#signs

It is possible to be struck by a meteor or a single-engine plane while reading in a chair at home. Pedestrians are flattened by safes falling from rooftops mostly within the panels of the comics, but still, we know it is possible, as well as the flash of summer lightning, the thermos toppling over, spilling out on the grass. And we know the message can be delivered from within. The heart, no valentine, decides to quit after lunch, the power shut off like a switch, or a tiny dark ship is unmoored into the flow of the body's rivers, the brain a monastery, defenseless on the shore. This is what I think about when I shovel compost into a wheelbarrow, and when I fill the long flower boxes, then press into rows the limp roots of red impatiens -- the instant hand of Death always ready to burst forth from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak. Then the soil is full of marvels, bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco, red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick to burrow back under the loam. Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue, the clouds a brighter white, and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge against a round stone, the small plants singing with lifted faces, and the click of the sundial as one hour sweeps into the next. ↗

— Billy Collins

#poetry #signs-of-life #death

We should have a great fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves. ↗

— John Locke

#fewer #great #ideas #only #our

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift. ↗

— Gustav Mahler

#gift #invention #melodic #signs #surest

As I say, the Animals had a particular concept of themselves as a band. There was an anarchic spirit in it, which was being flattened by commercial designs, attitudes, and needs. ↗

— Alan Price

#attitudes #band #being #commercial #concept

The president's economic plan doesn't do enough to create new jobs and that has to be a national priority. While there are some signs the economy is improving, it is not translating into jobs. ↗

— Jay Rockefeller

#economic #economy #enough #improving #into

No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ↗

— Florida Scott-Maxwell

#her #how #improvement #matter #middle-aged

My personality resembles my designs to a large extent. I'm in sync with myself and I'm transparent, just like my designs. ↗

— Elie Saab

#extent #i #just #large #large extent

Nearly all institutions, it might be said, are based on signs, but these signs do not directly evoke things. ↗

— Ferdinand de Saussure

#directly #evoke #institutions #might #nearly

See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? ↗

— M. Night Shyamalan

#believe #get #just #kind #lucky

But clearly an economy that's growing and expanding like this one - and it certainly is doing that with high GDP output, employment numbers strong, capacity utilization strong - that's an environment in which the Fed needs to continually be alert to early signs of inflation. ↗

— John W. Snow

#capacity #certainly #clearly #continually #doing