Mingtong Gu Quotes

On the first day of May the people of the crofter townland are up betimes and busy as bees about to swarm. This is the day of migrating, bho baile gu beinn (from townland to moorland), from the winter homestead to the summer sheiling. The summer of their joy is come, the summer of the sheiling, the song, the pipe and the dance, when the people ascend the hill to the clustered bothies, overlooking the distant sea from among the fronded ferns and fragrant heather, where neighbour meets neighbour, and lover meets lover. ~ Alexander Carmichael

I remember once, on a family skiing trip to the Alps, Dad's practical joking got all of us into a particularly tight spot.
I must have been about age ten at the time, and was quietly excited when Dad spotted a gag that was begging to be played out on the very serious-looking Swiss-German family in the room next door to us.
Each morning their whole family would come downstairs, the mother dressed head to toe in furs, the father in a tight-fitting ski suit and white neck scarf, and their slightly overweight, rather snooty-looking thirteen-year-old son behind, often pulling faces at me.
The hotel had the customary practice of having a breakfast form that you could hang on your door handle the night before if you wanted to eat in your room. Dad thought it would be fun to fill out our form, order 35 boiled eggs, 65 German sausages, and 17 kippers, then hang it on the Swiss-German family's door.
It was too good a gag to pass up.
We didn't tell Mum, who would have gone mad, but instead filled out the form with great hilarity, and sneaked out last thing before bed and hung it on their door handle.
At 7:00 A.M. we heard the father angrily sending the order back. So we repeated the gag the next day.
And the next.
Each morning the father got more and more irate, until eventually Mum got wind of what we had been doing and made me go around to apologize. (I don't know why I had to do the apologizing when the whole thing had been Dad's idea, but I gu ~ Bear Grylls

Who is moving in the distance? It is the clock's pendulum, Hired by the god of death To measure life. ~ Gu Cheng

Mairidh mo ghaol gu siorraidh, Ivy Calhoun," he says, and I already know that means "I'll love you forever. ~ Cindy Miles

a generation:
the black night gave me black eyes
still I use them to seek the light ~ Gu Cheng

The night has given me dark eyes But I use them to look for light. ~ Gu Cheng

The world I feel, within the realm of art, is more genuine than the wrorld of matter. Artistic feeling is not tape measures, spectrographs, or flash camera lens. ~ Gu Cheng

A Naoimh Mìcheal Àird-aingeal, dìon sinn anns an àm a' chatha.
Bi mar thèarmann againn an aghaidh an donais agus na ribeachan an Diabhail.
Guma thoir Dia achmhasan air, tha sinn a' guidhe gu h-umhail,
agus caith dh'ifrinn, a Phrionnsa an t-sluaigh nèamhaidh, tro chumhachd Dè,
Satàn agus na droch-spioradan eile a tha air allaban timcheall an t-saoghail
a' lorg anman a mhilleadh.

Holy Michael the Archangel, defend us in time of battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly beseech thee,
and cast into hell, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the divine power,
Satan and all the other evil spirits who wander through the world
seeking the ruin of souls ~ St. Michael's Prayer (Scottish Gaelic)

The poet is just like the fabled hunter who naps beside a tree, waiting for hares to break their skulls by running headlong into the tree trunk. After waiting for a long time, the poet discovers that he is the hare. ~ Gu Cheng