When you look at the houses around you today, something that very much gives the look of them are their windows and doors. Everything from the most simple to more intricate and decorative.
It is also a chance to play with colors and materials. In the area of Norway where I come from, the old style would be a white house made of wood with a different color around the windows and for the doors. With apartment buildings everything has become more uniform and functional. But if you keep looking, you will find unique details. Especially if you get out of the big cities.
I had a chance to take a quick walk during a visit to Pirenopolis in Brazil, a couple of hours drive from the capital Brasilia. Here, it seems like everyone has gone out of their way to make their houses stand out. The city itself has a thriving community of silversmiths that make beautiful jewelry and other artifacts, often mixed with semi-precious stones. If you ever have the chance to get to this area, make sure you include a visit here. You will not regret it!
The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing — where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.
Phillips Brooks (1835 – 1893)
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thru’ chinks of his cavern.
Blake
You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door.
Robert Collier
There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window.
Montesquieu
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller (1880 – 1968)
No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller (1880 – 1968)
It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door.
Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)
Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.
Chinese Proverb
They say dreams are the windows of the soul–take a peek and you can see the inner workings, the nuts and bolts.
Henry Bromel, Northern Exposure, The Big Kiss, 1991
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
Epictetus (55 AD – 135 AD), Discourses
A patient going to a doctor for his first visit was asked, “And whom did you consult before coming to me?”
“Only the village druggist,” was the answer.
“And what sort of foolish advice did that numbskull give you?” asked the doctor, his tone and manner denoting his contempt for the advice of the layman.
“Oh,” replied his patient, with no malice aforethought, “he told me to come and see you.”
Author Unknown
If you’re trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it’s a lot easier to hit your targets if you don’t yell going through the door.
Lois McMaster Bujold, “The Warrior’s Apprentice”, 1986
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open.
Elmer G. Letterman
Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.
Clarence Thomas (1948 – )
Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.
Dr. Laura Schlessinger
Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!
Matt Frewer, as Dr. Mike Stratford in “Doctor, Doctor”
It’s a dangerous business going out your front door.
J. R. R. Tolkien (1892 – 1973), The Fellowship of the Ring
