Showing posts with label quotations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quotations. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

More memorable quotations

Another find when I cleaned the closets this summer: a page of quotations from Forbes magazine in the 1980s. Here's a few:

"Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem, in my opinion, to characterize our age." ~ Albert Einstein

"Nothing ages people like not thinking." ~ Christopher Morley

"It is better to create than to be learned; creating is the true essence of life." ~ Reinhold Neibuhr

"It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done." ~ Oscar Wilde

"The constructive loafer uses his mind during the act of loafing, but he does not try to control his mind. In other words, loafing is educated day-dreaming. I do not plead for more loafing. I defend a reasonable amount of honest loafing as a tonic that is good for the body, mind, and spirit." ~ William Feather


Now I'm going to go do some loafing today. Maybe with scrapbooking products near me...

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Memorable quotes

Thank you for everyone who votes for me! I do get the privilege of being the Guest Designer at Sketchy Thursdays this month. More to share later...

When I was cleaning out my closets earlier this summer, I found a pile of poems, letters, and cartoons that I had copied and kept. Some of them I want to share. Here's a lovely one written by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his daughter :

Dear Pie:

I feel very strongly about your doing [your] duty. Would you give me a little more documentation about your reading in French? I am glad you are happy—but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.

All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly. If there is such a volume in the camp library, will you ask Mrs. Tyson to let you look up a sonnet of Shakespeare’s in which the line occurs Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Have had no thoughts today, life seems composed of getting up a Saturday Evening Post story. I think of you, and always pleasantly; but if you ever call me “Pappy” again I am going to take the White Cat out and beat his bottom hard, six times for every time you are impertinent. Do you react to that?


I will arrange the camp bill.


Halfwit, I will conclude. Things to worry about:

Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship…

Things not to worry about:

Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
Don’t worry about the past
Don’t worry about the future
Don’t worry about growing up
Don’t worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don’t worry about triumph
Don’t worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don’t worry about mosquitoes
Don’t worry about flies
Don’t worry about insects in general
Don’t worry about parents
Don’t worry about boys
Don’t worry about disappointments
Don’t worry about pleasures
Don’t worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:

What am I really aiming at?
How good am I in comparison to my contemporaries in regards to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

With dearest love.

- F. Scott Fitzgerald