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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Friday, January 8, 2010

(This has nothing to do with the post, but instead of writing an entirely pointless different post I calculated that a mini 'sub-post' would suffice.  So here it is-I went to see Invictus last night.  I've always liked that poem, Morgan Freeman's acting, Matt Damon's adorableness acting, and learning about Nelson Mandela, so I've been really excited to see this movie.  A few things here: I didn't think I would ever see the day that Clint Eastwood of all people would direct a 'feel-good' movie.  Not that it wasn't well done and a wonderful movie to watch, it's just....well.....The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? For a Few Dollars More? However, I was pleasantly surprised; also, I now have one more reason to say that Morgan Freeman is AWESOME!  His portrayal of Nelson Mandela was absolutely stunning in my humble, non-Hollywood opinion.  Freeman made this movie.  Period.  Not that I'm discounting Matt Damon's ability here.  However (and yes, this is going to be 'tweeny-fan' girly comment) my concern was less about his acting (which was good-that South African accent has to be extremely difficult to master), and more about how darn cute he is!  Everyone always thought I was crazy, but who was right? My opinion was completely vindicated when he was voted 'Sexiest Man Alive' one year.  It's nice to be right.  (Okay, girly moment over.) Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  I still don't understand organized sports, but hey, throw Matt Damon (Matt Damon with a great tan, a wunnerful accent and sun-bleached blond hair) in there and I'm game (no pun intended).)


(A picture from the New York archives of the blizzard of 1888 which crippled the city. Utility lines were rendered useless when they snapped under the weight of 22 inches of snow.)
It seems that for some time now, all weather reports concerning the east coast have centered around the phenomenon known as 'snow.' We here in North Carolina have felt particularly slighted, as we have not received our annual drifts.  For the past couple of weeks an undercurrent of hope and excitement has flowed beneath the surface; conversations have inevitably covered the upcoming whiteout.  The more sinister of us have searched for a flag pole and a willing dupe on which to test the old 'A Christmas Story' trick.  We huddled around our televisions, obsessively returning to the 'Weather on the 8's.'  We hung on every word which fell from the weatherman's wind-chapped lips.  Some of the more ambitious even began to record the transpiring events for the day when primary accounts would be needed for an epsiode of 'When Weather Changed History.' Eventually our patient hopes were rewarded.  We could expect a 'dusting.' An inch, to be more precise. A mix of rain and snow-a.ka. frigid, toe-numbing slush.  The carnival was slated to begin late Thursday night.  72-hour kits were obsessively gathered and checked.  Flashlight batteries were repeatedly tested.  Fleece blankets were pulled out of storage.  And I made the mistake of going to the grocery store at 5:30.  Honestly, I feared for my life, at the beginning at least.  Eventually, however, my attention was diverted from my own personal safety to the observation of the highly interesting cross-section of human nature displayed before me.  The store at which I was shopping happens to lie at a very interesting junction of three neighborhoods.  One is two sets of apartment complexes devoted to the hordes of pursurers of higher learning euphemistically known as 'college students.' Another is the city's first version of 90210.  The last is primarily populated by young couples with small children.  Let me just say that I now know how each demographic is going to react to the apocalypse.  Seriously, no kidding; one trip to the grocery store became an education in human nature. 

As I pulled into the parking lot I had a coronary.  There was absolutely no room in the inn.  Anywhere.  I couldn't even put one of the college students into a little extra beer money (we'll address that later) to give me his parking space.  Finally, after searching for that elusive, non-existent port I spotted one.  Right next to bright, shiny Cadillac.  As I waited patiently for the pedestrians to take their right of way (and taking their time taking that right.  It's flipping freezing for pete's sake! You'd think they'd hurry) I spotted the proud owner of the Caddy.  Apparently Hoke was off that night, Miss Daisy looked a little lost.  She passed my window.  I smiled.  She returned the smile.  I put on my blinker.  She pointed to the empty parking space next to her.  I nodded and smiled.  She acknowledged my affirmation.  She parked her cart in the parking space and opened the back door.  (Just so everyone knows, the plan was to park my car and offer to help her put her groceries in her car.  However, I valued my life too much to park my little red bumper in the middle of the lot and get out.  Tempers were a bit fragile and I believe I would have been bludgeoned with a case of beer had I held up progress.  And my car would have disappeared.  Trust me.)



On to the second group.  The logically impaired college students.  While domestic goddesses were WWF Monday Night Raw-ing it in the middle of the aisle for the preservation of their offspring, a preservation which came in the form of bread, milk and peanut butter, the entire cast of Animal House (and no, I've never seen that movie) was stocking up for Oktoberfest.  It's good to embrace other cultures; shows an open-mindedness, don't you think?  At any moment I expected some blonde fraulein in pig-tails and those German predecessors of the mini-skirt to appear and begin passing out frothy mugs while all the male proponents of cross-culture customs broke into an a cappella rendition of Das Deutstchlandlied.


That leaves the young mothers with their children.  The checkout lines were interminable.  Snow.  Adrenaline.  The very thought of no school the next day.  'Nough said.  If that doesn't sum it up well enough, perhaps this will.

Needless to say, it was a highly entertaining trip.  Who thought the grocery store could be so much fun?
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5 comments:

  1. Tim O'KeefeJanuary 8, 2010 at 10:28 PM

    So... You left us hanging. Didja get the snow?

    ReplyDelete
  2. KellyJanuary 9, 2010 at 10:15 AM

    sorry, i did, didn't i? and that was the funniest part of the whole thing-we saw nary a flake. nothing. zip. personally i was a bit glad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ryan and Heather MossJanuary 9, 2010 at 9:00 PM

    Okay, first of all I have to say..."I NEVER CALLED YOU CRAZY!" I was the crazy one that watched "The Talented Mr. Ripley" to drool over Matt Damon. UmmmmMISTAKE!!!

    Now I'll go back & finish reading the reast of your post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. MamafamiliasJanuary 9, 2010 at 9:04 PM

    Yep, it's a tossup between the Miss Daisys and the college students as to who's the biggest threat in this town. Throw in a possible hurricane/snow "storm"/the least little thing, and it's a true "get the women and children off the road" (and out of the grocery store) situation. A piece of advice to all who are reading out there - stay out of the grocery store the night before Thanksgiving as well. That's when all of us middle age women get vicious in the grocery store (ever seen what's her name in Fried Green Tomatoes? "I'm older and I have more insurance")

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ryan and Heather MossJanuary 9, 2010 at 9:06 PM

    I knew it! I knew that's what the college students were going for. That's all they've ever gone for when there's been a chance of snow.

    Emily was slightly disappointed the next morning but quickly recovered, surprisingly enough, when I told her, "Maybe next time." So that's what we're holding out for.

    Thanks for a new post! It made my night!

    ReplyDelete

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