I have been told, in no uncertain terms, that I need to cease referring to this exercise as “Crap”. “If it is crap, why are you doing it?” “Why did you mention me as crap?” Etcetera. You get the picture. So, no more crap. I need to be more positive and upbeat!
Well, anyway, today’s exercise is to tell my favorite quote. I have more than a few prized quotes, how am I supposed to choose just one as a favorite?
First there is Hunter S. Thompson, “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.” I should have that on a t-shirt or something.
And then there is Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
And then George Herbert‘s “Living well is the best revenge.” That one is often associated with some of the writings and life of F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Then every once in a while I will get really literary and quote W.B Yeats, “Come away, O human child! / To the waters and the wild / With a faery, hand in hand, / For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.” I love that. Such feeling. But it really doesn’t fit in conversation well without freaking out the folk you are talking to. Quotes like this will leave you sitting at your own table, by yourself, in the lunch room.
One more before the final. “The difference between adventure and adversity is attitude.” Most of the sites I found attributed this to Michael Argast, but I am not so sure. Somehow relates to what my mom used to say, “it’s not out of your way if your going there!”
OK, but I have beaten around the bushes long enough (bushes have leaves, like book pages are leaves. Get it?) So, here without further ado or waffling on my part is what I consider to be my #1 favorite quote. From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I guess it counts as a quote, though it is long. It is a passage.
`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ Alice speaks to Cheshire Cat
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
`I don’t much care where–‘ said Alice.
`Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
`–so long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.’
I have always loved that interchange. It sums up so much of life. People ask what they should do, but they don’t even know where they are trying to get to. And on the other hand, if you do something, anything, you are bound to get somewhere. It is all a matter of goals and expectations. Looking back up at my quotes, a lot of them seem to deal with that.
