"It's not the years in your life that count
...it's the life in your years"
Abraham Lincoln

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing."
-Sylvia Plath

That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along.
-Madeleine L'Engle

"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."
-Calvin Coolidge

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been'"
-John Greenleaf Whittier

"How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart you begin to understand there is no going back? There are some things time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep... and take hold."
-J.R.R. Tolkien (as Frodo)

"Often the test of courage is not to die but to live."
- Vittorio Alfieri

"Break the bones and the body will heal. Break the spirit and the body will die."
-Anonymous

"Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth."
-Ludwig Borne

"Too much awareness is a sickness; it keeps me awake all night."
-Yi Cho-nyon

"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong."
-Sir Winston Churchill

"In foresight life takes forever while a glance back reduces it to an instant."
-Christopher Copeland

"Darkness never really goes away, once you've seen it."
-Anne Rice

"The cruelest lies are often told in silence."
-Robert Louis Stevenson

"The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition."
-Henry Miller

"Pain is our mother. She makes us recognize each other."
-Linford Detweiler, "Nobody Number One"

"Doubts are more cruel than the worst of truths."
-Jean-Baptiste Molière

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am. I am. I am."
-Sylvia Plath

"Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself."
-Plato

"Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things they way they really are or people might think we're stupid."
-Jules Feiffer


I could go on.

"Sex, drugs & rock & roll. Take out the drugs and you've got more room for the other two." - Steven Tyler

"A mind is like a parachute. It doesnt work if it's not open." - Frank Zappa

"Look, I'm not a perfect person. I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble. I wear suits that are cheap. But I say what I think and I believe what I say, and I'm willing to say things that are not popular but ordinary people know are right." - Howard Dean

"If you went up to the head of Sony music, put a gun to his head, and asked him to play a C scale, he'd be a dead man." - Steve Lukather (Toto)

"As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both." - Bono

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace." - John Lennon

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained. mark twain

As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
john cage

"Rembrandt painted 700 pictures. Of these, 3,000 are still in existence."
Wilhelm Bode.

I write [music] as a sow piddles.
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Welcome to my world...how often I wished for the gift of ignorance.

from Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

"Have you reckoned a thousand acres much? Have you reckoned
the earth much?
Have you practiced so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin
of all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are
millions of suns left,"

"And to die is different than anyone supposes, and luckier"

"Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."

**********

"You teach best what you most need to learn." ~From The Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul, Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

"Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them so much."
- Oscar Wilde

"That she beloved knows naught that knows not this:
Men prize the thing ungain'd more than it is.
That she was never yet that ever knew
Love got so sweet as when desire did sue.
Therefore, this maxim out of love I teach:
Achievement is command; ungain'd, beseech."
- William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

I'm sure I'll think more more soon enough, though I'll leave all my favorite Whitman quotes in the care of Anna.

Oh, good one Becky! Here's my favorite serious Shakespeare quote, from Hamlet, Act II, Scene II:

"I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinte in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me,—no, nor woman neither..."

that and this quote from Cowboy Junkies, Bea's Song, perfectly articulate the down side of manic depression for me:

"With each passing year that I sit here
that horizon seems to inch just that much nearer
and all that appears on it seems as clear as spit.
But if there's one thing in my life
that these years have taught
it's that you can always see it coming
but you can never stop it.

Speed River at my feet running low and flat
I'm sitting here burning daylight,
thinking about the past
and that distance out there
where the earth meets the sky.
The slightest move and this river mud
pulls me further down
John's at my side,
but he's not noticing that I'm drowning."



Dunno if you're aware, but last Friday was the 112th anniversary of Whitman's death.

Hamlet is one of my favorites. So many great speeches out of that play.

I wasn't aware that last Friday marked Walt's passing. Dear dirty old man. Song of Myself is one of my favorite poems.

Good thread, dear Trudes.

