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Ever notice when someone says to you, “be careful,” they are really saying, “I love you”?

— Mark Woodward  <link>

I don’t make New Year resolutions because I am never in sync with the calendar. I make January 7th resolutions.

— CowPi  <link>

The ism’s of the 20th century are not so much a form for labeling or categorizing things but a way to separate us from each other and reality.

— Mark Woodward  <link>

Two Kinds of Freedom

Freedom is about choice, and there are two kinds of freedom. There is a freedom to choose to do whatever you want, and another kind of freedom to choose to live for others. One freedom leads in, the other out. One freedom is living with responsibility, the other with disregard except for self. One freedom is full of meaning and purpose, the other is ultimately empty and worthless. One freedom leads to heaven, the other to hell.

— Mark Woodward  <link>

On the thin border
Between faith and doubt walks Christ,
Calling all to trust.

— Mark Woodward  <link>

Signposts is a collection of quotes, sayings, proverbs, poems, or whatever. They are words that can point one in the direction of some thing or some place out there. Maybe they point to other words and other signposts. Maybe they point to no-where. Or maybe they point to some-where beyond words, to where being and truth and existence just are.

The spirit signposts are collected is in the idea of commonplace books—an anthology of illuminating passages “noted in a single place for future reference.”

[L]et us take down one of those old notebooks which we have all, at one time or another, had a passion for beginning. Most of the pages are blank, it is true; but at the beginning we shall find a certain number very beautifully covered with a strikingly legible hand-writing. Here we have written down the names of great writers in their order of merit; here we have copied out fine passages from the classics; here are lists of books to be read; and here, most interesting of all, lists of books that have actually been read, as the reader testifies with some youthful vanity by a dash of red ink.

— Virginia Woolf, Hours in a Library

No attempt has been made to organize these signposts. The “points” in the sidebar have no meaning or purpose. They are just labels to clump signposts together into chapters by a loose chronological order in which they were noted.

We shall not cease from exploring,
And the end of our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

— T.S. Eliot

So, are you going to sit there staring at the signpost? Or are you going to seek out where it points, into the unchartable area of truth and beauty and meaning?

In silvam ne ligna feras.
(Don’t carry logs into the forest.)

— Horace

— Mark Woodward  (14 Jun 2007)  <link>