Jo Boniszewski

Your fingers caress my heart strings, shaping a silent sonnet in notes of love. Transcending space and time, bathing the ether in perfect harmony.

If it matters, it will hurt like knives or wrap and lift you in the most immeasurable joy. Or both. One thing is certain, you will feel intensely alive.

Standing beneath this immense, bejeweled, star-spangled dome, breathing in its life, boundaries fall away, possibilities open up and my wings unfold. And I thought that you were the one who was the angel.

The time has come to shed this skin. Its cloying inconvenience doesn’t fit me anymore. My new attire strikes color, shine, shadow, makes noise, and may put your teeth on edge. Tough sh–. Get used to it. I’m inviting you to step into your fear and dance with life.

You sold me a dream and it shattered. I didn’t know how to put it back together again. So instead, I’m lovingly gluing those fragments anew with seams of gold, creating a vibrant new dream, rendering the broken strong and more than ever, breathtakingly beautiful.

Lilac anemone, paper petals, turning tentatively to face a pale sun opening to reveal a lightness of being, a flash of gold, a fresh resilience, contented silence, the dawn of a new day.

I respect not his labors, his farm where everything has its price, who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get anything for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars.

He may justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind, who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind.

It is very hard to be simple enough to be good.

One night awaits all, and death’s path must be trodden once and for all.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

There is nothing you can say in answer to a compliment. I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me-I always feel that they have not said enough.

Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you who you’ll turn out to be.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

If there be three distinct and separate Persons, then three distinct and separate Substances. . . . And since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God . . . then unless the Father, Son and Spirit are three distinct Nothings, they must be three distinct Substances, and consequently three distinct Gods.

You must not only aim right, but draw the bow with all your might.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.