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)

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Monday, June 22, 2009


For the past....oh....couple of years (it feels like, anyway), I've been spending quite a bit of time concerning myself very closely with wedding/engagement photos. Now, I'm not sure if anyone really quite fathoms the cruel irony of this situation. Have you ever noticed how, in a moderately sized group of people, cats always seem to find the one individual who is allergic and/or hates them, and attach themselves very closely to that individual for the remainder of the visit? Well, I've heard it said that it is because cats know which humans dislike them because that human avoids eye contact. Well, it is about the same, apparently, for weddings and me. It is as if there is some maleficent force in the universe which finds fodder for its sick sense of humor in throwing me into the metaphorical snake pit which is the exchanging of nuptials. Let me be quite honest: I "strongly-dislike" weddings. I generally only go to receptions for the food. The pervasiveness of high-running, blatantly expressed emotion makes me squirm like a six-year old waiting for the nurse to get back with the needle for the Hepatitis B shot. (Isn't that the one that would sting so badly? Anyway...) I'm a bit like that character in that movie with Sarah Jessica Parker, when she says, "I know I'm a girl and all, so I should be better at this emotional stuff, but......" Don't get me wrong, I love girly books like Jane Austen, the Brontes, etc. just as well as the next person. I love movies like "Casablanca" and "Roman Holiday." Seriously. But.....in real life.....? Nah, I'm okay, thanks. Personally, I've never really felt a need to 'get in touch with my inner-most feelings.' They're fine just where they are, being rudely ignored by my immediate consciousness, thank you very much.
Anyway, I believe I've veered a bit from my original intention.....which was.... let me think.....oh, yes, weddings. One reason I think I may dread them is for a reason hordes of others dread them. Someone else getting married brings into irritatingly close focus the fact that you are not. There are three questions I never fail to receive innumerable times in the course of two hours: "So, when are you getting married?" "Why aren't you married yet?" "Why aren't you married yet?" I think the first sense to deteriorate as you get older is your sense of humor. Apparently some individuals in my family think I'm joining a convent. Hmmmmm, yes, as the saying goes, "There's nothing more discouraging than unappreciated sarcasm." (Not that there's anything wrong with joining a convent, mind you.) Yet, I've not seen fit to correct this mistake. If all are satisfied, and I get some peace, the means are completely irrelevant. Alas, the arrival of warmer weather seems to be the signal for all of the underground movements of wedding planners and cake decorators to show themselves in full. I think had they been around a couple of hundred years earlier, living as university students in Paris, they would have orchestrated their own "barricade revolt."
Has anyone ever noticed how the lining up of single women to catch the bouquet occasionally appears disturbingly similar to those screaming maniacs on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange? I began wondering, how did the tossing of the bouquet originate? Personally, it makes me want to toss something, but quite emphatically not anything as sweet smelling as roses, peonies, or sweet pea. As far as the 'catching' goes, I think I'd rather catch the swine flu. So, I found it quite amusing, when looking online for the origin of 'throwing bouquet,' the suggested search topics came up.....including 'throwing knives.' The sad thing is, I could see a connection, and not just through the word 'throwing.' However, I felt much better, when scanning through the results for 'throwing the bouquet' on youtube, looking for some wild, 'no-holds-barred' bouquet catch, I came across one which gave me hope. These are my kind of people.


Maybe I will join that convent, after all.......Nah, then again, maybe not.......You can't wear red heels and a nun's habit. (As far as I know.)
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3 comments:

  1. MamafamiliasJune 23, 2009 at 6:49 AM

    Wow, I didn't know there could be so many Kellys at one wedding! Love the video. And didn't you see my post about why people have weddings? Of course it's for the food, girl. That, and a chance to wear those red high heel shoes. As for throwing the bouquet, just remember what Ernest T. Bass said - "He didn't say nuthin 'bout throwing no bricks."

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  2. cherylJune 23, 2009 at 8:17 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. cherylJune 23, 2009 at 8:18 PM

    If you joined a convent all the priests there would have immoral thoughts about you especially in those sassy red heals so best not to have that guilt on your shoulders. The food is the reason I go to anything!

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