Bonsai Quotes

To read is to cover one's face. And to write is to show it.

Goldfish get big enough only for the bowl you put them in. Bonsai trees twist in miniature. I would have given anything to keep her little. They outgrow us so much faster than we outgrow them.

To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate. Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on.

There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.

The Japanese think it strange we paint our old wooden houses when it takes so long to find the wabi in them. They prefer the bonsai tree after the valiant blossoming is over, the leaves fallen. When bareness reveals a merit born in the vegetable struggling.

All that I love I fold over once And once again

I told her the clitoris is like a Bonsai tree that needs constant tending and the g-spot is an unexplored island waiting to have a flag pinned on its peak. She laughed and said I should be a poet. Then we went to bed and crossed the sheets as if it were a new continent we had just discovered.

I'm just trying to help" "Do your uncle's bonsai eat meat?" "I don't think so" "Have you ever been bitten by one of his bonsai?" "No." "In that case, your uncle's bonsai are not helping us

The forest is blanketed by the greenest ferns and moss and bonsai-like trees, a wild majesty that beckons hobbits and pixies and elves and dreamers.

Don’t try to create some kind of shape for your life as if you are shearing it with a pair of clippers. Don’t prune down your own life into the shape you think it should be. Don’t be a bonsai, be a mighty oak.

To scale all love down To a cupped hand’s size

There are no borders in bonsai. The dove of peace flies to palace as to humble house, to young as to old, to rich and poor. So does the spirit of bonsai.

Kids aren’t bonsai. Maybe instead of trying to make them beautiful to the rest of the world, you should just love them and let them grow.

It’s utter sublimation, A feat, this heart’s control Moment to moment To scale all love down To a cupped hand’s size

¿Y qué más pasa? Nada, lo de siempre. Que todo se va a la mierda.

Es bello leer y comentar lo leído un poco antes de enredar las piernas.

Sitting there most of the night," she said, "I had a crazy kind of image. Do you think two sick twisted 'trees ever made bonsai out of one another?

There is one tree in Gainesville I call "Grandfather" because it looks like a giant Bonsai tree. Well, that and I actually thought it was my mother's father for the longest time.

If you are drawn to the refined, take up calligraphy or grow a bonsai.

I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception.

Roo: What’s your definition of popularity? Hutch: I used to think people were popular because they were good-looking, or nice, or funny, or good at sports. Roo: Aren’t they? Hutch: I’d think, if I could just be those things, I’d – you know – have more friends than I do. But in seventh grade, when Jackson and those guys stopped hanging out with me, I tried as hard as I could to get them to like me again. But then . . . (shaking his head as if to clear it) I don’t really wanna talk about it. Roo: What happened? Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me is all. And really, it was for the best. Roo: Why? Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the popular people weren’t nice or funny or great-looking. They just had power, and they actually got the power by teasing people or humiliating them – so people bonded to them out of fear. Roo: Oh. Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who could act like that. I didn’t want to ever speak to any person who could act like that. Roo: Oh Hutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular anymore. Roo: Weren’t you lonely? Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was for the best.

Qual o sentido de ficar com alguém se essa pessoa não muda a sua vida? Disse isso, e Julio, estava presente quando disse: que a vida só tinha sentido se a gente encontrasse alguém que mudasse, que destruísse sua vida.

Julio escabullía las relaciones serias, se escondía no de las mujeres sino de la seriedad, ya que sabía que la seriedad era tanto o más peligrosa que las mujeres

Mother’s estate—our estate—a thousand acres centered in a million more. Lawns the size of small prairies with grass so perfect it beckoned a body to lie on it, to nap on its soft perfection. Noble shade trees making sundials of the Earth, their shadows circling in stately procession; now mingling, now contracting to midday, finally stretching eastward with the dying of the day. Royal oak. Giant elms. Cottonwood and cypress and redwood and bonsai. Banyan trees lowering new trunks like smooth-sided columns in a temple roofed by sky. Willows lining carefully laid canals and haphazard streams, their hanging branches singing ancient dirges to the wind.

What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look through your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong �as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass �a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make �you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has �been irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, �would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it in any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re �afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness �of ravens”?

