Cultural rendering

A culture -- a civilization -- is only as great as the religious ideas that animate it; the magnitude of a people's cultural achievement is determined by the height of its spiritual aspirations. One need only turn one's gaze to the frozen mires and fetid marshes of modern Europe, where once the greatest of human civilizations resided, to grasp how devastating and omnivorous a power metaphysical boredom is. The eye of faith presumes to see something miraculous within the ordinariness of the moment, mysterious hints of an intelligible order calling out for translation into artifacts, but boredom's disenchantment renders the imagination inert and desire torpid.

~David Hart

Accomplishment

The marathon can humble you. ~Bill Rodgers

Learn to run when feeling the pain: then push harder. ~William Sigei

Anyone can run 20 miles. It's the next six that count. ~Barry Magee

My feeling is that any day I'm too busy to run, is a day that I am too busy. ~John Bryant

The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start. ~John Bingham

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things -- with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.

~Corazon Aquino~

And so with the sunshine and great bursts of leaves growing on the trees--just as things grow in fast movies--I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby