Quotes and contemplations

[autographedcat]

I keep a quotes file. I've kept a quotes file since I was in college, although my original one was in a notebook and got lost in the fire, so the one I have currently only dates back a few years. In it, I note things that strike me as either funny or profound. Some of them are from famous people, but many of them are just things that see in the course of reading Livejournal or Usenet or mailing lists or whatever i happen to be perusing.

Sometimes, I go through it to see what jumps out at me, and then I ponder that for a while. It's a good way of focusing my mind, and sometimes I'll find that something hits me with a different or deeper meaning than it did when I first selected it.



"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
--Henry David Thoreau

"Love hurts. Not loving kills."
--Mike Whitaker (fleetfootmike)

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
--Anais Nin

"Love is something you do, not something you feel."
--Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher)

"It's a dangerous life, and none of us gets out of it alive. I weigh my fears against my joys, and try to make sure the latter tip the balance."
--Pat Kight (kightp)

"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark."
--Agnes de Mille

"We live in a world where joy is possible, love is possible, happiness is possible; where all things are possible, if we're willing to take the time, take a chance, take a breath and step off the edge of everything that is for the sake of everything that might be."
--Seanan McGuire (cadhla)

Comments

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

Cool. All of these speak to me. I'm going to paste them chez moi. Thank you for posting this :-)

I have another one for you

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

I have recently been surfing a new webcomic and finding various strips I enjoyed. This is my favorite.

[celticdragonfly.livejournal.com]

More commentary ... I keep meeting more people who read RLP that I wouldn't necessarily have expected to read his blog. His writing has been very helpful to me this last year or so. His quote makes me remember a song I am very fond of, "Something that We Do"

I have been thinking of starting an actual physical "commonplace book" and putting quotes I love into it. Sigh, it may, like various other projects, have to wait until I fully heal. Nice to see you are already doing something like that.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting these - you made me go look at my quote wall again. (Of interesting quotes from philosophy readings. I put it up years ago and stopped adding to it awhile back. But it was good to go reread it.)

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

"it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."

Reality can be quite a stressor, can't it. How people react says a bit about them.

"take a breath and step off the edge"

Why am I thinking of Indiana Jones confronting the chasm of the chalice? :)

Ann O.

[deborah_c]

Thank you... although... *cries*

I'm not entirely sure that the RLP quote, on the other hand, doesn't in some ways say the opposite to the others. It's either in vehement agreement, or diametrically opposed, I think.

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Hm. After a bit of contemplation, I'd have to go with a bit of polite disagreement with Agnes. I don't buy that a bit of a personal clue is such a bad thing. Other than that, they are all quite suitably poetic :)

[demoneyes.livejournal.com]

--"Love hurts. Not loving kills."

"In that moment, he was aware not only of how much he loved his companions but of how fragile they were. Of how fragile all of them were, even himself, and of how terribly it would hurt to lose any of them. He saw the stark price of love more clearly in that instant than he ever had before.
The price of loss. The knowledge that, in the end, he must lose anyone he loved, for only elves were immortal, and even elves died. Yet it wasn't a depressing awareness, for the pain he would feel if he lost his loved ones was the other side of how much joy he took from their company. He could avoid the pain only by renouncing the joy and the trust and the knowledge that he was not alone, and building that sort of armor around his core would simply be a different sort of death."
David Weber - The War God's Own

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Food for thought...thank you.

More later

[eiblyn.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the inspiration. I too have a quote book. I've kept it since I was in high school. And your Thoreau quote I have on a magnet on my fridge...which is across from my bed so I see it every morning when I wake up. It's a great way to start the day and remind myself how I want to live my life.

[ohiblather.livejournal.com]

"Love is something you do, not something you feel."
--Gordon Atkinson (Real Live Preacher)

This is sooooooooooooooooooooooo true!

[poltr1]

I gotta compile my favorite quotes into a list. Some of my faves:

"There is only one of you. Fearlessly be yourself!"
-author unknown

"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive."
-Elbert Hubbard

Cage Of Freedom

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

There's a similar image from the Giorgio Moroder rock soundtrack to the colorized Metropolis remake.
"'Til every wall now touches the skin". Oh how I love that song. The whole album, actually.

http://www.yesworld.com/lyrics/CageOfFreedom.html

Ann O.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Going back to this again, I'm not sure love is a verb rather than a noun. The *expression* of love is a verb, certainly.

And sometimes that expression of love lies in not expressing it.

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, and for sure, that may be the hardest of all. Been there, done that, wished I'd not waited quite so long. :-(

My quotes

[zencuppa.livejournal.com]

Here is one of my own quotes, and a great question that I saw on a coffee cup, that I use as a "check" to see how I am doing. Both quotes help me take hard look at my work and goals, to make sure I am doing what I *want* not the safe *shoulds.*

"A goal is a dream with a deadline."

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

Both quotes are why I am a freelance business writer :-)