He removed his hat, something a wizard doesn't ordinarily do unless he's about to pull something out of it, and handed it to the Bursar. Then he tore a thin strip off the bottom of his robe, held it dramatically in both hands, and tied it around his forehead. "It's part of the ethos," he said, in answer to their penetratingly unspoken question. "That's what the warriors on the Counterweight Continent do before they go into battle. And you have to shout --" He tried to remember some far-off reading. "-er, bonsai. Yes. Bonsai!" "I thought that meant chopping bits off trees to make them small," said the Senior Wrangler. The Dean hesitated. He wasn't too sure himself, if it came to it. But a good wizard never let uncertainty stand in his way. "No, it's definitely got to be bonsai," he said. He considered it some more then brightened up. "On account of it all being part of bushido. Like...small trees. Bush-i-do. Yeah. Makes sense, when you think about it." "But you can't shout 'bonsai' here." said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. "We've got a totally different cultural background. It'd be useless. No one will know what you mean. "I'll work on it, " said the Dean.*

Alex had stopped giving her bonsai trees and exotic orchids some time ago. He said it made him too sad to send all those innocent lives to their doom.

Cuidar un bonsái es como escribir. Escribir es como cuidar un bonsái.

Bonnie had arranged for the whole family to volunteer at a homeless shelter on Christmas morning. “I just hate all that crass commercialism of Christmas, don’t you?” she’d told Madeline last week, when they’d run into each other in the shops. Madeline had been doing Christmas shopping, and her wrists were looped with dozens of plastic shopping bags. Fred and Chloe were both eating lollipops, their lips a garish red. Meanwhile Bonnie was carrying a tiny bonsai tree in a pot, and Skye was walking along next to her eating a pear. (“A fucking pear,” Madeline had told Celeste later. For some reason she couldn’t get over the pear.)

Her beauty was not like that of a bonsai, which achieves its charm by asserting its own will in defiance of the careful bindings that lash and restrict it. How, I wondered, would my grandfather describe Mitsuru’s beauty?

Everything points to the same conclusion: that Twitter hasn’t so much altered our writing as just gotten it to fit into a smaller place. Looking through the data, instead of a wasteland of cut stumps, we find a forest of bonsai. This kind of in-depth analysis (lexical density, word frequency) hints at the real nature of the transformation under way. The change Twitter has wrought on language itself is nothing compared with the change it is bringing to the study of language. Twitter gives us a sense of words not only as the building blocks of thought but as a social connector, which indeed has been the purpose of language since humanity hunched its way across the Serengeti.

It was a garden, a walled garden. Overgrown but with beautiful bones visible still. Someone had cared for this garden once. The remains of two paths snaked back and forth, intertwined like the lacing on an Irish dancing shoe. Fruit trees had been espaliered around the sides, and wires zigzagged from the top of one wall to the top of another. Hungry, wisteria branches had woven themselves around to form a sort of canopy. Against the southern wall, an ancient and knobbled tree was growing. Cassandra went closer. It was the apple tree, she realized, the one whose bough had reached over the wall. She lifted her hand to touch one of the golden fruit. The tree was about sixteen feet high and shaped like the Japanese bonsai plant Nell had given Cassandra for her twelfth birthday.

Pessoas assim, como este Sr. José, em toda a parte as encontramos, ocupam o seu tempo ou o tempo que crêem sobejar-lhes da vida a juntar selos, moedas, medalhas, jarrões, bilhetes-postais, caixas de fósforos, livros, relógios, camisolas desportivas, autógrafos, pedras, bonecos de barro, latas vazias de refrescos, anjinhos, cactos, programas de óperas, isqueiros, canetas, mochos, caixinhas-de-música, garrafas, bonsais, pinturas, canecas, cachimbos, obeliscos de cristal, patos de porcelana, brinquedos antigos, máscaras de carnaval, provavelmente fazem-no por algo a que poderíamos chamar angústia metafísica, talvez por não conseguirem suportar a ideia do caos como regedor único do universo, por isso, com as suas fracas forças e sem ajuda divina, vão tentando pôr alguma ordem no mundo, por um pouco de tempo ainda o conseguem, mas só enquanto puderem defender a sua colecção, porque quando chega o dia de ela se dispersar, e sempre chega esse dia, ou seja por morte ou seja por fadiga do coleccionador, tudo volta ao princípio, tudo torna a confundir-se.

ASSOCIATE WITH WINNERS Four groups of people will dramatically influence how your business evolves: » Customers » Employees » Vendors » Peers Line yourself up with the wrong people in each category and, like a poorly created bonsai tree, your business will grow up twisted and misshapen.

