G is for Gold

How does gold grab you? Is it glamor that glitters? Or is gold given to goons with guns (think: government) ghastly?

Today we look at the letter G at Alphabe-Thursday.

I will first share with you a few scenes of the grand and glitzy Gold Souk in Dubai, where gold gewgaws from tiny to gigantic go for below the global price when you haggle. 

Then you may find interesting the thoughts on gold from luminaries past that seem still so germane in today's turbulent world... and which give heed to the great idiom, "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

Dubai, 2005

By gold all good faith has been banished; by gold our rights are abused; the law itself is influenced by gold, and soon there will be an end of every modest restraint. 

~ Sextus Propertius elegiac poet of the Augustan age (~50 BC-15 BC)

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

~ Samuel Johnson (1709 –1784) English author

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.

~ Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) American poet

Give fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune's bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all. 

~ John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American author/philosopher

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

~ Plato (424 BC–348 BC), Classical Greek philosopher

A Great and Glorious New Year to my fellow blog hoppers!

Apple Blossoms

The apple blossoms' shower of pearl, 
Though blent with rosier hue 
As beautiful as woman's blush 
As evanescent too.”
      ~ Letitia E Landon (English poet/novelist, 1802–1838)

The apple blossom exists to create fruit; when that comes, the petal falls.    
      ~ Kabir (Indian Philosopher, 1398-1519)

[click to enlarge to see shadows]

Austria, 2011

I saw this magnificent apple tree in bloom this past spring in Austria.

Linking with Shadow Shot Sunday (see the gentle  shadows of the stamen on the petals?), Weekend Flowers, Today's Flower, and Macro Monday.

Let Reason Hold the Reins

Mongolia, 2007

"If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins." - Benjamin Franklin

The prompt this Theme Thursday is reason. And so this wise quote l found lead me to post a befitting photo of Mongolian horsemen in traditional garb galloping to the Naadam Festival in the wilderness of Hovd province.