Waterfall

“A strong man and a waterfall always channel their own path.”

The Waterfall


A graceful ballerina, dancing,


Leaping off the stage,


Twirling amongst the audience below.


A vibrant entertainer, sparkling,


Waving at the crowds,


Singing of joy and showering harmony.


A lasting natural beauty, flowing,


In an endless dance,


Hearing not the cry of the final curtain call.

Helium 

So flows the stream, this hot summer day


Listen, can you hear the sounds of the waterfall


Tranquil even life, cool relaxing


Heat intoxicating debilitating strength,


Like the assuredness of melting ice drops,


Caressing my skin


Caught between ecstasy and pleasure


Can you feel the placidity


Tender kisses flowing softly


Liquid fingers against warm skin


Flowing sensations inter thoughts


A hot summer day, a world away


Enclosed in a cooling mist


Akin to a lovers embrace,


Droplets of affection, I succumb,


Whispers of expression


Eyes closed cool in darkness


Images, sounds enrapture my somber shell


Droplet splash heart racing, slowing unobtrusively


Hear the wisdom of the waterfall,


Nurturing sounds nature’s symphony


Hear the maker of beginnings


Substance of life giver of pleasure


This hot summer day, a world away

ALL POEMS FROM Helium

The water leaps and rushes over the rocks.


Flying through the air


It glimmers-


Each drop a diamond in an always-moving tapestry.


The curtain moves and changes,


Yet remains the same.


Always present, always changing,


Water against the rock,


Glittering through the air.


The roar,


The constant roar,


Monotonous and melodious


Fills the air.


Mist wells up from far below,


Leaping from the rocks as the water


Returns to the earth once more.


For a moment the water waits,


Suspended,


Sparkling beads in the air,


For a moment and forever.


Yet each drop must fall.


Though it be replaced by another,


Each drop must reach the bottom


And return to the calm river.


As each drop drifts away,


The waterfall thunders on.

Helium

Each day is a little life.
-Schopenhauer

He is happiest who finds peace in his home.
-Goethe

We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.
-Martha Grimes

Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.
-Doris Mortman

Rather fail with honor than succeed by fraud.
-Sophocles

Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
-James Barrie

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances.
-Martha Washington

I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains.
-Anne Frank

When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses.
-Dr. Joyce Brothers

Believe you can and you're halfway there.
-Theodore Roosevelt 

You may live longer than I do, but I will live more.
-James McConnell

My life is my message.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Trees

I wonder about the trees.


Why do we wish to bear


Forever the noise of these


More than another noise


So close to our dwelling place?


We suffer them by the day


Till we lose all measure of pace,


And fixity in our joys,


And acquire a listening air.


They are that that talks of going


But never gets away;


And that talks no less for knowing,


As it grows wiser and older,


That now it means to stay.


My feet tug at the floor


And my head sways to my shoulder


Sometimes when I watch trees sway,


From the window or the door.


I shall set forth for somewhere,


I shall make the reckless choice


Some day when they are in voice


And tossing so as to scare


The white clouds over them on.


I shall have less to say,


But I shall be gone.

-- Robert Frost

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures
and go on to the next challenge. It's OK. If you're not failing, you're not growing.
-H. Stanley Judd

Happiness is a direction, not a place.
-Syndey J. Harris

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify.
-Henry David Thoreau

Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.
-Samuel Johnson

Integrity is one of several paths, it distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path,
and the only one upon which you will never get lost.
-M. H. McKee

Believe the best of everybody.
-Rudyard Kipling

The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.
-Bill Copeland

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-John Keats

Our life is what our thoughts make it.
-Marcus Aurelius

If you believe in the Lord, He will do half the work: the last half.
-Cyrus Curtis

Ruthlessly compete with your own best self.
-Apollo 13 engineers

Many of our disappointments and much of our unhappiness arise from our forming false notions of things and persons.
-Abigail Adams

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.
-Shakespeare

Teachers open the door, but you must enter by yourself.
-Chinese Proverb 

Three Rules of Work: 1. Out of clutter, find simplicity. 2. From discord, find harmony.
3. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-Albert Einstein

The cost of a thing is the amount of life that must be exchanged for it.
-Henry David Thoreau

There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way.
-Christopher Morley

And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.
-Leo Tolstoy

Try not to be a man of success, but rather try to be a man of value.
-Albert Einstein

When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
-Alexander Graham Bell

No man is a failure who is enjoying life.
-William Feather

Into each life some rain must fall. Some days must be dark and dreary.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Only those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.
-Robert Kennedy

Fog

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination.
-Tommy Lasorda

In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few.
-Shunryu Suzuki

Fear always springs from ignorance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson


When you get into a tight place, and it seems you can't go on, hold on, for that's just the place and time that the tide will turn. 
-Harriet Beecher Stowe

If you feel happy, tell your face.
-Steve Potter

You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough.
-Joe E. Lewis

Happiness is a perfume you can't pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.
-Calvin Coolidge

