Forgiving Nature Post #10 • Robert John Bonney

Issue Ten · October 1, 2026

Recipes for Sanity · The Water Lies · Book Survey Update

Recipes for Sanity

This month’s blog is about quotes I’ve saved that have helped me over the years. I’ve paired them with very short stories to illustrate, and threw in some pics, because this is a website 😉. Will these make you sane? Am I sane? Ba ha ha!

Quote

Story

son and father at Dave's wedding in Greece

If there is any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow human being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.

William Penn

In Greece for my brother’s wedding, my brave and tough father was relying on a machine to deliver medicine through vapor. The machine stopped working. I went wandering the labyrinth streets of Athens and found a little repair shop. The man inside spoke only Greek, but he took apart the machine and fixed it for a modest fee. Then he sent me off with a box of spare fuses. There are good people everywhere. We already loved Athens and even more after that. I still have the box of fuses.

Nothing can be more useful to you than a determination not to be hurried.

Henry David Thoreau

I’ve balanced dishes, phone, cup of water, mail, laptop, headphones, etc., in my arms and halfway down the hall they crash to the floor, and I’ve done it again and again. I was trying to get more life by rushing and multitasking and freeing up hours. It doesn’t work! Stephen King wrote a story, Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut, about a woman who found shorter and shorter shortcuts until she disappeared.

weatherbeaten chair on a deck surrounded by sand dunes

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Albert Einstein

I’m disagreeing with Albert here. I can do that, because it’s not my job to develop a theory of everything. My journey, maybe til my last day, will be to feel more and analyze less. Sure, we need to “understand” how to take care of our loved ones, but the universe is way too big to understand. Maybe Albert meant to sit in a spot, like the one at left, in the Provincelands. I changed my mind. He was right. A good nature soak helps your brain work better.

If you want to life yourself up, lift up someone else.

Booker T. Washington

The last thing I want to do when my mood ain’t great is talk to somebody. However, the New York Times found “volunteering can improve our health, ease feelings of loneliness and broaden our social networks.” They noted that three of five Americans reported feeling lonely (yikes!) You could do double good, for yourself and them. Try tutoring English. It feels pretty good to have someone say, “Thank you, teacher.”

Many of the bravest never are known, and get no praise. That does not lessen their beauty.

Louisa May Alcott

Whatever good deed you did, tell nobody about it. “But, why not feel good about what you did and get some nice praise, too?” It might have to do with pure motives. One guy who found my wallet traveled a mile to drop it in my mailbox. I had no way to thank him. Good for the soul, I think.

The thing about creativity is, people are going to laugh at it. Get over it.

Twyla Tharp

I hope you will join our cult! Just kidding. We had a name for ourselves, but I’m not going to tell you it. How we laughed as we dreamed up these costumes in the Goodwill store. I won’t moralize on how any of this helped me stay sane, but you can probably guess.

I’ve got buckets of these! Now I’m dreaming of a quote carousel for the website…

Comments Welcome!