Nevertheless, there was something extraordinary about it when a man so young, with so little experience in flight test, was selected to go to Muroc Field in California for the XS–1 project. Muroc was up in the high elevations of the Mojave Desert. It looked like some fossil landscape that had long since been left behind by the rest of terrestrial evolution. It was full of huge dry lake beds, the biggest being Rogers Lake. Other than sagebrush the only vegetation was Joshua trees, twisted freaks of the plant world that looked like a cross between cactus and Japanese bonsai. They had a dark petrified green color and horribly crippled branches. At dusk the Joshua trees stood out in silhouette on the fossil wasteland like some arthritic nightmare. In the summer the temperature went up to 110 degrees as a matter of course, and the dry lake beds were covered in sand, and there would be windstorms and sandstorms right out of a Foreign Legion movie. At night it would drop to near freezing, and in December it would start raining, and the dry lakes would fill up with a few inches of water, and some sort of putrid prehistoric shrimps would work their way up from out of the ooze, and sea gulls would come flying in a hundred miles or more from the ocean, over the mountains, to gobble up these squirming little throwbacks. A person had to see it to believe it: flocks of sea gulls wheeling around in the air out in the middle of the high desert in the dead of winter and grazing on antediluvian crustaceans in the primordial ooze. When

Tick Lu-Tze patiently adjusted a tiny mirror to redirect sunlight more favourably on one of the bonsai mountains. He hummed tunelessly under his breath. Lobsang, sitting cross-legged on the stones, carefully turned the yellowing pages of the ancient notebook on which was written, in faded ink, 'The Way of Mrs Cosmopilite'. 'Well?' said Lu-Tze. 'The Way has an answer for everything, does it?' 'Yes.' 'Then...' Lobsang nodded at the little volcano, which was gently smoking, 'how does that work? It's on a saucer!' Lu-Tze stared straight ahead, his lips moving. 'Page seventy-six, I think,' he said. Lobsang turned to the page. ' “Because”, he read.

What’s the kindest thing you almost did? Is your fear of insomnia stronger than your fear of what awoke you? Are bonsai cruel? Do you love what you love, or just the feeling? Your earliest memories: do you look though your young eyes, or look at your young self? Which feels worse: to know that there are people who do more with less talent, or that there are people with more talent? Do you walk on moving walkways? Should it make any difference that you knew it was wrong as you were doing it? Would you trade actual intelligence for the perception of being smarter? Why does it bother you when someone at the next table is having a conversation on a cell phone? How many years of your life would you trade for the greatest month of your life? What would you tell your father, if it were possible? Which is changing faster, your body, or your mind? Is it cruel to tell an old person his prognosis? Are you in any way angry at your phone? When you pass a storefront, do you look at what’s inside, look at your reflection, or neither? Is there anything you would die for if no one could ever know you died for it? If you could be assured that money wouldn’t make you any small bit happier, would you still want more money? What has been irrevocably spoiled for you? If your deepest secret became public, would you be forgiven? Is your best friend your kindest friend? Is it any way cruel to give a dog a name? Is there anything you feel a need to confess? You know it’s a “murder of crows” and a “wake of buzzards” but it’s a what of ravens, again? What is it about death that you’re afraid of? How does it make you feel to know that it’s an “unkindness of ravens”?

There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers [...], they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.

Who are they?” “I teach a bonsai class at their retirement home,” he said, getting up. “They are obsessed with me, and they have no filter. I won’t be offended if you go inside—actually, you should definitely go inside. Now. Right now.” I shook my head. “No way.” He stared at me. “What do you mean no?” “Old ladies with no filter? No, I’m not going inside.

In fondo, dice qualcuno, in fondo la paura non è che la sorella cattiva della nostalgia.

True fellowship can never be diluted by numbers, only by complacency and sin.

Prayer is the key to all church growth.

Al final ella muere, y él se queda solo, aunque en realidad se había quedado solo varios años antes de la muerte de ella.

I took a step inside to get a better look and realized the man was actually Christ, the way he appeared in Sunday-school classrooms: milky complexion, starched blue dressing gown, a beard trimmed as painstakingly as a bonsai tree. He was doing what he was always doing: cupping blinding light in his hands like he was trying to warm up after a long day of downhill skiing.

Seria impróprio dizer que conversaram como antes, porque antes havia confiança e agora o que as unia era mais um sentimento de desconforto, de familiaridade culpada, de vergonha, de vazio.

