“Collecting quotations is an insidious, even embarrassing habit, like ragpicking or hoarding rocks or trying on other people’s laundry. I got into it originally while trying to break an addiction to candy. I kicked candy and now seem to be stuck with quotations, which are attacking my brain instead of my teeth.” ~Robert Byrne
A few months ago I started writing – by hand – all of my favorite quotes I’ve used in the past 3 1/2 years. ‘Tis true that at times some quotes bear repeating depending on the situation and other times I use a quote just because it makes me think or laugh and the quote is the impetus for the conversation I would like to have. Anyway, when I tried writing the quotes by hand I got a cramp after the third one and I am currently battling an ass-whooping case of insomnia that has me brimming with brilliant ideas after 10 PM.
Every night.
For a week.
A brief digression to say that it is probably due to the general stress and underlying sadness of my life as of late and really it’s nothing a little melatonin can’t cure but still a royal pain in the ass because I keep seeing 2 AM. Spoiler Alert! It’s like getting smacked in the nose with the business end of a pitching wedge.
This evening I decided to use a tumblr site I’ve had for ages to start collecting my absolute favorite quotes already used and ones I will eventually come across and also because I am a quote collector. Some people go for stamps or model trains or beer bottles circa 1956 but I am all about the quotes.
Here’s the site: Hedder I’m Here. I’d explain the title and the tagline but that would just take more time than I have right now because the melatonin! It works! And I’m ready to sleep! So feel free to leave in the comments or email your favorite quotes because seriously, I’m always looking for new ones.
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Kyran introduced me to this one…my favorite by a landslide:
“I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” — Theodore I. Rubin, MD
my bff says “we do the best we can and when we know better, we do better.”
And one of my favorites, “our greatest glory consists not in never falling but rising every time we fall.”
“I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.” -Dorothy Parker
A girl has got to pay the bills….haha
My dad, to my sister, when she was a teenager:
“If you lie down with dogs, little girl, you get up with fleas.”
A couple of favourites from friends over the years:
“Lower your expectations, but not your standards.” (when I was lamenting my dating life)
“It always works out in the end. If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.”
“You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time, all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” (Charles Bukowski)
“We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” ~Author Unknown
“there will come a day, when you will feel like shit, and you’ll want to give up on this life, and everything else. When that day arrives, save yourself some troubles and don’t do a thing. Just take a nap”-www.wordboner.com
“we accept the love we think we deserve”-postsecret
“Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time,” A Course in Miracles.
I’ve got a lack of inhibition
I’ve got a loss of perspective
I’ve had a little bit to drink
and it’s making me think
that I can jump ship and swim
that the ocean will hold me
that there’s got to be more
than this boat I’m in
‘cuz they can call me crazy if I fail
all the chance that I need
is one-in-a-million
and they can call me brilliant
if I succeed
gravity is nothing to me, moving at the speed of sound
I’m just going to get my feet wet
until I drown
- Ani Difranco (from Swan Dive)
My all time favorites:
“For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.” -T.S. Eliot
“Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” -Hemingway
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” -Jack Kerouac
“Barns burnt down-now I can see the moon.” -Masahide
“Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.” ~Albert Einstein
compare:
“Thoughts without content are empty. Intuitions without concepts are blind.” ~Immanuel Kant
In both first cases there must be something for the subject to be ABOUT, or else what’s the point? And in both the second cases there must be something for the subject to be filtered through, or else it has no value.
“Try not.
Do…or do not.
There is no try”
- Yoda
Anything said by Mark Twain. A couple of favs:
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.”
“Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.”
“Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”
Hundreds more, of course. He had such a way with words. And humor.
“What is decency? It is trying to do your share, add to the world, help your friends and create something great. I can’t sit here and worry about religion. Its not my business to worry about heaven and hell. I could be dead tomorrow. Now pass the peanuts.”
-Katherine Hepburn
“Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.” -ingrid bengis
“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” -duke elington
I keep mine on individual “slides” in a power point file… It’s got over 300!
“And in the end, the love we take will be equal to the love we make.” – The Beatles
“A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.” The Wizard to the Tin Man, Wizard of Oz
“A hard man is good to find.”
I’m a quotes junkie also. I keep a journal by my bed which contains quotes, future baby names, books I’d like to read, dream recollections, and lots of those brilliant 2 am ideas you speak of.
A few faves:
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates
“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“The worst feeling is suddenly realizing that you don’t measure up. And that in the past, when you thought you did, you were a fool.” – Angela Chase, My So-Called Life
I love quotes so much. I keep them in a mini moleskine, but just lost two of them which I’m totally bummed about. This is such a great idea.
I don’t really collect quotes, but I know there was a great one by Cicero that had to do with friendship. I saw it in a book about Lincoln and it’s rattled around in my head off and on ever since, but I just can’t remember it right now. So when I find the book, I’ll let you know =)
All you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure.
-Mark Twain
“It isn’t the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.”
-Unknown
“I can be changed by what happens to me, but I refused to be reduced by it.” Maya Angelou
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” Ghandi
“Life is not easy” Scott Peck – for sure a “no shit” quote, but it’s nice to see it validated in print. He continues, “This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult–once we truly understand and accept it–then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”
Anything by Sark.
Finally this poem by Hafiz just because it has some awesome lines in it.
“TIRED OF SPEAKING SWEETLY”
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town”
Oh, I thought of another one, from my island:
“Cow don’t make goat!”
(it means the equivalent of “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!”)
LOVE that one.
Of course I can’t think of a favorite right now, but I just have to say that “Hedder I’m Here” brought a tear to my eye. Aw!
I’d like to come up with something all prolific and what not, but instead I’ll go with the one that always stands out to me:
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”
They say it’s Dr. Seuss, but it really wasn’t. So I guess I’ll say – Unknown.
I love Tumblr. I’ve got one too, more of a mental scrapbook that I keep separated from my usual blog world. My escape of sorts.