Jo Boniszewski

I am a sky gazer. The sky, it pulls at me. Its amazing eternal expanse of breathtaking beauty calls me back to my senses, stretches my awareness, soothes my eyes, opens my heart, stills me. I feel a soft soul longing to be up there, in the vastness, amongst the clouds that are alive and billow and skud and glow; metamorphosing from perfection into perfection. A constantly changing canvas brushed by magic.

Resting at your shore fills me with a peace, as if I’ve always been here. My cells resonating with the element of you, boundaries diffuse as one.

Stay with me,’ he said, ‘until the sun goes out, the seas are parched, and the wind draws its last breath.

It’s like something shifted when I spoke to you, I can’t even put words to it. This sense of gentle peace, space, lightness, freedom. The realization that the longing I carried for so long, that pain was not about him all along. It was the yearning to return to that place from which, once upon a time, we all came.

This body of mine is my teacher. This heart of mine, my guide. My dear head struggles to make sense of it all whilst my hands gently remind me to trust and let go.

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.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, Sir, I am your most humble servant. You are not his most humble servant. You may say, These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times. You don’t mind the times … You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don’t think foolishly.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

The secret in education lies in respecting the student.

Better be a nettle in the side of your friend than his echo.

That’s what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure one fool tells him he’s wise.

Fame is proof that the people are gullible.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

I cannot forgive a scholar his homeless despondency.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

A stumbling block to the pessimist is a stepping-stone to the optimist.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. There is no thread that is not a twist of these two strands. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

Dare to think for yourself.