“Money - it can buy you a moment of glee but not a lifetime of happiness.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“We may not always fight well, and some days we may not be able to fight at all, but somehow we find out what we are made of by trying and beginning again.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Respect both what you need to know and what you don't need to know. Respect mystery, for mystery is still needed to run the universe."
-- The Legacy Letters, by Carew Papritz
"Things I didn't know.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“These Moments Cascade Upon One Another
"Here at shepherd's dusk, in a valley without echo, I listen for you. With a frayed longing, I hear your shadow voice whispering within me from far away. I grasp at what is left of this husky sun lying golden upon the upper meadows of lodge pole and bear grass. I gather the last remnants of the evening's breeze, so cool and lazy within my arms, feeling it curl up like a small and innocent kitten. And I see that behind a cloak of clouds, dalliance suits the canting moon. Suddenly I do not wish to lose another moment, And I covet all pristine light.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“With your Christmas-Day-will-never-arrive-soon enough salivations, you anticipate the moment when, like voracious cub lions, you’ll rip open the wrapping paper and feast off your every delicious present.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“A Good Man. Every night, like a question-and-answer prayer, my son and I recite...What are you going to be? And he says...An honest man. A fair man. A courageous man. And a good man. That's the most important thing, Papa. And my job is finally done. For the night.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“I want to remember...Smelling your newness upon this earth. The baby-Jesus smell as Grandma used to put it. Pure. Unsullied. Like the imagined smell in the twirling air of eiderdown feathers spin-floating around the yard on a new spring day.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Why read? Because books are precious guides to our humanity—civilization’s backbone—that tenuous ridgeline that allows us to climb above the jungle and see what the horizon has to offer. Thus they represent the yearning to go beyond, to explore. Yet they are also human-sized. And made of paper and ink, and thus they come from the earth. Their physicality is what makes them immensely human. And they contain the flesh-and-bone thoughts of one person capturing one blink of time, now made immortal in the bound pages carried by your own hands and touched by your own eyes. How can such fragile and thin paper and spidery veins of ink be our most precious treasure, binding together the entire hope and legacy and language of a civilization—of our existence. We touch the book and turn the page, and thus we are bound to our destiny.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“Walk with me now into the very bright night, and revere with me in silence what must be God-given and what is surely God-taken.”
Source: The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
“On every mountain of despair, there is a rock of hope; keep looking.”