Beryl Stapleton Quotes

I'm a fan of polarization. If you make something that is palatable to everybody, it's like making vanilla ice cream, and I think we have enough of that. ~ Chris Stapleton

Prosperity's Curse {Couplet}
Prosperity's a gilded curse,
misdirecting our poor souls
from the higher purpose of life's fire,
to mindlessly rake over old coals. ~ Beryl Dov

finding the time to practice takes a little effort and thought. For many of us, already feeling maxed out in terms of time constraints, being told that we need to set aside more time five days a week to do something else is in itself stressful. As you make your wellness and wholeness a priority, you will find it becomes easier to protect your practice by creating a special place and time in which to work on yourself. ~ Beryl Bender Birch

PlayStation: Live in your world. Play in ours...
...and once you're hooked on gaming
you'll live and play in our world exclusively. ~ Beryl Dov

The prize I value most was given to me 60 years ago. I was named the girl with the cleanest fingernails. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

Buddha Under the Bodhi Tree
Under the bodhi tree
I sat
Untangling the intangible.
Bees nested in my hair,
Apian swarms of nature ~
I too swarmed
In my mind
Taking the rhythm of their dance
To be a sign of
Divine Honey.

Under the bodhi tree
I sat
Where each new
second
Eradicated its past
In this brief mystery of time.
I
took the cricket's call
To be a sign of
Divine Eternity.

Under the bodhi tree
I sat
Thinking the unthinkable
Raindrops fell to quench the thirst
Of insects and plants
My compassion rose
To quench the thirst of heaven
I took the rain
To be a sign of
Divine Love ~
and was finally at peace with
Myself and God. ~ Beryl Dov

Self-Improvement
Turn yourself into a neighbor worth loving,
and then keep moving. ~ Beryl Dov

Soulmate My Ass [10w]
Aspire to marry the person
the least wrong for you. ~ Beryl Dov

Steady Bridges Won't Get You There [10w]
You must cross shaky bridges to go where few dare. ~ Beryl Dov

Other People's Children
We see our virtues in our kids,
and our faults in other people's children. ~ Beryl Dov

Seasons Haiku
Summer sleeps cozy
spooning Spring. Winter needs
a blanket of snow. ~ Beryl Dov

You could expect many things of God at night when the campfire burned before the tents. You could look through and beyond the veils of scarlet and see shadows of the world as God first made it and hear the voices of the beasts He put there. It was a world as old as Time, but as new as Creation's hour had left it.
In a sense it was formless. When the low stars shone over it and the moon clothed it in silver fog, it was the way the firmament must have been when the waters had gone and the night of the Fifth Day had fallen on creatures still bewildered by the wonder of their being. It was an empty world because no man had yet joined sticks to make a house or scratched the earth to make a road or embedded the transient symbols of his artifice in the clean horizon. But it was not a sterile world. It held the genesis of life and lay deep and anticipant under the sky. ~ Beryl Markham

Translations
A literary translation is like a spouse who thinks they can cheat on you because business has brought them to a foreign city. ~ Beryl Dov

White Collar Crime
White collar crime is neither immoral nor evil ~ it's simply unlawful.
We should think of it as a subspecies of gambling;
we wager the potential loss of our freedom against a big payout.
Win or lose, we get to live in a big house. ~ Beryl Dov

The Dead Should Not Go Uncuddled
"Should you die and I persist,
I insist I be buried in an empty coffin
next to yours,
so you can keep it warm for me. ~ Beryl Dov

Radha Krishna
Krishna,
Svayam Bhagavan,
Avatar of Vishnu,
play your flute for me
beneath this parasol of stars,
diadems bejeweling your eternal crown,
and I will dance for you a joyous dance.

Svayam Bhagavan,
Avatar of Vishnu,
visit your consort, Radha,
mantled in the black of night,
the cow-herd girl who has stolen your heart,
and now the gopi has become the guru
and awaits her lover with open arms.

Svayam Bhagavan,
Avatar of Vishnu,
stay the night,
and learn the love of Radha,shakti,
her wifely love, the svakaya-rasa,
her spiritual love, the parakiya-rasa,
for immortality is a curse without both of these.

