The Friday Five:

When was the last time you...

1. ...sent a handwritten letter? Must be about two years ago now. I really enjoy sending letters and I try to make them worth it by writing out a draft and making the whole thing long enough to read.
2. ...baked something from scratch or made something by hand? From scratch? Pretty much rules me out completely. I did mend my trousers the other day by sewing the pockets back together as I don't have enough money for a new pair yet.
3. ...camped in a tent? I went up the coast to a lovely warm beach community with my sister and a friend of hers. Must be nigh on five years now.
4. ...volunteered your time to church, school, or community? I used to be part of the Young Legion of Marg group in my local parish and we would go and visit hospitals and half way houses. I always dreaded going, even though I knew that I was doing a good thing. Strange heh?
5. ...helped a stranger? I carried an elderly looking woman's suitcase down the stairs when I was overseas last month. Does that count?

Quote from my desk diary
Once a woman married for security and worked for a hobby; now she works for security and marries for a hobby. P.K. Shaw

And why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question, "Why should my love be powerless to help another?" George McDonald

Not a day passes over the earth, but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words and suffer noble sorrows.

Charles Reade

Land of Hope and Glory

Dear Land of Hope, thy hope is crowned.
God make thee mightier yet!
On Sov'ran brows, beloved, renowned,
Once more thy crown is set.
Thine equal laws, by Freedom gained,
Have ruled thee well and long;
By Freedom gained, by Truth maintained,
Thine Empire shall be strong.


Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?
Wider still and wider
Shall thy bounds be set;
God, who made thee mighty,
Make thee mightier yet.


Thy fame is ancient as the days,
As Ocean large and wide:
A pride that dares, and heeds not praise,
A stern and silent pride:
Not that false joy that dreams content
With what our sires have won;
The blood a hero sire hath spent
Still nerves a hero son.

In Explanation

HER lips were so near
That--what else could I do?
You'll be angry, I fear,
But her lips were so near--
Well, I can't make it clear,
Or explain it to you,
But--her lips were so near
That--what else could I do?

Walter Learned

"If the man is the head of the family, the woman is the heart, and as he occupies the chief place in ruling, so she may and ought to claim for herself the chief place in love."
Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii

Principles and Habits of a Loving Marriage

by Bud Macfarlane Jr

Pray together every day, out loud, as a couple.
Rely completely on God's Divine Providence.
Tithe 10%.
Don't try to force your will on your spouse.
Offer each other constant and copious affection.
Listen carefully and watch closely.
Show love by small acts of charity.
Ask your guardian angel for help.
Spend long periods of time together--"Couch Time."
Take the long view.
Encourage generously and encourage often.
Don't interrupt rudely or use uncivil tones of voice.
Change quickly and change easily for the better.
Ask Our Lady for all things, great and small.

You may vist the webpage of Catholicity

Quotes about character

Here are some sample quotes from "Warrior Culture of the US Marines" :
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0965081451/thejollyroger

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
--Edmund Burke

In matters of principle, stand like a rock! --Thomas Jefferson

Who here is so vile that he will not love his country? --William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar

You will never know how much it cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you use it wisely. --John Adams

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. --Benjamin Franklin

America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. --Alexis de Tocqueville

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! --Patrick Henry

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. --Thucydides


Great deeds are usually wrought at great risk. --Herodotus

One man with courage is a majority. --Thomas Jefferson

Stand firm, for well you know that hardship and danger are the price of glory.
--Alexander the Great

Our business in the field of fight
Is not to question, but to fight. --Homer

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
--William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar

The pen is mightier than the sword. --Edward G.E. Bulwer-Lytton

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear. --Mark Twain

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. --George Orwell

War hath no fury like a noncombatant. --Charles E. Montague

Semper Fi brothers! God Bless the United States and the Corps! --2ndLt. John E. Fales USMC

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
--John Stuart Mill

"I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson

Sonnet 73

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake aganst the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, (1) where late the sweet birds sang
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Shakespeare

Ulysses
by Alfred Tennyson

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoy'd
Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known,-- cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honor'd of them all,--
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
to whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,--
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me,--
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads,-- you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,--
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

"There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. It is too good to waste on jokes."
--The Last Battle

"Joy is the serious business of Heaven."
--Letters to Malcolm

"'You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you,'" said the Lion."
--The Silver Chair

"'Yes,' said Queen Lucy. 'In our world too, a Stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.'"
--The Last Battle

"'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver...'Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. but he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'"
--The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe