Quote of the Day (Sheryl Lee Ralph, on Busting Rocks to ‘Create My Road’)

“I had to bust rocks to create my road. And now that road is there for my kids and other people's kids to travel. They might look at those broken rocks by the side of the road and say, ‘Wait a minute. If we melt that rock, we’ll have four more lanes.’” —Emmy-winning actress-singer Sheryl Lee Ralph quoted by Harriette Cole, “Nothing But Class,” AARP: The Magazine, August/September 2023

The image accompanying this post, showing Sheryl Lee Ralph at the pre-Oscar party held by Black Enterprise, was taken Feb. 23, 2008, by eternalconceptspr.

Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on the ‘Uses of Adversity’)

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.”— English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), As You Like It (1599)

Quote of the Day (Horace, on Coping With Adversity)

“Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.”—Roman poet and satirist Horace (65 BC-8 BC), in Horace for English Readers: Being a Translation of the Poems of Quintus Horatius Flaccus Into English Prose, by E. C. Wickham (1903)

Quote of the Day (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on Why Suffering Is Not So Good for Writers)

"You write better with all your problems resolved. You write better in good health. You write better without preoccupations. You write better when you have love in your life. There is a romantic idea that suffering and adversity are very good, very useful for the writer. I don't agree at all."—Colombian Nobel Literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1928-2014), quoted in Pete Hamill, “Pete Hamill Interviews Gabriel García Marquez: Love and Solitude,” Vanity Fair, March 1988

Quote of the Day (Anne Bradstreet, on Winter and Adversity)

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” —American Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672), “Meditations Divine and Moral” (1655)

The accompanying picture was taken in my hometown, Englewood, NJ, almost exactly a year ago, when snow was still on the ground on the first day of spring.

Quote of the Day (Soren Kierkegaard, on Why ‘Faith Sees Best in the Dark’)

“The believer humanly comprehends how heavy the suffering is, but in faith’s wonder that it is beneficial to him, he devoutly says: It is light. Humanly he says: It is impossible, but he says it again in faith’s wonder that what he humanly cannot understand is beneficial to him. In other words, when sagacity is able to perceive the beneficialness, then faith cannot see God; but when in the dark night of suffering sagacity cannot see a handbreadth ahead of it, then faith can see God, since faith sees best in the dark.” — Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), Kierkegaard's Writings, XV: Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, edited and translated by H .V. Hong & E.H. Hong (1993)

Quote of the Day (Francis Bacon, on Prosperity and Adversity)

“Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.”—Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), “On Adversity,” in Essays (1597)

An excellent thought to recall as a new year begins... 

(The image accompanying this post is John Vanderbank’s portrait of Francis Bacon painted around 1731, after a portrait from a century before by an unknown artist. The Vanderbank painting now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, in London.)