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Author Quotes
- "I have great faith in fools; self-confidence, my friends call it." Edgar Allan Poe
- "The love of knowledge is a kind of madness." C.S. Lewis, "Out of the Silent Planet" (1/8/10)
- "...my private opinion is that after the words 'In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou earn thy bread; another clause has dropped out from the original text, running 'In the exasperation of thy souls shalt thou attend social functions.'" C.S. Lewis, "Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis Vol. 1" (9/17/09)
- "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown." Ralph Waldo Emerson (9/16/09)
- (Description of Charlotte Lucas) "Without thinking highly either of men or of matrimony, marriage had always been her object; it was the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and however uncertain of giving happiness, must be the pleasantest preservative from want." Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice" (8/4/09)
- "Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to noone, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But, in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless-it will change. It will not be broken, it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredemable. To love is to be vulnerable." C.S. Lewis (5/13/09)
- (Elizabeth to Jane) "Do not be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your privilege of universal good will. You need not. There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice" (3/21/09)
- "If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed." C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain" (3/15/09)
- "Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute." Mark Twain (3/14/09)
- "How frequently in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which when we are fallen into it, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be rais'd again from the affliction we are fallen into." Daniel Defoe, "Robinson Crusoe" (2/12/09)
- "I did avoid a critical personal examination...I referred to all the people of high standing I could think of in the community who would be least likely to know anything about me." Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" (1/10/09)
- "When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. We are bidden to 'put on Christ', to become like God. That is, whether we like it or not, God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want." C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain" (12/23/08)
- "Let us never forget what the poor widow did, when we think we are charitable." Charles Dickens, "The Life of Our Lord" (11/30/08)
- (Writing of champion boxer, Max Baer, in comparison to James J. Braddock) "Everything was so easy for him-but great champions usually are fashioned by adversity." Jeremy Schaap, "Cinderella Man" (11/27/08)
- Dorian Gray to Lord Henry, "'I don't want to see him alone. He says things that annoy me. He gives me good advice.' Lord Henry smiled. 'People are very fond of giving away what they need most themselves. It is what I call the depth of generosity.'" Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (11/18/08)
- "Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the caveman had known how to laugh, History would have been different." Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (11/17/08)
- "In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less." C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain" (11/14/08)
- "Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary." C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity" (11/5/08)
- "A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it." Charles Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities" (11/1/08)
- "Many of us probably would be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect." Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It" (10/27/08)
- "'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'" Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol" (10/26/08)
- "The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use for oneself." Oscar Wilde (10/25/08)
- "I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task." Mark Twain, "Nineteenth Century Progress" (10/24/08)
- "Only keep your ears open and your mouth shut and everything will lead you to everything else in the end." C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy" (10/23/08)
- "I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least." C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy" (10/22/08)
- "Shasta's heart fainted at these words for he felt he had no strength left. And he writhed inside at what seemed the cruelty and unfairness of the demand. He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. But all he said out loud was: 'Where is the King?'" C.S. Lewis, "The Horse and His Boy" (10/21/08)
- "Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself." C.S. Lewis, "The Problem of Pain" (10/20/08)
- "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning..." C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity" (10/19/08)
So, I was tagged for the photo thing (a long time ago, but among the distractions of things such as exams, visiting family, and work, I haven't had time to focus on priorities, like my blog. Ah, excuses, excuses.....); I didn't like the photo in the fourth folder (I just need to delete that whole folder anyway...), so I chose one I did like. I know it is cheating in the most low manner, but I think we have already established the fact that my character is hopelessly, irretrievably flawed, so we'll move on and do the best we can with what we have to work with....Anyway, photo-I went with my grandfather and other World War II veterans on a trip to D.C. to visit the WWII memorial. I was the "chaperone" for a group of men, of whom the youngest was 80-plus; at first I scoffed at the idea that they needed a chaperone, but after sitting at the back of the bus as they reminisced about their days in the service, I was brought to the conclusion that perhaps the organizers were not as out of touch with reality as I at first assumed. The good news is, our capital still stands. While we were there we visited the other memorials; I had never seen the Vietnam memorial (that I remembered, anyway, which means it very possibly could have happened and trickled straight through the sieve which is euphemistically called my "memory.") It was quite an experience. Although there were crowds of tourists milling about, and a busy road ran by in close proximity, as you rounded the curve which led up to the memorial, all the sounds became muted, and everyone instinctively began to talk in near-whispers. I was walking down the Wall, looking at all the names, of all these lives that were forfeited, and I have to admit, my eyes did water a bit. No matter your political stance or opinion on anything, I think it would be impossible to be presented with a palpable form of lives given for something other than themselves, to view something such as this which was an entirely separate entity from the maelstrom which is politics, something which exists entirely as a reminder of the voluntary immolation of some on the behalf of the whole, and walk away unaffected. If you can, it is as in King Lear, "you are men of stones." (5.3.259-sorry, all my term-paper training demands that I cite it, just for future reference...). Alas, I digress terribly...the photo. I was walking along, and although there were many small wreaths and such, propped at various points along the Wall, this one item just caught my attention, for some reason. I suppose amidst the larger, more elaborate things, the simplicity of this one was just very poignant. I'm not sure if it will be too small to read, in the post, but it says that this man asked the girl he loved to marry him; she agreed, the day after she got his letter, he was killed in Vietnam. I don't know, it just brings everything down to a much more personal, individual, human level. So, I'm sure that is much more of an explanation than anyone ever wanted, but there it is.
With tears in my eyes I completely agree. Thank you for capturing such a beautiful moment and sharing it. I’m glad you broke the rule and cheated although I'm sure the other picture was fabulous. Love you lady.
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