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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Saturday, June 6, 2009


I'm not sure how this post is going to proceed, but I felt an obligation to post something today. As I'm sure everyone is well aware, today is the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Discussing the veterans of World War II is something very close to my heart, something that I always tend to get a little emotional over. My grandfather was a paratrooper in the 8nd Airborne, I have made some very dear friends among the older men who come into the library who served during the War, and I have had the opportunity to converse with others who served during those brutal four years which shaped the world I came into. I make it a point never to discuss politics on my blog; to begin with, I don't follow them closely enough to assume enough knowledge to converse intelligently about politics, so I feel my best policy is to simply keep my mouth shut. Better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt. However, this post is not political, it is not even historical in content. (Shocking? Well, maybe I will slip up and include some history, I can't help it.) This, my friends, is purely emotional. Despite your political views on anything, I feel that respect is owed to those who were willing to set aside any dreams they harbored, their youth, their security, their lives, the hopes of their loved ones and imperil themselves for the amelioration of a world burning down because of the greed of a few. I tend to fall into a romanticized view of this time period. Young men in uniform, wonderful clothing styles, white picket fences, Bennie Goodman, Glenn Miller, etc. However, I have to catch myself and realize there was nothing romantic about it. I read a statistic the other day which was a reality check. The average age of a G.I was about 21-22. I turned 24 in April. These were children, really, who became the immolation for the preservation of humanity and what it means to be human. Whatever political reasons there were, my feelings remain that, although we were pulled into the War because of the events on December 7, 1941 (although I don't think we feasibly could have avoided involvement), the deepest reason for the need to sacrifice 'the American Dream' of an entire generation was the demand for a generation of champions of humanity. While so many were devolving into an animalistic state of hate and annihilation, there had to be those who were willing to halt the deterioration of the fabric of humanity into feral, bestial chaos. If I am dragging things a bit heavily, and seem to be a bit too serious about all of this, I am truly sorry, but, as I said, this is a discussion which lies very close to my heart. That generation and what they accomplished is one reason I gave 4 years of my life to study history. It is imperative that their accomplishments are remembered; not the accomplishments of the generals and politicians, but the accomplishments of the average father, son, brother, cousin, friend. Because I also love photography, especially black and white, and most especially black and white from the forties, I've included a few of the photographs included in the National Archives and Records Administration. I hope they aren't too much.
I'm continually astounded to see how young they really were.
A copy of a German photograph. The Warsaw Ghetto being destroyed. Stop and consider where these people were being moved.
I love this photograph. I think it's beautiful. I know that sounds crazy, but not 'beautiful' in a 'pretty' way, but it leaves an impression. The contrast of the surroundings and the circumstances is impossible not to be affected by, I think.
This is also an affecting photograph, to me. Those who were intent on preserving life in situations in which death was the goal is a very sobering thought to me.

This is actually from Korea, but I had to include it. This, I think, shows the price paid. It rips my heart out every time, but it is one of my favorites. It tramples on my heart and leaves my nerves raw and throbbing, but it is one of the most profound images I have come across.

So, I know this is a bit heavy, but there it is. It makes me think of a few lines from a letter a soldier during the Civil War who wrote home to his wife, "I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing-perfectly willing- to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government and to pay that debt...." I, for one, am indescribably grateful to men like my grandfather.

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5 comments:

  1. MamafamiliasJune 6, 2009 at 7:55 PM

    There is absolutely no comment I can leave to do justice to this post. I'm so glad that my daughter has the good sense and the goodness of heart to appreciate what has been done for all of us. Thank you for expressing it so beautifully and from so far down in your heart.

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  2. Ami JacksonJune 9, 2009 at 10:17 PM

    Kelly, that was so beautiful! Thank you for such a wonderful post! It brought tears to my eyes. That last quote from the soldier to his wife... puts a lump in my throat. So true and beautifully said. :)

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  3. Ami JacksonJune 9, 2009 at 10:21 PM

    Oh and I forgot... I love the picture with the Medic (since that is what my husband is!)

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  4. cherylJune 10, 2009 at 11:39 PM

    THis is so moving. It is mind boggling what has gone on and goes on in the world. You are such a good writer.

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  5. Ryan and Heather MossJune 16, 2009 at 10:37 PM

    And none that I've ever talked to that served from "The Last Great Generation" seem to be bent on they're owed something. You can tell that they felt it was a privilege to serve their country & fight for freedom. Yeah, I can't seriously think about it without crying. How can you not respect someone who has selflessly served others, whether you agree with the reason for fighting or not. Great post.

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