"Sailing is a good sport. You don't have to beat up the other guy like you do in boxing and football; you just try to outsmart him, and then you go out and have a beer with him"
-John Kolius

I'm living this quote this week...hope all of Quotidian's readers are having as wonderful a week...including and especially the women sailors among us.

Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
-- Gustave Flaubert

To the thousands of you who read my blog daily and so have noticed I have not entered a post in 3 days, you will appreciate Flaubert's quote. To those of you who are reading my blog for the first time today, you will also appreciate Flaubert's quote. I am traveling, outside the USA and internet access has been patchy - not because I am in some remote part of the world, but only because the house I am living in does not have internet.
But how right is Flaubert. It is one reason I love to travel. To appreciate my insignificance and so all the more to appreciate my life. When I am reminded I am but a tiny speck in the universe, I am better able to accept that my actions do not have an enormous impact on anyone but those immediately around me and so I can be very kind to those around me and the rest of the world will not know or care I am soft.

“Deny the passport, throw it away and make a great decision that you will not leave this shore until and unless you have liberated all the human beings.”
-BUDDHA

It's the denying me without the passport which concerns me at the moment.

"ALL IS CLOUDED BY DESIRE."
Wayang

What do we see when we remove desire?

"To err is human, to forgive divine."
- William Shakespeare


Well, thank God for that.

"MAKE NEW FRIENDS, BUT KEEP THE OLD, ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER GOLD."


I was lucky enough to have lunch today with an old friend from college. Old friends are amazing experiences. I haven't seen this friend in 4 years, and before that it was probably 4 years. She lives on one coast and I on the other. Yet today she arrives at my front door and it is instant ease, picking up as if we saw each other yesterday. I've known her since 1980 so more than 1/2 my life, is it any wonder I feel completely at home with her?

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch."
-anonymous

Anonymous was a woman, as we all know. In this circumstance, probably some poor farmer's wife who cut off some tail after her husband told her "just wait til spring when the chickens hatch, we'll be rich"...and then they lost the farm.

The hummingbird competes
With the stillness of the air.
- Chogyam Trungpa

"A long life may not be good enough, but a good life is long enough"

- Benjamin Franklin

As promised yesterday, I spent the 3 hours alloted to work by Benjamin Franklin to discover how he defined "powerful goodness". Alas, it was not enough time, and so rather than give you Benjamin Franklin's definition of powerful goodness, or just simple goodness, I am giving you another quote by him. I have not abandoned the plan to learn how he defined goodness, it will just take me longer than 3 hours. Keep checking back, one day it will be here on Quotidiannee.