Bonsai is a way of life, and the joy derived from it should always be for today, and for anyone at any age, whether already involved with it or whether considering the prospect. Planting the seed of a tree in a pot or contemplating the majesty of a mature Bonsai is immaterial; both evoke a sense of joy at any given moment in time. That moment, when it is experienced, will be in the present, and that is, today!

There is something in this Lametrie, a nice slip of our anthropocentrism. Why should Man be at the hub of all analogies? How would plants describe us, I wonder, what classification would they impose upon us? 'Described by a Plant' sounds like a good title to be used later. I feel we're being watched: by rubber plants, sparrow-grass, bonsai, small date palms, Chinese roses, geraniums and lemon trees. They keep an eye on us.

Sobre el fin del milenio, las personas que tienen asegurada casa, comida, entradas al cine, ropa y discos viven hostigadas por la idea de que hay una fiesta, una gran fiesta, pero que está siempre sucediendo en otro lado. Les tengo malas noticias, amigos: la fiesta no está en ninguna parte. Estar conectado, vivir sin riesgos, imaginarse el mundo como un lugar claro y racional donde queremos habitar…Esa es la distopía que propulsa a las propagandas de telefonía celular. En realidad no estamos conectados con nadie. Cada vez acumulamos más información -podemos tener 5 mil canciones en un ipod- , pero, ya no podemos pensar. Ya lo dijo Sara Connor, la mamá de John en Terminator: Las máquinas vienen por nosotros. Se achican, cada vez más pequeñas, símbolo de perfección y pedigrí para quien las posea. Mientras tanto nosotros engordamos de comida, discos, películas y revistas que ya leemos de reojo porque no damos más…

In my years as a detective and particularly with Searchlight, I’ve learned so much about cycles of violence in family systems. But cycles of silence can be just as dangerous—and they repeat through generations with startling consistency. A mother’s dieting becomes her daughter’s obsessive control over bonsai trees. Secret glaring infidelity becomes wordless assent and then emptiness. Cameron was exposed to all of this. Silver spoon or no, Emily had fed her powerlessness.

Can you go over to the feed and seed? I'm worried about my bonsai. They're probably thirsty, maybe scared, maybe loney, especially The Old Man. I moved him up there a few weeks ago. . . . I take him up there when he needs some warm, moist air and sometimes, well, to be with his old friends." "Yes, he's talking about midget trees. He gives me a list with each bonsai's name. I told you how nuts-and-bolts he is about them. He tells me how to touch the soil and feel if they're thirsty. And talk to them! I must be sure to talk to them.

The young man was sort of ... well ... peering at this shovel, and Lisey knew not by his face but by the whole awkward this-way-n-that jut of his lanky body that he didn't have any idea what he was seeing. It could have been an artillery shell, a bonsai tree, a radiation detector, or a china pig with a slot in its back for spare silver; it could have been a whang-dang-doodle, a phylactery testifying to the pompetus of love, or a cloche hat made out of coyote skin. It could have been the penis of the poet Pindar. This guy was too far gone to know.

Wat zou José Saramago over Carlos zeggen? Dit. 'Mensen als deze heb je overal, ze besteden hun tijd, of de tijd die er in hun ogen naast het leven voor rest, aan het verzamelen van postzegels, munten, medailles, vazen, ansichtkaarten, luciferdoosjes, boeken, horloges, sportshirts, handtekeningen, stenen, kleien beeldjes, lege frisblikjes, engeltjes, cactussen, libretto's, aanstekers, vulpennen, uilen, speeldozen, flessen, bonsais, schilderijen, bierglazen, pijpen, kristallen obelisken, porseleinen eenden, antiek speelgoed of carnavalsmaskers, en dat doen ze vermoedelijk uit iets watje metafysische angst zou kunnen noemen, omdat het idee van de chaos als alleenheerser over het heelal onverdraaglijk voor hen is, misschien proberen ze daarom met hun bescheiden vermogens en zonder goddelijke hulp enige orde te scheppen in de wereld, waar ze voor korte tijd nog in slagen ook, maar alleen zolang ze hun verzameling in stand kunnen houden, want op de dag dat daar de klad in komt, en die dag komt altijd, hetzij door de dood, hetzij doordat de verzamelaar er genoeg van heeft, is alles terug bij af, loopt alles weer door elkaar.' 

