The following are a growing collection of words of wisdom and wit that seem to echo the voices of the Major Arcana. If you have any feedback or contributions feel free to e-mail Arnell

The Fool/Dreamer
If you hear a different drummer—
dreamer, take a chance…
The road you choose to travel
means the difference in the dance.
D. Morgan

We should not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T.S.Eliot

It is trust in our vast 'don't know'
that allows room for the truth,
that allows the next intuition
to float to the surface.
Stephen Levine

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey.
We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
S R Covey

We are the hero of our own story
Mary McCarthy

Life is not as serious as the MIND makes it out to be...

The Magician
Magic is believing in yourself,
if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life consists not in holding good cards
but in playing those you do hold well.
Josh Billings

It's not the wand; it's the Magician.
Old Joke

For me, there is very little difference between magic and art.
The ultimate act of magic is to create something from nothing
Alan Moore

The High Priestess
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift
and the rational mind a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honors the servant
and has forgotten the gift.
Albert Einstein

Nothing worth possessing can be quite possessed.
Sara Teasdale

A woman must have money and a room of her own.
Virginia Woolf

Be obscure clearly.
E. B. White

It's not what you look at that matters,
it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

The Empress
There are two ways of spreading light... To be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.

We do no great things
only small things with great love.
Mother Teresa

Don't compromise yourself.
You are all you've got.
Janis Joplin

Emperor
Words are a form of action,
capable of influencing change.
Ingrid Bengis

If you are life-worthy, you can take it. What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure. The world is a match for us. we are a match for the world. Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “Yea” to it all.
Joseph Campbell

Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption
in high places will follow, and the money power of the country
will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices
of the people, until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and
the Republic is destroyed.
Abraham Lincoln 1864

Men are only as loyal as their options.
Bill Maher

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world
and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
Abraham Lincoln

Hierophant
I thank God, for making me an atheist!
Ricky Gervais

Yesterday I was clever
so I wanted to change the world
Today I am more wise
so I am changing myself.
Rumi

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer
but wish we didn't.
Erica Jong

Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts.
Life itself still remains a very effective therapist.
Karen Horney

Tarot is an excellent guide, but a bad master.
Unknown

The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, & breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

Lovers
Love is everything it's cracked up to be…
It really is worth fighting for
being brave for, risking everything for.
Erica Jong

Giving love is beautiful.
'Being' loved is sacred.

Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.
It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness,
of witherings, of tarnishings.
Anaïs Nin

What are we to each other?
I think different facets of the same gem.
Turning, turning in the hand of God.
Doraine Portez

Happiness comes from the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply,
to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
Storm Jackson

The Chariot/Challenge
A bird sitting on a tree is not
afraid of the branch breaking
because her trust is not with
the branch but her own wings.

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson

The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action.
William Burnham

You'll never get anywhere else if you don't leave where you are now.
Unknown

The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win,
you're still a rat.
Lily Tomlin

Justice
Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both.
Alice Stone Blackwell

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
Josh Billings

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Groucho Marx

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible;
but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can do only a little.
Do what you can
Sydney Smith

The Hermit
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
May Sarton

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Just remember, we are all in this alone.
Lily Tomlin

Each person has her own safe place- running, painting, swimming, fishing,
weaving, gardening. The activity itself is less important that the act of drawing
on your own consciousness.
Barbara Gordon

Wheel of Fortune/Karma
Even the best intentions turn around one day...
Nobody's right all the time.
Stevie Nicks

Not to say 'I am right and you are wrong.'
Wisdom is provided to different people at different times in different ways.
Unknown

Life is an endless process of self discovery.
Gardner 1912

Strength
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage
Anaïs Nin

To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate
is strength undefeatable.
Helen Keller

Its better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
Sister Elizabeth Kenny

