She was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size . . . Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.
Lewis Carroll
To express what one wishes, one must look at things with enough attention to discover in them what has never been seen before.
Gustav Flaubert
I will do whatever the role requires.
Nastassia Kinski
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James
I had permission from myself to love whomsoever I wished.
Bryce Courtenay
Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur. This calls for a scheme of procedure. In some cases the best design is no design, as with a love letter, which is simply an outpouring, or with a casual essay, which is a ramble. But in most cases planning must be a deliberate prelude to writing. The first principle of composition, therefore, is to foresee or determine the shape of what is to come and pursue that shape.
William Strunk and E. B. White
You’ve got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being.
ee cummings
I shall learn many secrets from my books.
Ayn Rand
One lesson of the civil rights movement of yesterday, and the ongoing civil rights movement of today, is that sometimes the simplest of ordinary acts – taking a seat on the bus or a lunch counter, registering to vote, applying for a marriage license – can have extraordinary ramifications. It can change our world, change the way we act and think.
Julian Bond
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
Mae West
The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
Joseph Campbell
If there have been, at various times, trifling misunderstandings in our life, now I see how one was unable to value the passing of time.
David Lodge
“One seventh of your life is spent on Tuesday.”
Woody Allen
How pleasant to wake up and read a quote by one of my favorite authors, Lewis Carroll, followed by many other wonderful quotes by equally as awesome people.
“Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” -Lewis Carroll
always nice to see a Kinski quoted, maybe I’ll check back in later with one of my favorites by her dad.
Hint: it’s from his Jesus tour
I love good quotes, and have taken a couple of these for my personal quote book.
Here is one to add:
May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them, and to turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Franciscan Prayer
Some of my favorites.
Happy New year to all – my concept here did not fully work – I think I am still reeling a bit from the multiple Vespers on Wednesday night – I have been thinking how absurd it is that I make the same resolutions every year – the same 20 pounds, the same desire to read, write and rekindle relationships and conversations, the want to be more present and alive – it occured to me that our desire to change and better ourselves is universal. The same sorts of “resolutions” are all through literature and essays. So I sat down yesterday to comb some of my favorite books and find passages that I thought represented my own resolutions this year (except for the damn 20 pounds). I should have written an intro but thought the title would suffice. But as my sister and editor so aptly concluded – “great quotes, I don’t get the title.” Ah well, best to start the year murky and then get clearer from here on . . .
So if someone else were to speak your change – who would it be and what would they say?
My change? I often get accused on TGW for being too positive. In 2009, I vow to stir it up.
THis post sucks. Pandora, you should have been clear the first time.
(insert smiley face here)
“Now for everyone to be patient in this lifetime is an arduous task to ask, for they live very fast now and they die very young. They don’t know how to live because they live by time. They must do it in a certain perimeter of time or they shall never accomplish it…They will have only lived by time, and that shall be their accomplishment in this life…Imagine what it would be to get up every morning and defy reality, to start changing what has been normal to you to be supernormal every day. So the first day you get up and a few things change but not everything. Is it enough to go back to and accept mundane reality?… What does that take? Constant focus on what is expected rather that what is seen.”
Ramtha
“A quotation without direct application is useless.”
Au contraire, mon frère.
Marleyfan – I congratulate you on keeping your first resolution! (what tips do you have on consistent journal keeping??)
And Gary Lee – I disagree.
Quotations without application allow one to consider without action. Very useful to lazy people.
Hmm. Very true. It should be revised to: A quotation without application is not useless, for they retain intellectual value, but is less useful than one applied. It doesn’t have the same ring to it sadly…
but “gary lee – I disagree” has definite ring – like poetry!
An anapestic marvel!
Anapestic means that a line of poetry is compose of anapests, a rhythmic patter that has two light stresse followed by a final heavy stress. Edgar Allan Poe use anapestic lines in Annabel Lee when he wrot
For the moon never beams without bring
-ing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
In the first line the words “For” and “the” are light stresses, and the word “moon” is a heavy stress; that is the first anapest. “Never” has two syllables, and both are light stress, and “beams” is heavy; that is another anapestic unit. “Without” also has two syllables and they are light, but “bring” is heavy stress. (Note that the line is split to show that a new stress pattern begins with the light stress of “ing” and “me” and the heavy stress of “dreams.”
This is a rhythmic pattern, just like a song, so sometimes it helps, if you have to write an anapestic line, to see if you can hum and keep the beat in the lines you are considering without forcing the sense or the diction or the syntax of the line.
In the first line
the words
“For” and “the
are light stresses, and the
word
“moon”
is
a
heavy stress;
Julie, this is beautiful!
thus: “Gary Lee, I disagree” is actually trochaic tetrameter. Just like “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright!”
“Without the continual growth of sociality, and consequently of the intensity and variety of sensations, life is impossible.”
— Peter Kropotkin
And multiple Vespers, Pandora? How many do you need, really?
Oh my God! Changes!
Oh, pardon me. I didn’t count my syllables correctly (and yes i knew what it meant). My English teacher would be disappointed.
Trust me–your English teacher would be ecstatic that you used the word “anapestic” in casual conversation.