Some time ago, Desire to Inspire ran a post called Room Porn. It wasn’t our idea of room porn (which we’re very into, but for a totally different sensibility) EXCEPT for the scrawled writing across the top of the room; it segues with our strange lust/love of signs. It’s do-able by mere mortals and holds lots of possibilities.
Dig this flight of stairs with a quote you read as you walk up…
Childhood finds its paradise in a moment. It does not ask for happiness. It is happiness.
We wish we knew who said it….
…We love this Goethe quote written in German, in lovely script, on a kitchen wall…
Kein Wesen kann zu nichts zerfallen!
Das Ew`ge regt sich fort in allen,
Am Sein erhalte dich beglückt!
Das Sein ist ewig; denn Gesetze
Bewahren die lebend`gen Schätze,
Aus welchen sich das All geschmückt.
We emailed David Saltman, who can navigate many languages, and asked if he could translate. “It’s from Faust” he wrote. Difficult and beautiful.” He sent us his rough translation…
No being can decay into nothing!The eternal moves always in all,In His is your happiness maintained!Being is eternal; because LawPreserves the living treasuresWith which all and everything is adorned.
and then a classic, rhyming translation he found:
What exists cannot into nothingness fall!
The eternal ever reigns strong in all,
In pure existence be content!
Being is eternal: and law’s measures
Preserve the living treasures
That adorn the universe’s raiment.
Both quotes were wonderful finds for us.
The trick to writing on a wall, of course, is to write something you really want to live with…Or else write it on a wall you can easily paint over …Or scrawl it on a wall painted with chalkboard or dry-erase paint…
or tape, as our friend Holton Rower did years ago; it remains one of our favorites:
Related posts: idea maps on a ‘whiteboard’ wall
diy: words on walls
powerful words: devise, invent, create, change…
“love cannot be, without love”
The quite literal translation is :
No being can dissolve into nothingness
The eternal keeps moving in everything
Find joy in existence
Being is everleasting ; because laws
keep those living treasures
from which the universe has crowned itself
( ‘das Sein’ = literal ‘being’, in the meaning of existence, life )
I have seen (key ) words , sentences written on canvas (and that way it is easy to replace) – one could paint their favorite poem, song, mantra or quote on it.
Greetings,
sahana
ps . how about a sign on a door that reminds us to give something every day -a smile, a kind word, attention or simply some money for a good cause ?
What a lovely translation.
And what a good idea: a word, or a sentence, on canvas
Thank you.