This is the story of two student enthusiasts of the truth, aficionados of deploying words that seem like truth, of smoking endless cigarettes, and of enclosing themselves within the violent complacency of those who believe themselves better and purer than others, than that immense and detestable group called everyone else.

Whether working in the yard or just going about the daily business of life, you are continually adjusting, trimming, touching, shaping, and tinkering with the wealth of things around you. It may be difficult for you to know when to stop. We are all torn between the extremes of taking care of things and leaving them alone, and we question whether many things could ever get along without us. We find ourselves with pruning shears in hand, snipping away at this or that, telling ourselves that we're only being helpful, redefining something else's space, removing that which is unappealing to us. It's not that we really want to change the world. We just want to fix it up slightly. We'd like to lose a few pounds or rid ourselves of some small habit. Maybe we'd like to help a friend improve his situation or repair a few loose ends in the lives of our children. All of this shaping and controlling can have an adverse affect. Unlike someone skilled in the art of bonsai gardening, we may *unintentionally* stunt much natural growth before it occurs. And our meddling may not be appreciated by others. Most things will get along superbly without our editing, fussing, and intervention. We can learn to just let them be. As a poem of long ago puts it, "In the landscape of spring, the flowering branches grow naturally, some are long, some are short.

Tantalia' is the tale of a couple who decide to buy a little plant to keep as a symbol of the love that binds them. Too late, they realize that if the plant dies, the love that binds them will die too. And since the love that binds them is immense and they aren't willing to sacrifice it for anything, they decide to lose the plant amid a crowd of identical plants. Then comes the desolation, the tragedy of knowing that now they can never find it again.

After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of the world. But their wallets always waited cold sober in the cloakroom while the Icelandic purse lay open for all in the middle of the table. Our men were the greater Vikings in this regard. “Reputation is king, the rest is crap!” my Bæring from Bolungarvík used to say. Every evening had to be legendary, anything else was a defeat. But the morning after they turned into weak-willed doughboys. But all the same I did succeed in loving them, those Icelandic clodhoppers, at least down as far as their knees. Below there, things did not go as well. And when the feet of Jón Pre-Jón popped out of me in the maternity ward, it was enough. The resemblances were small and exact: Jón’s feet in bonsai form. I instantly acquired a physical intolerance for the father, and forbade him to come in and see the baby. All I heard was the note of surprise in the bass voice out in the corridor when the midwife told him she had ordered him a taxi. From that day on I made it a rule: I sacked my men by calling a car. ‘The taxi is here,’ became my favourite sentence.

Kau harus memperlakukan dirimu seperti bonsai. Cobalah hidup selaras dan terbuka dengan lingkunganmu. Pengalamanmu hidup berpindah-pindah negara harus disyukuri, karena itu kelebihan yang jarang dimiliki anak-anak lain. Kau punya kesempatan untuk melihat dunia secara langsung.

Depression is a cruel bitch. She starts by planting little seeds all over your mind, knowing that life’s troubles will water it daily until it grows into a massive bonsai tree that crowds your thoughts and feelings, not leaving any room for leaves of hope to spur from it.

years, but so far that’s all it’s been—talk. “We could sell it,” Jade said. “Sell what?” Mom asked. “The Weirdland. I mean, if it’s not making enough money, what’s the point? It’s a stupid place to live, anyway. If we sell it, we can live somewhere normal,” Jade answered. “It’s not called the Weirdland,” I reminded her again. “I’ll call it whatever I want to call it!” Jade informed me in her snippy way. Mom spoke up. “We are not selling the Wonderland. It’s your daddy’s life.” Jade kept yapping, “I’m just saying . . .” Mom frowned. “Not another word, Miss.” Miss was code for “if you have good sense, you’ll shut up now.” And Jade did. When we got home, I found Daddy trimming his bonsai trees and plants. He was whistling a tune the way he sometimes does when he’s happily working. The sound of his whistling always makes me smile. Over and over, from the time I was little, I’d tried to learn how, putting my lips together and blowing. But no matter what, I’d only been able to produce the sound of plain old air, and after I’d failed for what felt like the hundredth time, I’d finally given up. “Howdeedoo, Zoe,” he said when he saw me. There were no customers around that I could see and I wondered if any had come in. “Any

He was too damned innocent. Homer wished he could keep Tad at this point, bonsai him to never grow up, to never have to experience bad things—

Mass their troops—everyone they’ve got—and then bonsai charge.