You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore

Nothing is so strong as gentleness.
Nothing so gentle as real strength.
Unknown

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
Christian Larson

There are days
I drop words
of comfort on
myself like
falling
leaves
& remember
that it is
enough to be
taken care of
by my self.
Brian Andreas

Sometimes you have to be a lion
to be the lamb you really are.
Dave Chappelle's Mom

Hang Man/Reflection
Between living and dreaming is a struggle toward meaning.
Brenda Murphree

I'm the opposite of every guy you've ever met.
George Costanza (Seinfeld)

Death
"And in the spring I shed my skin
And it blows away with the changing wind"
~Florence & the Machine, Raise it Up

The deterioration of symbols is natural.
They wear out, needing to be reclaimed,
recreated; returned to the spirit.
Clarrisa Pinkola Estes

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.
Rabindranath Tagore

We have been taught to suspect and fear the unknown.
Demetra George

How young can you die of old age?
Steven Wright

Temperance/Alchemy
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances:
if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
Carl Jung

A man is called selfish, not for pursuing his own good
but for neglecting his neighbors.
Richard Whately

The mind flows like the water
reflects like a mirror
responds like an echo.
Chuang-tse

The Devil
Don't you know there aint no Devil
that's just God when he's drunk
Tom Waits

Good girls go to heaven,
Bad girls go everywhere!

Be careful lest in casting out your devils that you cast out the best thing that's in you.
Nietzsche

Guilt is the price we pay willingly for doing what we are going to do anyway.
Esabelle Holland

What are we but our bad habits?
They make us feel alive, don't they?
Marilyn Harris

I am only strong enough for a life of
partial virtue.
Brian Andreas

I'm as pure as the driven slush.
Tallulah Bankhead

The big print giveth and the small print taketh away.
Tom Waits

It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence,

transform our lives and give us the necessary complexity and depth.
Thomas Moore

In so far as one denies what is, one is possessed by what is not --
the compulsions, the fantasies, the terrors that flock to fill the void.
Ursula K. Le Guin

The fear of one evil often leads us into a worse one.
Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux


The Tower
Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.
Fortune Cookie

Our greatest glory consists not in never falling
but in rising every time we fall.
If you have made mistakes there is always another chance for you
You may have a fresh start any moment you choose,
for this thing we call 'failure',
is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Unknown

The Star
If we did not dream, we could not ever be fully awake.
Unknown

Starlight star bright,
a wish for peace in the world tonight
Unknown

The Moon
Our work is to interpret this Life/Death/Life cycle,
to live it as gracefully as we know how,
to howl like a mad dog when we cannot
and to go on.
Clarissa Pincola Estes

The Sun
There are your fog
people and your sun
people, he said.
I said I wasn't sure
which kind I was.
He nodded. Fog'll
do that to you, he said.
Brian Andreas

She softened
gradually, melting
in the light of the
sun, all the while
thinking O, this
is what's its like to
be a planet
& suddenly
it was over
& the universe expanded
by one.
Brian Andreas

She left pieces of her
life behind her
everywhere
she went.
It's easier to feel the
sunlight
without them,
she said.
Brian Andreas

Happiness is the sense that one matters.
Samuel Shoemaker

Judgment/Liberation
"Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable."
Mary Oliver

All we're ever looking for is another open door.
Kate Bush

If the doors of perception were cleaned, everything would appear as it is, infinite.
William Blake

We are so vain that we care about the opinion of those we don't care about.
Marie Von Eschenbah

The World
In my dream,
the angel shrugged
& said, If we
fail this time, it
will be a failure of
imagination
& then she placed the world
gently in the palm of my hand.
Brian Andreas

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take,
but by the moments that take our breath away.
George Carlin

The only thing you can change is yourself
but sometimes that changes everything.
Unknown

As long as the world is turning and spinning,
we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.
Mel Brooks

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don't make peace with ourselves.
World peace must develop out of inner peace.
Dalai Lama

What we call the beginning is often the end...
The end is where we start from.
T.S. Eliot