Never explain yourself: Your friends don't need it and your enemies won't believe it.
-Unknown

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be used until they are seasoned.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-George Santayana

The human mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open.
-Walter Gropius

There must be more to life than having everything.
-Maurice Sendak

Genius is but one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-Thomas Edison

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.
-Clarence Darrow

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
-Boris Yeltsin

Humor makes all things tolerable.
-Henry Ward Beecher

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
-John Lennon

The best thing one can do when it's raining is let it rain.
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Birds sing after a storm. Why shouldn't we?
-Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.
-Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is as hard to do gracefully as getting down off your high horse.
-Frank Jones

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
-Japanese proverb

Character is much easier kept than recovered.
-Thomas Paine

Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.
-George Santayana

If you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move.
-Katherine Hepburn

Don't talk unless you can improve the silence.
-New England Saying

Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy.
-Marshall Field

Do not act as if you had a thousand years to live.
-Marcus Aurelius

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
-Kierkegaard

Don't lose your head. It's the best part of your body.
-Jimmy Snyder

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
-Elbert Hubbard

I have had more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met!
-Dwight L. Moody

To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable.
-Barry M. Goldwater

The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.
-Alexandra Penney

The worst prison would be a closed heart.
-Pope John Paul II

There are many things in life that will catch your eye. But only a few will catch your heart....
-Ben Crenshaw

Friendship is Love without his wings.
-Lord Byron

Love . . . the essence of God.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is a fruit always in season and within reach of every hand.
-Mother Teresa

Love is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
-Helen Hayes

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.
-Og Mandino

Love is indestructible : Its holy flame for ever burneth; From Heaven it came, to Heaven it returneth.
-Robert Southey

True love's the gift which God has given to man alone beneath the heaven.
-Sir Walter Scott

It is wisdom to believe the heart.
-George Santayana

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.
- Sophocles

Experience is how life catches up with us and teaches us to love and forgive each other.
- Judy Collins

A life lived in love will never be dull.
- Leo Buscaglia

Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope.
- Tom Head

There has been much tragedy in my life; at least half of it actually happened.
- Mark Twain




The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.
- Norman Cousins

Lord, let me live until I die.
- Will Rogers

Sport and life is about losing. It's about understanding how to lose.
- Lynn Davies

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?
- Charles Schulz

Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
- Oscar Wilde

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.
- Arthur Ashe

Mountains

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver

Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.
- Erik H. Erikson

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
- Carl Sandburg

Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back.
- Arthur Rubinstein

You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.
- Zig Ziglar

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
- Oscar Wilde


What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.
- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama


It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
- Victor Hugo

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.
- Isaac Bashevis Singer

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
- Albert Einstein

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
- Dorothy Thompson

People living deeply have no fear of death.
- Anais Nin

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
- Isaac Asimov


Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
- Marie Curie

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
- Omar N. Bradley


Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
- John Dewey

Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.
- Germaine Greer

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
- Helen Keller

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
- Carl Jung

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
- Mark Twain

People do not live nowadays - they get about ten percent out of life.
- Isadora Duncan

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death
- James F. Bymes

A useless life is an early death.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
- Elbert Hubbard

Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
- Maria Mitchell

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson

Live your life and forget your age.
- Norman Vincent Peale

There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
- Theodore Rubin


What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?
- Henry David Thoreau

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.
- Blaise Pascal

There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
- Linda Hogan

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A flower is an educated weed.
- Luther Burbank

Trees are the earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
- Rabindranath Tagore

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.
- Henry David Thoreau

Don't follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.
- Joan Rivers

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
- Oscar Wilde

Take it easy -- but take it.
- Woody Guthrie

People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
- Ramona L. Anderson 

Lighthouse

This is a very important practice. Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
- Samuel Richardson


The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves.
- John Dryden


He who angers you conquers you.
- Elizabeth Kenny

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

- Marcus Aurelius

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
- Frederick Buechner


He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
- George Eliot

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.
- Simone de Beauvoir

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched ... but are felt in the heart.
- Helen Keller

Sex appeal is fifty percent what you've got and fifty percent what people think you've got.
- Sophia Loren


A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
- Winston Churchill


Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
- Bernice Johnson Reagon


When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it,
requires brains.
- Mary Pettibone Poole

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.
- William Lyon Phelps

There never was a good knife made of bad steel.
- Benjamin Frankl

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
- Helen Keller 

In the world to come, I shall not be asked, "Why were you not Moses?" I shall be asked, "Why were you not Zusya?"
- Rabbi Zusya

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
- John Wooden

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
- Mary Engelbreit

Growth is a painful process.
- Wilma Mankiller

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
- Carl Rogers

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
(frequently attributed to Charles Darwin)
- L. C. Megginson

The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.
- James Yorke


If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?
- Gloria Steinem 

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
- Pearl S. Buck

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
- Woodrow Wilson

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
- David Lloyd George

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin