|

2009 Quote a Day Calendar

I have always loved to collect intangible things. One of my favorites collections consists of opening lines of great novels. Who can forget “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . ” Or “Call me Ishmael.” My all-time favorite opening line comes from Pat Conroy’s Prince of Tides: “My wound is geography.”

But lo, I digress. By far my largest stash of immaterial things are the countless quotes, words of wisdom, poems, and pithy sayings I have collected over the years. I have a library card catalog filled with hand written 3×5 cards with quotes accumulated from the days before computers had entered my life. In the intervening years I have made several vain attempts to catalog my precious to no avail. The first installment came and went in a HyperCard stack that is long gone. A Microsoft Access database of pearls of wisdom sits unused on an old Windows machine somewhere in the house.

Every fall I get the half-baked idea to make one of those “Page-a-Day” calendars filled with my own favorite quotes. I have yet to undertake the arduous task of selecting, formatting, printing and binding 365 of my favorite sayings. However, this year I will avail myself of this space to “catalog” some of my favorite quotes here at It Seems To Me.

Sometimes I will comment on why the quote was important to me or where my head was at the time. Other times the quotes wills stand on their own. Feel free to join in the conversation.

Similar Posts

  • Silence is Golden

    I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

    — Unknown

    For the last few weeks I have been intensely focused on the launch of the web site for Rizers, my new company. I haven’t had much to add to the daily quote file. Stay tuned for the official Rizers’ announcement.

  • Science is a way of thinking

    “Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

    — Carl Sagan, astronomer and author (1934-1996)

  • You Know I’ve Always Been A Dreamer

    You know I’ve always been a dreamer
    (spent my life running ’round)
    And it’s so hard to change
    (Can’t seem to settle down)
    But the dreams I’ve seen lately
    Keep on turning out and burning out
    And turning out the same

    So put me on a highway
    And show me a sign
    And take it to the limit one more time

    From Take It To The Limit

    I had the good fortune of seeing The Eagles in concert on Friday night on their History of the Eagles tour. Nostalgia ruled the night. Everyone from the original band was was there, and everyone was a few years older than their prime days in the late ’70s. But the music was a s good as it ever was (which is to say, ‘good but not great’). Joe Walsh, however, brought the house down with great stage energy and fantastics renditions of Rocky Mountain High, and Life’s Been Good.

  • Leadership

    Those “best leaders” excel at six skills . . . They have a winning attitude, a passion for customers, an ability to collaborate across boundaries, a global mindset, an ability to leverage diversity and a talent for working just “fast enough” — getting the right balance point between overly rapid decision-making and paralysis by analysis.

    — Ann Livermore, HP Executive VP
    From a Knowledge at Wharton article

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.