So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
With all the strength of my soul, I testify that God lives, that His
Beloved Son is the firstfruits of the Resurrection, that the gospel of
Jesus Christ is that penetrating light that makes of every hopeless
dawn a joyful morning.
I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.
I've never really resented hard work because I've always liked it. Up every morning for roadwork. Going to the gymnasium every day at 12 o'clock. I never change my pattern.
Nature is sanative, refining, elevating. How cunningly she hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses, and violets, and morning dew! Every inch of the mountains is scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet the new day is purple with the bloom of youth and love.
If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.
I go to a hotel and try to get there by 5:30 in the morning. I keep a dictionary, a thesaurus, a bible, a deck of playing cards, a bottle of sherry, and stacks of yellow sticky pads. I shut myself in for six, seven hours. I have an arrangement with the hotel that no one may go in my room. After three or four months, they might slip notes under my door like, "Dear Ms. Angelou, please let us change the linens. We think they might be molding." It's probably true. I let them in if they promise not to touch anything other then the bed.
One night I couldn't sleep. It was like 2:00 in the morning. I was thinking, 'What can I do?' I'm watching TV. I'm like, 'Let me do something else.' I'm not going to fall asleep for a few hours. What are my hobbies? There was the masturbation option. I skipped that because just knowing my kids are down the hall I felt psychotic. So, I went with watching more TV. I couldn't come up with anything. I was going, 'God, read a book.' Then I was like this, 'Where do I keep the books?' I've got nothing to do but watch TV.
Let that get you up in the morning and put the light in your eyes. I'm telling you, it makes you a better husband, mother, father, neighbor, citizen, when you have that light in your eye, that you feel so good, and you're a pleasant person to be around. "Good morning, sir. Did you find everything that you need? Oh, that's over in aisle seven. I'll come help you as soon as," that's the stuff. Find something. It could be planting flowers, especially if you can watch it.
To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition....Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought.
If you cut yourself, if you hate yourself, if you eat, if you don’t eat. If your parents split up, if your parents hit you, if your mom tells you you’re a piece of trash. If you got in a car crash and half your face is gone - wake up in the morning and give yourself a shot. Do it. Not for music, not for any reason other than the fact that you are alive and you were given the grace to wake up another day. So do it, man. Just freaking get out there and try.
...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?
...solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. *** Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.
"Mr. Churchill you're drunk!"
Mr. Churchill: "And you, Lady Astor, are ugly. As for my condition, it will pass by the morning. You, however, will still be ugly.