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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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Here's the thing: I love my job. Really. I do. I love the people I work with, even if I don't always necessarily like the people I work for. Those people being, of course, the 'public.' Generally, I like most of them. I mean, really, how many places do people bring you homemade lemon bars, fudge pie, and brownies for the holidays? Then there are days like today.....I could have reeeeaaaaallllly used a fudge pie today. The whole thing. By myself. See, here's the other thing. I like kids. Really. I do. The day began innocently enough......We had story hour, of which, if you've ever watched National Geographic and witnessed the panicked stampede of the wildebeests in the face of predators, you've got a fairly accurate image. An hour later, I looked up to notice one lone survivor standing in the midst of the no man's land between the desk and the decimated shelves. Staring right at me. "Did you need something?" Nothing....No response. "Were you looking for something?" Still nothing. Then....."Do you know where my mom is?" Oh. Crap. "No. You wouldn't happen to, either, would you?" Shrug. Am I the only one who seems concerned about this? Apparently so, because, according to this kid, if you've reached the 60" height requirement, you've got all the answers. "I'm looking for my mom." "Yeah, I know. Me too, kid." "You can't find your mom either?" "No....what I meant was...never mind. Just.....hang on....." Thankfully "mom" was just looking for books. Still, that brief instant of mistakenly being considered capable rattled my nerves a bit.

Then, on the way back to the desk after leaving a serene junior with an equally irritatingly serene mother hen, I was snapped at. Not figuratively. Literally. *Snap* *Snap* "I need an over-ride!" We have system wide filters on many sites, including "My Space," which, I have to say, is the bane of a librarian's existence. So, we have to manually over-ride the filter for anyone over 17. Sound time-consuming? It is. Trust me. So, I drag over. "How old are you?" "13" "Sorry..." "It's not for My Space." "Then I couldn't over-ride it anyway. I'm only allowed to over-ride for My Space." It is said that nature abhors a vacuum. It also apparently abhors repetition. Plagues and pestilence have already been used on ancient Egypt. Something original was needed. Which is why 13-year-olds were invented. Said 13-year-old accomplished a freakishly good impersonation of a bee stung Angelina Jolie, she stuck her lips out so far. "If you can't over-ride anything, there's not a whole lot I can do on the computer, then." What?! It's the world-freakin'-wide-web! Find something (wholesomely) educational! You're in a library! Find a book! I wanted to say something really sarcastic, but, instead, I smiled as nicely as I could manage. "National Geographic isn't blocked."

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2 comments:

  1. Ryan and Heather MossJuly 1, 2009 at 10:45 AM

    But I thought you had the easiest job in the world because all you have to do is "sit & read books all day." You're so much nicer than me! Love ya!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MamafamiliasJuly 1, 2009 at 10:34 PM

    Wait, I thought you were MY mama.

    ReplyDelete

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