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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)
'Criminal Minds' and ADD
There is this great show my mom and I got hooked on when a co-worker of mine suggested it. The title of the series was "Lark Rise to Candleford," and let me just say it was an amazingly, insanely addictively wonderful show. All of it. Anyway, my point for telling this is not only to encourage people to watch it because it is great but because of what one of the characters would often say. When she was getting a new dress she'd say that clothes were her 'one weakness,' or that good food was her 'one weakness.' Whatever she indulged in at the moment was her one weakness. Well, one of my weaknesses is another television show, "Criminal Minds." I could never watch it while I lived at home because I knew it would only feed into my loving mother's occasionally irrational fears about the safety of....well, everyone. My sister doesn't even like me to mention the title. Of course, I'm the one who used to get freaked out by the theme song for "Unsolved Mysteries," so I guess I'm really the wimp in the crowd. Anyway, I love to watch them solve the mystery by observing how (or if) someone puts their pencil back in the desk drawer. It's kinda like "House" without all the personal drama-I don't like personal drama, just give me the case that needs solving and solve it. (Also, I've loved me some Thomas Gibson ever since his 'Darma and Greg' and 'Far and Away' days...)
Whenever we voted on board games when I was a kid I always voted for either 'Clue' or 'Trivial Pursuit.' My sister always voted for 'Monopoly,' but I suck at math and business so it was always a short game. I've never really given up on that whole thrill of solving the mystery. When a friend and I went on a photography trip a while back we both got a big kick out of driving past the sign for Quantico. I suggested we do the whole tourist thing and drive up, jump out of the car and ask the security guard to take a picture of us in front of the sign, but I don't think the FBI would have found it nearly as amusing as us. If it wasn't for the whole obsessive compulsive homicidal nut job thing you have to deal with on a daily basis I think profiling would be a blast for a career. Whenever I watch the show I always wonder how the 'team' would profile me (not that I'd ever turn into an obsessive compulsive homicidal nut job, but you know what I mean). Actually, I'd just love to sit down and tell Thomas Gibson anything he wants to know about me, especially if he was in the period clothing from 'Far and Away.' So, I decided to try out my own 'Criminal Minds' chops and profile myself. Here goes:
I have multiple half used, year old bottles of vitamins-shows that the intention to be healthy is there, but the attention span is not; probably exhibits signs of classic ADD behavior
Moved exercise weights to a new apartment, but indentation in the carpet proves they haven't been used since the move-in a month ago-see above
all movies alphabetized-shows signs of control issues....or, can't find anything without some kind of system and doesn't have the patience to look for very long for any particular item; irritation due to presence of ADD characteristics
cds categorized by genre and alphabetized within categories-control freak with ADD issues
two closets of shoes-deep rooted envy for Imelda Marcos, pre-revolution
stacks of unread library books next to bed, on desk, next to couch-good intentions but ADD
book collection centered around classic sarcastic authors such as Austen, Lewis and occasionally Dickens-people skills underdeveloped due to an overdeveloped sense of sarcasm
some classics, such as Milton's 'Paradise Lost' are well creased in the spine a third of the way through-shows multiple attempts to finish, but no success thus far......ADD?
Hmmmm. I think I might be ADD. But I have a great shoe collection.
Hey, I've got the perfect character for your first novel... An observant, sarcastic librarian, slightly obsessive, funny - in a dry witted kind of way, seeker of knowledge and beauty, family oriented with excellent old school taste in music. As she studies in the college of library science, and then later as a rich-researcher-librarian-type (the series will be so successful that readers will have to follow her through various ages and stages of her life), she solves crimes when the police come to her with cases in which they desperately need a brilliant criminal profiler.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah. She is a little ADD too.
I'm with Tim.
ReplyDeleteAnd heck - just do like me and flip to the end of the book to see whodunit. Let's talk ADD shall we?
And I'm proud of your shoe collection. Who's your mama?