Listen to episode 209 of the Inspirational Living podcast: The Smile of Mona Lisa & Secret of Life. Adapted from Adventures in Common Sense by Dr. Frank Crane.
Inspirational Podcast Excerpt: Leonardo's Mona Lisa was stolen by an Italian thief in 1911, and when she finally got back to her place upon the walls of the Louvre two years later, all the world came to see her — on the first day of her home-coming some twenty thousand visitors trooped by to have a look at the most famous of paintings. And there, with those placid hands upon her lap, she sat in her frame, regarding the passers-by with her amused and superior smile, very much as you would look upon the antics of your pet kitten.
"Why worry?" she seemed to say. "Here I am, as you see. I came back, of course, since it is written. It was destiny. All of us but follow our program. I am the original predestinarian. I am the cheerful fatalist. Men and women struggle and fume, but always by and by they do what is set down for them to do, in the book of fate. It is to smile!"
“I am the companion of Omar Khayyam. For I am the Looker-On. I do not mingle with the energies of other people. I am the Bystander. My Maker was the Many-Minded One. He was a Philosopher. Philosophy is aloofness. I am the daughter of the Aloof. Leonardo smiled at people in his heart, and made me that I might smile at them forever."
“I am the Eternal Feminine. I do not labor. I sit. I judge. I smile. I know; hence I am amused. I am in the secret of things, and that is always rather funny; it is so different from the appearance of things. In the core of wisdom is laughter. In the secret springs of history there is grim humor.”
Related Inspirational Podcasts:
Thoughts on Nature, Art & Beauty
The Spirit of Opulence