Thursday, July 21, 2011

borrowed words, Part One

I have a small, grimy blue notebook about a third full of quotes I collected over a period of a few years.  None of them are dated, but judging from the changes in the handwriting, I'd say it looks like I started in in high school (roundish printing, short capitals, the typewriter "a"), went through college (smaller, less round mix of cursive and printing with the occasional experiment interjecting capitals where they do not belong), possibly into post-college Japan years (judging from the Alexander Pope and Kahlil Gibran quotes).

These quotes probably won't interest anyone but me - they're my history, after all.  I'm not really posting them here for you (although they may have some entertainment value, who knows?).  I don't want to keep the inconvenient little binder they're in, but I can't quite bear to lose all the quotes, either, despite the fact that it's been years since I looked at them.  It would feel a bit like throwing away my baby book.

So, what better place to preserve my collection of quotes than .... my blog!!!

Since it's too much for even me to handle in one sitting, I'll break it into parts.  I present to you, Part One, ordered as they were recorded:

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.  ~ Sir Thomas Browne

What web is this,
Of what will be, is, 
       and was?
                              ~ Jorge Luis Borges

There was a star danced, and under that I was born.  ~ William Shakespeare

A baby is the most complicated object made by unskilled labor.  ~ anonymous

The youth of art is, like the youth of anything else, its most interesting period.  ~ Samuel Butler

As for me, let my bones and flesh be burned, and the ashes dropped in the moving waters, and if my name shall live at all, let it be found among Books, the only garden of forget-me-nots, the only human device for perpetuating this personality.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Glory be to stubbornness!  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

Come, be agreeable, for you will have little competition, and are pretty sure to succeed.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as brave as the zodiac.  ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Each of you, individually, walkest with the tread of a fox, but collectively ye are geese.  ~ Solon

I think, therefore I am.  ~ Rene Descartes

Man is by nature a social animal.  ~ Aristotle

Truth is arrived at by the painstaking process of eliminating the untrue.  ~ Arthur Conon Doyle

Physical activity has a peculiar luminous effect upon the judgement.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

All the religion that is of any account is what we thresh out with our own hands, suffer out with our own hearts, and find out with our own visions.  ~ Dr. Frank Crane

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