Quote of the Day (Britain’s Clement Attlee, on Material Discoveries and Morality)

“Man’s material discoveries have outpaced his moral progress.”—British Prime Minister Clement Attlee (1883-1967), address to the U.S. Congress, Nov. 13, 1945, quoted in Richard M. Crowder, Aftermath: The Makers of the Postwar World (2015)

Quote of the Day (Thomas Merton, on the Desire to Please God)

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” —American Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Thoughts in Solitude (1956)

Photo of the Day: Brooklyn Bridge, ‘Sleepless as the River Under Thee’

“O Sleepless as the river under thee,

Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,

Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend

And of the curveship lend a myth to God.”— American poet Hart Crane (1889-1932), “To Brooklyn Bridge,” in The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane, edited by Brom Weber (1933)

I took this photo in early October of last year. As you can tell from the short-sleeved shirts of those gathered by the riverside, something like Indian summer was being experienced and enjoyed that day. It was the kind of day that make those lucky enough to be in that area to fall in love with this stretch of New York City.

Quote of the Day (Rollo May, on Freedom as ‘Our Capacity to Mold Ourselves’)

“Freedom is man's capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.”— American humanistic and existential psychologist Rollo May (1909-1994), Man’s Search for Himself (1953)

Quote of the Day (Lemony Snicket, on the Importance of ‘One Misheard Word’)

“In love, as in life, one misheard word can be tremendously important. If you tell someone you love them, for instance, you must be absolutely certain that they have replied ‘I love you back’ and not ‘I love your back’ before you continue the conversation.”— Lemony Snicket (pen name of Daniel Handler), Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid (2007)

Quote of the Day (Walt Whitman, on ‘That Music Always Round Me’)

“That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning,

yet long untaught I did not hear,

But now the chorus I hear and am elated,

A tenor, strong, ascending with power and health, with glad notes of daybreak I hear,

A soprano at intervals sailing buoyantly over the tops of immense waves,

A transparent base shuddering lusciously under and through the universe,

The triumphant tutti, the funeral wailings with sweet flutes and violins, all of these I fill myself with,

I hear not the volumes of sound merely, I am moved by the exquisite meanings,

I listen to the different voices winding in and out, striving, contending with fiery vehemence to excel each other in emotion;

I do not think the performers know themselves-but now I think I begin to know them.” —American poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), "That Music Always Round Me," in the "Whispers of Heavenly Death" section in Whitman's last edition of Leaves of Grass