|

2009 Quote a Day Calendar

ByHeather

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

  • More Steinbeck on Writing

    ByHeather

    Sometimes in a man or a woman an awareness takes place — not very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplainable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through.

    — John Steinbeck, Journals of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters

    This is another installment from Steinbeck’s journals written as he was giving birth to East of Eden. It has echos from my Julian Schnabel quote when he said “That is true about all art. The conflict is to try and take what is inside of you and put it inside somebody else.”

  • Christopher Hitchens’ Guiding Principles

    ByHeather

    Beware the irrational, however seductive.

    Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself.

    Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.

    Don’t be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.

    Picture all experts as if they were mammals.

    Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity.

    Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.

    — Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

    Your time of silence has come too soon. Thanks for the valiant fight.

    (Thanks to A.Word.A.Day for the reference.)

  • The severest test of a character…

    ByHeather

    The severest test of a character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that you knew it all along.

    — Sydney J. Harris

    I suspect that this principle of character also applies to the ability to refrain from chiming in when someone in the room is explaining something and you can’t resist what you think is a better explanation. I know that is certainly one of my challenges.

  • You Know I’ve Always Been A Dreamer

    ByHeather

    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.

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.