Quotes
We all love quotes because they sum up in a few well
chosen words and idea or concept that makes sense. Sometimes you might even catch yourself
saying something, or hear someone else say something that makes you stop and
say, “I better write that down.”
In fact, posting my thoughts on Facebook and
elsewhere causes me to say this so much that I do stop and write down those
short little phrases and comments that seem to sum up my thoughts. My list of quotes is growing, maybe if I get famous
other people will quoting me. But until
then I’ll just keep reading the quotes of others.
And that’s just what I do every morning. I always have from eight to ten different books
that I read from each morning during the time between 5 a.m. and about 8:30
when I need to begin my work day. And I
always have a book of quotes in the stack.
In fact, right now I have two.
One is the Calendar of Wisdom compiled by Leo
Tolstoy. Each day of the year he has
quotes from others and his own thoughts listed.
The day’s quotes usually follow a theme for the day, although he does
not announce the theme. Tolstoy considered
this the most important book that he wrote, and he wrote it late in his
life.
I’m reading it through for the third year in a
row. Yes, it’s that good. I make notes in the margin if I agree with
the quote, and sometimes just cross it out if I don’t agree. Some really well
known people have had their quotes crossed off by me. It is interesting to open the book each day
and see what I was thinking about the same quote a year ago.
Recently I finished a huge book of quotes called Divine
Sparks compiled by Karen Speerstra.
She spent a life time collecting quotes and cataloging them by
topic. Then she selected 500 words that
represented the topics and published a book with multiple quotes on each topic
from over 1,800 different people. The
book is nearly 600 pages and must have close to 5,000 quotes. It took me 500 days to read it through the
book reading all the quotes for each word.
She subtitled the book, “Collected Wisdom of the Heart” and it is a good
course in wisdom. I’ll probably start
reading it again beginning in January of 2013.
My other current quote book is Change Your Life –
A Little Book of Big Ideas compiled by Allen Klein. His big idea quotes are centered on thoughts
that follow the letters of the alphabet though he leaves out a few
letters. Speerstra did not however, her
first word with quotes was “Abundance” and the last word with quotes was
“Zoroastrianism.”
What Matters Most……..why the quotes themselves, of
course. Here is a brief sampling.
“Everything depends on the use to which it is
put.” --Reinhold Niebuhr
“What is moral is what you feel good after; what is
immoral is what you feel bad after.”
--Ernest Hemingway
‘The price of anything is the amount of life you pay
for it.” --Henry David Thoreau
“All happy families are like one another; each
unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
--Leo Tolstoy
“Personally, I have never liked folks who didn't
speak plainly. Communication is meant to
be understood, not figured out.” ---Jim
High
© 2012 #16 Jim High can be reached at P. O. Box 467,
Tupelo, MS 38802-0467
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