In this greenhouse I see how much he loves this collection of bonsai trees. Each one has a name, age and a place of birth engraved on brass plaques. Most of them come from places I've ever heard of before. Mr. Kaye says each bonsai has its own life story and he knows every one of them. When I was a kid, he used to tell me some of the stories, but he was probably just making it all up. He always told me bonsai were balanced, but in a lopsided way.

Talk kindly. No gossip or gibberish, Never talk down to them-they're not children.

The Old Man's all gnarled and sort of crippled looking. Well, who wouldn't be when you're that old [600 +years]? The pine needles are so teeny-tiny and the greens are vivid like the ocean in the summer. Even the moss shines up at me. Mr. Kaye told me the moss and The Old Man are inseparable friends and one would die without the other.

twisted

If you decide to keep your bonsai tree compliant with standards for yourself, you’ll need to follow specific guidelines that will help determine that. Some of the most common guidelines include: The tree is in a small, formal container The only other living vegetation in your container is moss, which is optional. Nothing but rocks (optional), soil, and moss should appear beside your bonsai in the pot The tree should have a front and back. The tree should be tapered from the bottom to the top Roots should be exposed around the base and spread out as the tree enters the soil The tree should not have any visible root crossing Branches shouldn’t appear before the first third of the trunk, at which point they should continue to the tip Branches should become smaller as they move up toward the top of the tree No major branches should cross in the front Ramification should increase toward the tips of branches

Branch shape should appear heavy and dip downward The trunk may be straight or contorted but should lean slightly toward the viewer Foliage should be proportionate with the tree

People who aren’t really fanatics can try all they want, but they’ll never have the talent and their bonsai won’t look anything like those that have been raised by an old fool like me!

I’d move to trim the front hedges by hand in an insane act of “yard maintenance.” This act of kaiju sized bonsai left me exhausted to attempt any more complex yard acts, but it did give me time to ponder the control a hand tool can provide.

Oh, no, they’ve still expelled you. Your headmaster, Mr. Bonsai, said you had—how did he put it?—un-groovy karma that disrupted the school’s educational aura.

quando Julio se apaixonou por Emilia, toda a diversão e todo o sofrimento prévios à diversão e ao sofrimento que lhe proporcionava Emilia passaram a ser simples imitações da diversão e do sofrimento verdadeiros.

esta é a história de dois estudantes devotados à verdade, a dispersar frases que parecem verdadeiras, a fumar cigarros eternos e se fechar na violenta complacência dos que se creem melhores, mais puros do que o resto, do que esse imenso e desprezível grupo que chamam de o resto.

é Andrés quem fica e lhe faz um péssimo resumo de uma história muito longa que ninguém conhece bem , uma história comum cuja única particularidade é que ninguém sabe contá-la direito.

If someone else around you has motivation for you to do well, you don’t need to develop your own motivation.

When we understand that the people on our rolls are persons for whom Jesus died, we will treasure any and every contact with them. When we prune them from our roll, we forfeit opportunities to touch their lives for the kingdom of God. Don’t prune them; go find them.

no matter how much signage is available, people have to be clearly directed to find their way.

Likewise, a child who has been given the perfect childhood can’t cope with the less than perfect, but completely normal realities of adult life.

As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, ‘The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a species were sure of living forever, it would not care about its offspring.

sceptre

We pinch back new growth when we expect our new members to find a place of service without some specific plan, approach, or program for helping them.

Ideally my penultimate day would be spent attending a giant beach party thrown in my honor. Everyone would gather around me at sunset, and the golden light would make my skin and hair beautiful as I told hilarious stories and gave away my extensive collection of moon art to my ex-lovers. I and all of my still-alive friends (which, let’s face it, will mostly be women) would sing and dance late into the night. My sons would be grown and happy. I would be frail but adorable. I would still have my own teeth, and I would be tended to by handsome and kind gay men who pruned me like a bonsai tree. Once the party ended, everyone would fall asleep except for me. I would spend the rest of the night watching the stars under a nice blanket my granddaughter made with her Knit-Bot 5000. As the sun began to rise, an unexpected guest would wake and put the coffee on. My last words would be something banal and beautiful. “Are you warm enough?” my guest would ask. “Just right,” I would answer. My funeral would be huge but incredibly intimate. I would instruct people to throw firecrackers on my funeral pyre and play Purple Rain on a loop.