"When we get our spiritual house in order, we'll be dead. This goes on. You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don't expect faith to clear things up for you. It is trust, not certainty."
Flanner O'Connor

"We would rather be ruined than changed."
W.H. Auden

"Live not for battles won. Live not for the-end-of-the-song. Live in the along."
Gwendolyn Brooks, Speech to the Young. Speech to the Progress-Toward

"Help me, someone, help my crude tongue. Where is my silver tongue? Aren't I meant to speak of God?"
Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

"A man should carry two stones in his pocket. On one should be inscribed, "I am but dust and ashes." On the other, "For my sake was the world created." And he should use each stone as he needs it."
A Jewish rabbi, name unknown

"It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt."
Dostoevsky

"In a way I've never quite understood, the veil tore an inch for me that day, like it does every so often, when in the midst of all that is mundane and day-to-day, there's suddenly a tiny tear in the veil, and you see the bigger brighter thing, and then the veil repairs itself, and the day goes on as before."
Anne Lamott, All New People

You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.
Bob Dylan

I believe in You even through the tears and the laughter.
Bob Dylan

I need a shot of love.
Bob Dylan

Yes, "n' how many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned?
Bob Dylan

He not busy being born is busy dying.
Bob Dylan

Even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.
Bob Dylan

Love is just a four letter word.
Bob Dylan

Something is happening here but you don't know what it is do you, Mr. Jones?
Bob Dylan

Yes, I wish that just for one time you could stand inside my shoes, you'd know what a drag it is to see you.
Bob Dylan

Everybody must get stoned.
Bob Dylan

Gotta kick at the darkness 'till it bleeds daylight.
Bruce Cockburn

It's only rock and roll, but I like it.
Mick & Keith

*sigh*

There's nothing I can say that Bob hasn't already said better.

"I'd like to rename all of the major periods of philosophy after types of fruit."
- Brandon Gregory

Here are some of the best from my theater days. I recorded many more that were funny at the time, but I think these work well out of context too:

"Girl Scouts taught me how to hang people."
- Kelly Caniglia

"You hate me? You're gonna hate my hand in a second!"
- Kim Murray

"It's like patty-cake, only with deadly weapons."
- Katey Parker

“So you’re like, ‘Whoa,’ and then he’s like, ‘Whoa,’ and then you’re both like, ‘Whoa.’ [pause] Oh my God, sometimes I’m the world’s stupidest director.”
- Richard Width

“I prefer my smell of body odor, shaving cream, and chalk. It’s the smell of love.”
- David Dowell

"My third eye is bright and shining. It's my Nirvana into the mists."
- Jenn Kahn

“A diamond won’t run out on you. A diamond won’t say, ‘Bitch, where’s my dinner?’ A diamond won’t say, ‘I want a boy child.’”
- Meaghan Fenner (on why diamonds are a girl's best friend)

Colossal hijack

sorry Becky

from michael wilsons: heads bowed, eyes closed, no one looking around

there's this restless moving inside tonight, It's got no name no face no size no shape no over no under no visible mother no predictable finish...nothing but this strange power to suck you dry and leave you numb, this power to keep you in your room tonight...again. I'm not that old yet and it's not that bad really.


but to some extent we are all of us warm containers of pain. at times, it would seem that we are that and little else...but really...


that may seem strange; life is strange, i open my eyes. i rest my case. and here's to truth in cliche. i will close my eyes.

I sure liked what you shared analoguegirl.

hijack

thanks nichole,

michael wilson and glenn gould are my heros.
d.


end hijack

I didn't know such things existed in the world! (Okay, I did. And though I may be fairly sheltered, I'm rarely offended, so I recovered after a few blinks. )

Deb, where did you find your copy of Michael Wilson's book?

</END HIJACK>

hijack

ummmmmmmm.
(covers head with arms and shrinks)
he sent it to me years ago.

i'd quote the whole thing if i could. it's my fave book, maybe even more fave that the little prince.

let's get get a petition to get it reprinted. with enough deposits, i wonder if he would?
besides, he is sooooooooo humble he should know how much people want to see his stuff reprinted.

end hijack

OK, ya know what? Just take the thread. Go with it.

