Passion
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
— Harold Whitman
People who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
— Ann Landers.
Whatever you’re doing now is just a stepping-stone to the next project or adventure. Any rut you get into is one you can get yourself out of.
— Timothy Ferriss, 4-Hour Work Week
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.
— Unknown
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 . . . ” Other greats include “Who is John Galt?” Or “Howard Rork laughed.” 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. …
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
— Mark Twain
It seems as though Mark Twain was also inspired by the William Shedd quote I posted yesterday.
Know this. You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can incarcerate me with two moronic cellmates. You can torture me with your thrice-daily swill. But you cannot break the spirit of a Winchester. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness, and I shall be delivered from this fetid and festering sewer.
I became a giant fan of M*A*S*H during my undergraduate years in college. By the time I tuned in the show had been on the air for many seasons and had found its stride. Each night the dorm lounge would fill up with fans as we all partook of the syndicated re-runs punctuated once a week with a fresh fix. The writing was superb, the acting a joy to watch. The storylines were moving and yet funny. It seems like every character was my favorite. I have seen each episode so many times I can recite the entire plot line within seconds of seeing the opening sequence.
The quote above from Charles Emerson Winchester is one of my favorites. …