In describing the causes of poverty, Muhammad Yunus has often compared a poor person to a bonsai tree. The seed of a bonsai has the potential to grow into a full-size tree, but, planted in a tiny pot, its growth is stunted. To Yunus, a person deprived of education or opportunity is like a bonsai. The constraint isn’t the seed, it’s the pot.

Emilia e Julio - que não são exatamente personagens, embora talvez fosse conveniente pensá-los como personagens - ficam vários meses lendo antes de trepar, é muito agrádavel, pensa ele e pensa ela, e às vezes pensam ao mesmo tempo: é muito agradável, é bonito ler e comentar o que leram antes de trançarem as pernas. É como fazer ginástica.

Consider bonsai There but for constricting bowl Would be a giant.

Esta é, então, uma história leve que se torna pesada. Esta é a história de dois estudantes devotados à verdade, a dispersar frases que parecem verdadeiras, a fumar cigarros eternos e a se fechar na violenta complacência dos que se creem melhores, mais puros do que o resto, do que esse imenso e desprezível grupo que chamam de o resto. Rapidamente, aprenderam a ler os mesmos livros, a pensar parecido e a disfarçar as diferenças. Logo moldaram uma vaidosa intimidade. Ao menos naquela época, Júlio e Emília conseguiram se fundir numa espécie de vulto.

Auf Hawaii finden jedes Jahr Wettbewerbe im Kokosnussweitwurf statt." "Und die Schweden schmeißen mit Tannenbäumen." "Die Finnen mit Gummistiefeln. Tja, so hat jedes Land seins." Schmunk beugte sich nach vorn. "Mit was werfen denn die Japaner? Mit Bonsais?" Takeo lachte. "Aber nur, wenn die Deutschen sie mit ihren Bierkrügen auffangen." Er suchte nach einer passenden Retourkutsche. "Sagen Sie, Schmunk, werfen die Thüringer eigentlich mit Klößen?

The finger-biter’s feelings for her ex-husband were a bonsai tree—they may have started in something real, but she’d tended them so closely and for so long they were now purely decorative.

The bonsai grower knows that if she can give life to a product that lives forever and perpetually adds value to the lives of others, she has not only a success but a legacy.

Every bonsai dreams of being a tall tree - until the wind blows

Pero puede suceder que no estemos en la época correcta. Usted sólo puede manipular raíces a finales del otoño o durante todo el invierno. Según el año, probablemente los primeros 15 días de la primavera, pero el resto del año, NO. Si se encuentra con ganas de meter mano en ese resto del año, ESPERE A LA TEMPORADA PRECISA. Nunca estará a más de 6 meses de distancia, así que no es tanto.

En

Their personalities are like stunted bonsai trees, trained to grow in unnatural shapes. Because they had to bend to fit their families, they were unable to develop fluidly into the integrated, natural people they might have become.

Nunca debe utilizar el fertilizante como viene. Siempre debe mezclarlo con agua. En términos caseros, una cucharadita de té (NO la de café: es más chica) por litro de agua es suficiente. Una vez por mes, RIEGUE como lo hace con cualquier otra planta (es decir, NO utilice en éste caso el pulverizador) y tenga en cuenta repetir justo cada 30 días.

We want what we can’t have until we can have it and then we don’t want it anymore. I know. I get it. We’re all the same. But this was something different. An unappeasable desperation. All of his earthly needs were insatiable. He texted me links of impossible-to-find snacks from his childhood. Or he’d order random things off the internet. One day, it was a PlayStation. Another day, it was an Alfred Hitchcock box set. And then there was the bonsai kit for beginners.

In this city of concave algae ponds, my mother begins to plant bonsais, nettle and leaf: silk against the skin.

that stressed simplicity and minimalism, the cultivation of bonsai

Among the more degrading of his daily tasks is the watering of Cindy’s bonsai tree. Her fake bonsai tree. He assumed that she’d been joking when she had first instructed him in its care. But when no laughter followed the tutorial, he decided to just play along, believing that, if nothing else, it would show he was a team player. It hadn’t worked.

It turns out that maybe breeding bonsai-tree children to become résumé zombies isn’t so good for their mental health.

I stopped thinking of them [my children] as little bonsai trees that I could prune carefully, and I began treating them instead like wildflowers of unknown genus and species that would reveal their unique and glorious beauty as long as I gave them the proper nourishment and environment.

A bonsai plant promotes ease and grace