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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)
Grad School Can Turn You Into a Poet-Or not
Well, prior to the eventful weather occurrences of last week, the fall semester began. Here at the beach house we had, and I kid you not, a tornado on Monday, an earthquake on Tuesday and a hurricane on Friday. Not good for my pre-semester jitters. By the time the nervousness of a new semester and the onslaught of natural events of a particularly sinister type were over I was nearly ready to invest in some white pajamas and take up ping-pong.....Actually, that's a lie. I didn't even know about the tornado until Tuesday, so worrying about it was completely useless by that point, the novelty of experiencing an earthquake made it a little more exciting than upsetting, and I slept through the hurricane.....However, the thought of the semester beginning did have me eyeing Krispy Kreme donuts with nothing short of envy and greed, but I satisfied myself with working my way through two packages of Chips Ahoy in as many days.
And yet, as with so many other things in my life, I seem to have wasted a good stress for nothing. So far, it seems as if this semester may prove to be a bit less.......hmmmm, how shall I put this......ummmmmm "murderous"? "devastating"? "turn you into Haley Joel Osment in 'The Sixth Sense'"? (you know, that "freaked out, maladjusted, tortured kid with a white patch in his head from all of the trauma of conversing with dead people" kind of basket case). Anyway, like I said, seems like this semester might be a trifle more manageable. Which in itself has me worried. I mean, does this mean it actually will be better or is it just lulling me into a false sense of security before it springs the whole, "All the better to EAT you with, my dear!!!!" on you right before you're ravenously devoured in one bite? Or maybe I'm just beginning to suffer from Stockholm Syndrome? How do you know if you're experiencing Stockholm Syndrome symptoms? I mean, it isn't like it is listed on Medline Plus' website or anything. (It really isn't-I checked.) So, anyway, as I was sitting in class, my mind began to wander (don't worry, mother, it was only the last five minutes or so...I think?) and here is the result of said wandering. While I am no poet, I recognized as a child that my strengths leaned more to the prose end of the spectrum, here is my humble contribution to the world of Stockholm Syndromed Graduate Student Poetry. I hear the market for it is growing.......
To all Grad students far from home
Beware of a syndrome currently on loan
From that city in Sweden called Stockholm.
The disease, while not mortal,
Though this may make you chortle,
Creates such confusion
Indeed, the delusion
That one's captor means no harm,
Even has a certain charm;
And who, in the end,
May even be a friend.
This is rather unfortunate,
For no matter how importunate,
While attending university
It's nearly a dead certainty-
A hostage striving for academic potential
Usually just ends up a tiny bit mental.
All in all I think it was a pretty productive first day of class.
Now THAT is impressive! And you rhymed and everything (as opposed to "We shave our legs and stomp roaches).
ReplyDeletelove you!
Ahh, graduate school. The Neverland of the overachievers among us. Feeling better about your digs can only be a good thing, right? I hope the semester turns out well for you.
ReplyDeleteLoved the poetry. You must have had some spare time on your hands. That's a god thing, right? Another calling maybe? After you publish that first novel?
HA! I wrote god thing, but I meant good thing. Or maybe I meant GOD thing. That is my most frequent typo.
ReplyDelete