Svayam Bhagavan,
Avatar of Vishnu,
return to heaven now
for the cock has crowed
and yet you linger, lazy in Radha's bed.
Even endless love must seek and end
to repeat the joy of new beginnings.
Return, Krishna, I beseech you,
for my feet are weary of the dance
and I have fields to plow and rice to plant. ~ Beryl Dov

if I were, even now, without either a dog or a horse in my keeping, I should feel I had lost contact with the earth. ~ Beryl Markham

A lot of great bluegrass comes out of Kentucky. There's a lot of great music, like the Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, and Keith Whitley. There's a lot of bluegrass intertwined with country music. ~ Chris Stapleton

Railway Stations
Train stations are a metaphor for life;
people have either just arrived or are about to leave.
If they're just waiting, they're in purgatory. ~ Beryl Dov

R-o-l-a-i-d-s: How do you spell relief? [10w]
J-a-c-k-i-n-go-f-f. ~ Beryl Dov

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BERYL CORONET ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Silence is never so impenetrable as when the whisper of steel on paper strives to pierce it. ~ Beryl Markham

Obama Talks to Auto-Worker's Union [10w]
"We shall increase auto-industry employment
by using live crash-test dummies. ~ Beryl Dov

There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa
and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no one else's, but likely to be haugthily disagreed with by all those who believed in some other Africa ... Being thus all things to all authors, it follows, I suppose, that Africa must be all things to all readers.
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home. ~ Beryl Markham

The Poet's Touch [10w] + {Couplet}
See little and remember much,
that's the poet's special touch. ~ Beryl Dov

It is amazing what a lot of insect life goes on under your nose when you have got it an inch from the earth. I suppose it goes on in any case, but if you are proceeding on your stomach, dragging your body along by your fingernails, entomology presents itself very forcibly as a thoroughly justified science. ~ Beryl Markham

Today's Challenge [10w]
The challenge you must meet daily:
'Is life worth living? ~ Beryl Dov

It occurred to him that there were a lot of stories for kids with stuff like this in them, stuff that threw acid all over your emotions. Hansel and Gretel being turned out into the forest, Bambi's mother getting scragged by a hunter, the death of Old Yeller. It was easy to hurt little kids, easy to make them cry, and this seemed to bring out a strangely sadistic streak in many story-tellers ... including, it seemed, Beryl Evans. ~ Stephen King

I have lifted my plane ... for perhaps a thousand flights and I have never felt her wheels glide from the Earth into the air without knowing the uncertainty and the exhilaration of first-born adventure. ~ Beryl Markham

Walk of Grace [10w] + [10w]
The compassionate man walks in grace with the earth's pace,
floating over eggshells, one step in front of the other. ~ Beryl Dov

New Yorkers [10w]
New Yorkers dwell on their misfortunes
because
rents are outrageous. ~ Beryl Dov

Country music is one of those places where we support each other and prop each other up. ~ Chris Stapleton

Forgotten [10w]
There's no greater slur of memory than to be forgotten. ~ Beryl Dov

Sublime Beauty
When I shut my eyes, I can move mountains.
When I open them, mountains can move me. ~ Beryl Dov

Each humid, tropic day is stillborn, and does not breathe, however lustily pregnant the night that gave it birth. ~ Beryl Markham

Semper Fidelis [10w] + [10w] + [10w]
It's more patriotic to serve your conscience than your country.
It's more courageous to unclench a fist than clench it.
Semper Fidelis, always faithful,
sometimes it's more
to be less. ~ Beryl Dov

Politicians talk too much bullshit
with their little heads.
One day they'll get caught
in their zippers
and feel the real pain
of the voters. ~ Beryl Dov

Moonlight lined the windowsills like a fall of snow. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

It seems to me that a mutually beneficial relationship between a man and woman requires the man to be dominant. A sensible woman will allow the man to think he is the most important partner. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

I never was a liner note junkie. I didn't know who produced records or there was such a thing as a straight songwriter. I always assumed that everybody that was singing a song wrote it or made it up. ~ Chris Stapleton

…it was even more disconcerting to examine your charts before a proposed flight only to find that in many cases the bulk of the terrain over which you had to fly was bluntly marked: 'UNSURVEYED.' It was as if the mapmakers had said, 'We are aware that between this spot and that one, there are several hundred thousands of acres, but until you make a forced landing there, we won't know whether it is mud, desert, or jungle – and the chances are we won't know then! ~ Beryl Markham

I've never been drawn to the feminist movement. I was brought up to believe that men had little to do with the home or children - except to bring in the money. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

You never possess a cat; you are allowed to be in a cat's life, which, of course, is a privilege. ~ Beryl Reid

Good Egg [10w]
Picking up the pieces is the responsibilty of the egg. ~ Beryl Dov