A favorite line of mine from "As You Like It." Poetically expressed -- and
profound too.
On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 8:47 AM Mike Godwin <mnemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, David. And you just reminded me of this:
>
> "And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees,
> books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
>
> Mike
>
>
> On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 8:31 AM David Sharpe <dpsharpeaus...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> For me, the most provocative and takeaway line of B. Russell's passage
>> was "The organic need {union with the life on earth} that was being
>> satisfied is so profound that those in whom it is starved are seldom
>> completely sane."
>>
>> To be surrounded by nature and out in the country are important keys to
>> the success of Shakespeare@Winedale.
>>
>> I enjoyed the piece. Thanks, Mike.
>>
>> On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 6:45 AM Mike Godwin <mnemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> How to be Happy — Excerpt The Conquest of Happiness (1930) often cited
>>> as one of Bertrand Russell’s most accessible and favorite books.
>>> 'Whatever we may wish to think, we are creatures of Earth, our life is
>>> part of the life of the Earth; and we draw our nourishment from it just as
>>> the plants and animals do. The rhythm of Earth life is slow; autumn and
>>> winter are as essential to it as spring and summer, and rest is as
>>> essential as motion. To the child, even more than to the man, it is
>>> necessary to preserve some contact with the ebb and flow of terrestrial
>>> life. The human body has been adapted through the ages to this rhythm, and
>>> religion has embodied something of it in the festival of Easter.
>>> 'I have seen a boy of two years old, who had been kept in London, taken
>>> out for the first time to walk in green country. The season was winter, and
>>> everything was wet and muddy. To the adult eye there was nothing to cause
>>> delight, but in the boy there sprang up a strange ecstasy; he kneeled in
>>> the wet ground and put his face in the grass, and gave utterance to
>>> half-articulate cries of delight. The joy that he was experiencing was
>>> primitive, simple and massive. The organic need that was being satisfied is
>>> so profound that those in whom it is starved are seldom completely sane.
>>> 'Many pleasures, of which we may take gambling and drink as good
>>> examples, have in them no element of this contact with Earth. Such
>>> pleasures, in the instant when they cease, leave a man feeling dusty and
>>> dissatisfied, hungry for he knows not what. Such pleasures bring nothing
>>> that can truly be called joy. Those, on the other hand, that bring us into
>>> contact with the life of the Earth have something in them profoundly
>>> satisfying; when they cease, the happiness that they have brought remains,
>>> although their intensity while they existed may have been less than that of
>>> more exciting dissipations.
>>> 'The two-year-old boy whom I spoke of a moment ago displayed the most
>>> primitive possible form of union with the life of Earth. But in a higher
>>> form the same thing is to be found in poetry. What makes Shakespeare’s
>>> lyrics supreme is that they are filled with this same joy that made the
>>> two-year- old embrace the grass. Consider “Hark, hark, the lark”, or “Come
>>> unto these yellow sands”; you will find in these poems the civilized
>>> expression of the same emotion that in our two-year-old could only find
>>> utterance in inarticulate cries.'
>>>
>>> Love to all,
>>>
>>> Mike
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Be vigitant, I beseech you!
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>> --
>> Be vigitant, I beseech you!
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>>
> --
> Be vigitant, I beseech you!
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