I collect quotes like one collects stamps or stones. I do it in a compulsive manner, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re everyone: rewritten in margins, four notebooks, in my phone as texts to myself. I feel that as if I were to write down every inspirational quote that I find in my paper-strewn path, that they might lend me some of their own prowess. And perhaps, as a result of dutifully compiling quotes, I could feel what it might be like to write something so profound, so powerful in a single paragraph, a single phrase (or less) myself \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to feel the words as they fall from the fingertips and imagine what that must feel like. Like little vignettes in themselves, these quotes are the cruxes, the essence of contexts vast and mysterious, and before the authors of these quotes utter them into existence, one would not be able to believe they could be articulated. They are observations of the truth captured in a beautifully concise, linguistic format. And they are readily available to be admired by you and I. Personally, I believe that writing tiny kernels of wisdom requires a sort of genius \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a genius to distill the convoluted down to a manageable essence while not compromising the initial intricacies, the serpentine coils and twists of life\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 they say so much without being overstated and gaudy.<\/p>\n
Here are some of my favorite quotes that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written down in dire haste within a wide array of note pages and such. I hope that they instill in you some feeling of grandeur as they have done for me.<\/p>\n
With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like quicksand \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to die.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Sylvia Plath<\/p><\/blockquote>\nEmerson, for instance, left his sick wife, Lidian, and their young children in Thoreau\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s care to go to Europe in 1847, writing coldly to Lidian, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcI foresee plainly that the trick of solitariness never can leave me.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d from the preface to The Journal of Henry David Thoreau 1837-1861<\/p><\/blockquote>\nA living entity that regarded its means of survival as evil, would not survive. A plant that struggled to mangle its roots, a bird that fought to break its wings would not remain for long in the existence they affronted. But the history of man has been a struggle to deny and to destroy his mind.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d John Galt<\/p><\/blockquote>\nActual happiness looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamor of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Brave New World, Aldous Huxley<\/p><\/blockquote>\nChaos was the law of nature; order was the dream of man.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Henry Brooks Adams<\/p><\/blockquote>\nYou\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll find that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re by no means alone on that score, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll learn from them \u00e2\u20ac\u201d if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t education. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetry.
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAlgebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation?
\n\u00e2\u20ac\u201d Les Miserables, Victor Hugo<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhat are some of your favorite quotes?<\/p>\n
Sue majors in Neuroscience & English and tends to lurk in bookstores.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I collect quotes like one collects stamps or stones. I do it in a compulsive manner, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re everyone: rewritten in margins, four notebooks, in my phone as texts to myself. I feel that as if I were to write down every inspirational quote that I find in my paper-strewn path, that they might lend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":785,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583\/revisions\/785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}