
Books are gates to lands of pleasure;
Books are paths that upward lead;
Books are friends. Come, let us read!

--Emilie Poulsson

Art credit: The Half Holiday by Elizabeth Adela Forbes

In Flander's Fields originated in remembrance of lives sacrificed in World War I, a Month 10 topic. In three days, on June 6, we'll remember the lives sacrificed on Normandy Beach in WWII. This poem reminds us of the sacrifices of all who have given their lives for others--and what we owe them.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

---John McCrae

Art credit: Coquelicots by Robert Vonnoh

"By words, one transmits thoughts to another; by means of art, one transmits feeling."
--Leo Tolstoy

Art credit: Idealismo y Realidad by Juan Comba Garcia