I would so totally love to have a copy...

There are more old drunks than there are old doctors. - Willie Nelson

24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? - Stephen Wright

The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give....in any case the giving of love is an education in itself.
Eleanor Roosevelt

"it's hard being a living artist. so, whenever necessary, i just pretend i'm already dead. it frees things up and makes every new piece feel like a bonus."
--joe scanlan


*more later*


-j

Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so
that other people won't feel insecure around you.

~Marianne Williamson

We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown.
We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin.
At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And Lo! It is our own.

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."

Dr. Seuss

"slam!"

Onyx

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Oscar Wilde

"We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us." Henry David Thoreau (sort of an ironic quote to post on an internet message board )

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly. ~Don Juan Matus

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is a alive." -Jack London, Call of the Wild.

"We look before and after and pine for what is not
Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught
Our sweetest songs are those that tell the saddest thought"

- Um, maybe wordsworth...I can't remember offhand. But I love that one. Because it is true.

And one of my personal faves, "I have a lot of angst." boy, does that ever sum things up...

"it ain't heaven yet" bill pentad

"How much further we got to go?" -Billy
"I don't know." -Wyatt
"Not much further." -The Stranger
"That's what you said this morning." -Billy
"I sometimes say it all day." -The Stranger

-Dialogue from Easy Rider

"If you were right, I'd agree with you."

"thank you my champion" ~ mom

"Please read the guidelines." -Drew

That one cracks me up every time...

~fyyff

"I see your duty, and I raise you three duties."
- my professor, commenting on a one-upsmanship passage in Dracula

“ *gasp!* Strongbad is on your T-shirt! Cool.” ~Michael Wilson

since we've had serious ones from such a multifaceted personality...
~m

oh man, bad question to ask dani...me loves quotes.

i find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. Groucho Marx

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. H. L. Mencken

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. Juan Ramon Jiminez


Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
-- C.S. Lewis

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."
-- C.S. Lewis

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 no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round 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, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
-- C.S. Lewis

When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all. -- C.S. Lewis

To be trusted is a greater complement than to be loved. -- George MacDonald

"If I could comprehend God completely, God wouldn't be worth bothering about. I'm finite, God is infinite; the finite cannot comprehend the infinite. But we get enough glimpses." - l'engle

and of course:

"if we try to make heaven out of earth, we'll destroy the earth, trying to suck something out of it that's not there, trying to satisfy hungers that can't be satisfied down here. we enjoy this life, but we know there is more to come. we are immortal." - linford d.

I know I've quoted thsi before, but what the heck.....

You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older, and now you're even older, and now you're even older. You're older thanyou've ever been, and now you're older still.

- They Might be Giants

"If beauty is truth how come no one gets their hair done at the library?"
-Lily Tomlin

"Bill Shakespere is a great poet but Burt Bachrach he ain't"
-Theatre director Dr. Desmond Forrest Oates (aka Martin Short)

"Was there only one world after all which spent its time dreaming of others?"
- Philip Pullman

"I am so uncreative. I sound like an Over the Rhine boardie without even going there." - my sister


Trust me, it isn't as bad as it sounds. But it's so darn funny!

"I said little beached whale! It's a term of endearment!"
- a male friend trying to justify a comment about his girlfriend

"not being a banana"

-harry belafonte, when asked to reveal his greatest regret.

Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.

"Strange is our situation here upon earth. However, there's one thing that we do know. Man is here for the sake of other men, above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends. And also for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy." -- Albert Einstein, quoted by Chris in an episode of Northern Exposure

Excellent use of Vonnegut.

"Of course she's a virgin, she looks depressed and alone."
- my friend Mika, on identifying a picture of the Virgin Mary

Does anybody know who said it first? I've seen it several different languages, and the symbolism is so strong that one would think it was somewhat older...

Patrik

Corn Chips are a vegetable! They are made of corn!
Katie, my six year old

It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?

-Blade Runner