July 13 , 2008
What Quotes Have You Read Lately That Speak To You?
I’m quite illiterate, but I read a lot.” Holden Caufield in Catcher in the
Rye, p. 18
As I finish Edith Wharton’s classic short novel Ethan Frome this week, my
habit is to make lots of notations on the margins. A circled word and a
capital V in the margin indicates a vocabulary word I am not sure of, and is
flagged to look up later, & a capital Q in the margin marks a great quote.
Rapidly-filling margins of V’s and Q’s indicate Wharton’s deceptively simple
but painstaking manner of crafting words and giving images her unique hue
have won my heart.
What quotes have caught your eye recently in journals, novels or articles
that you have read recently that have spoken to your heart or soul that you’
d like to pass along? In the past few months, here are a few that spoke to
me:
"A work of art introduces us to emotions which we have never cherished
before.” Rabbi Abraham Heschel
“Behind fear is powerlessness.” Gary Zukav.
“Called or not called, God shall be there." Carl Jung
“A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter from the sanctuary and
leaves it to the cabaret, the night club and the toastmasters.” Helmut
Thielicke
"All music already exists. When God created the world, God created
everything. It's up to us as artists to find that music." John Tavener
“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees, and flowers,
and clouds, and stars." Martin Luther
“Deception must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.” Thomas Fuller.
“To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Compare not yourself with anybody else lest you spoil God’s curriculum.”
Bal Shem Tov
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
President and General Dwight D. Eisenhower
