It’s hard to choose which words to quote from Charlie Mackesy’s beautiful book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. His work carries such quiet wisdom — a reminder of what matters. Charlie is always worth following, on Instagram or wherever his words find you.
“Nothing beats kindness,” said the horse. “It sits quietly beyond all things.”
— Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind (via exhaled-spirals)
Image credit: Jimmy Chan on Pexels
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Carl Sagan – Researcher, Educator, Communicator, Advocate and Activist
We read to know we are not alone.
C.S. Lewis -Author
Image Credit: Vladimir Mokry on Unsplash
Julia Baird, Author, Journalist and Thalassophile recently wrote about the simple exercise of making a list of things you love. Inspired by her, and by Andrea Gibson who inspired Julia, I decided to make my own.
I found it uplifting to gather them together in a collection, with the memories of feelings felt.
And you — what do you love?
~ Image credit: Matt Gleeson – The renewal of trees after fire
This morning I read a post by Georgi Kisyov on the rhythm and wisdom of Autumn. His words painted the season in a way that made me pause and think of things differently — the pace, the colours, the quiet lessons nature offers.
While I’ve always loved aspects of Autumn, I also dread the coming of Winter. Reading this post gave me a fresh perspective, a reminder of beauty in change and the value of slowing down.
I encourage you to read Georgi’s post here: https://georgikisyov.com/2025/09/22/the-season-of-the-wisdom/— it’s a wonderful piece of writing that truly moved me.
~ Image credit: Autumn Mott Rodeheaver on Unsplash
What more could one ask of a companion? To be forever new and yet forever steady. To be strange and familiar all at once, with enough change to quicken my mind, enough steadiness to give sanctuary to my heart. The books on my shelf never asked to come together, and they would not trust or want to listen to one another; but each is a piece of a stained-glass whole without which I couldn’t make sense to myself, or to the world outside.
~ Pico Iyer
~ Image my own
… books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life—wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift …
~ Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
~ Image Credit: Mike Gattorna on Unsplash
Curating Quietude 