Quotations to Remember

I see as I begin to compose this message that it has been a year since I created this blog. A year. Twelve full months. A lot has happened in those months, of course, but to think that twelve of them have gone by completely boggles my mind. And then I note how few posts I have made in the course of those twelve months, and I have to smile. It's not that I haven't had anything to say; quite the opposite, in fact. But there are so many things that it would be so imprudent to say online, where they will live on in perpituity, that the trouble has been finding things to say that won't get me into trouble at some point down the line. I have no quarrel with trouble in general, when it comes from standing up for something I believe in. But I would prefer that a potential future employer not find my site and discover that I support medical marijuana, for example, and assume that I am a pothead, or find that my political rantings directly conflict with her own. These are subjects best left to the sphere of in-person conversation, I believe, at least for now.

So why have a blog? Well, because I can. And just in case I ever have something to say -- and a desire to sit down at my computer during one of my few free hours in order to say it-- that I feel like putting out there for anyone and everyone to see. Today, I felt like posting a handful of quotes that I find particularly inspiring, or beautiful, or entertaining. That way, if I should ever lose any of the small slips of paper on which I have collected them, I still won't have lost them. Because, after all, once they're online, they're there to stay.

So, without further ado, today's collection:

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be under the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison [Think we can manage to slip a copy of "The Federalist Papers" to George W.? He might learn something.]

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- E. Hemingway

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -- J. M. Barrie

One of my greatest pleasures in writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the saddening realization that such people rarely read. -- John Kenneth Galbraith

Soyez comme l'oiseau posé pour un instant
sur des rameaux trop frêles
qui sent ployer la branche, et qui chante pourtant
sachant qu'il a des ailes -- Victor Hugo, "Les Chants du crépuscule"
Translation: Be like the bird perched for a moment
on branches too weak
who feels the branch give way, and sings anyway
knowing that he has wings.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head. -- T. Roosevelt

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. -- Edmund Burke

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. -- Herm Albright

L'âme a des illusions comme l'oiseau a des ailes; c'est ce qui la soutient. -- Victor Hugo
Translation: The soul has illusions like the bird has wings; that's what sustains it.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. -- Anne Lammott

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it. -- Brendan Francis

If everyone likes you, you have failed to stand up for something important. -- ??