Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Anais Nin
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
M.C. Escher
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
Cameron let himself procrastinate while watching his new client leave. She had a dancer’s body, a tawdry wardrobe, and a massive bank account. His kind of woman. The kind that could leave a man too discombobulated to do his job.
He blinked, and picked up the file she’d left behind. The case had little intrigue. She’d cheated on her husband, and now some edacious vulture had photographs good enough for blackmail.
She’d fired the previous PI for his lack of progress and (her words) “namby-pamby” approach to her case. She used several nasty phrases to describe him, but beneath her anger still seemed unsure when she told Cameron, “He said I should pay the bastards what they want.”
“Poppycock!” Cameron snapped. He’d made a promise to stop swearing in front of ladies, which was proving to be a vocabulary challenge.
The case notes were cumbersome and of little value. This other guy had clocked enough hours for a new plasma TV, but clearly had scant talent as a PI. A good PI has to be more than a good observer. The best PI gets vicarious thrills from the low-lifes he investigates.
And sometimes, from his clients too. Cameron blinked again.
Well it won't win a Pulitzer, but it was fun to write! And I won the contest, which is just too cool because there were really fun entries in the mix.
Walt Disney
There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate's loot on Treasure Island.
"Jack Sparrow" in Pirates of the Caribbean, Curse of the Black Pearl
Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, you know. It's not just a keel and a hull and sails; that's what a ship needs. Not what a ship is. What the Black Pearl really is, is freedom.
D. H. Lawrence
The sense of wonder, that is our sixth sense.
Thomas Edison
If we all did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
If you want to build a ship, then don't drum up men to gather wood, give orders, and divide the work. Rather, teach them to yearn for the far and endless sea.
I believe that education is all about being excited about something. Seeing passion and enthusiasm helps push an educational message.Very sad.
...
My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife.
...
Yeah, I'm a thrill seeker, but crikey, education's the most important thing.
Amy Bloom
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
Mignon McLaughlin
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.
Simone Signoret
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.
discombobulated
blackmail
edacious
namby-pamby
poppycock
vicarious
tawdry
cumbersome
procrastinate
intrigue
The Talmud
There are stars who's light only reaches the earth long after they have fallen apart. There are people who's remembrance gives light in this world, long after they have passed away. This light shines in our darkest nights on the road we must follow.
John Keats
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
Gian Carlo Menotti
Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.
Abraham Lincoln
Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.
William Shakespeare
In delay there lies no plenty.
William James
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
Sorrow fades.
You become
a brilliant cascade
of dreams --
my happy cycles
my summer songs --
delicious,
uncertain,
forever.
The Embarrassing Episode of Little Miss Muffet
Little Miss Muffet discovered a tuffet,
(Which never occurred to the rest of us)
And, as ’twas a June day, and just about noonday,
She wanted to eat -- like the best of us.
Her diet was whey, and I hasten to say
It is wholesome and people grow fat on it.
The spot being lonely, the lady not only
Discovered the tuffet, but sat on it.
A rivulet gabbled beside her and babbled,
As rivulets always are thought to do,
And dragon flies sported around and cavorted,
As poets say dragon flies ought to do;
When, glancing aside for a moment, she spied
A horrible sight that brought fear to her,
A hideous spider was sitting beside her,
And most unavoidably near to her!
Albeit unsightly, this creature politely
Said, "Madam, I earnestly vow to you,
I’m penitent that I did not bring my hat. I
Should otherwise certainly bow to you."
Though anxious to please, he was so ill at ease
That he lost all sense of propriety,
And grew so inept that he clumsily stept
In her plate -- which is barred in Society.
This curious error completed her terror;
She shuddered, and growing much paler, not
Only left tuffet, but dealt him a buffet
Which doubled him up in a sailor knot.
It should be explained that at this he was pained;
He cried, "I have vexed you, no doubt of it!
Your fist’s like a truncheon." "You’re still in my luncheon,"
Was all that she answered. "Get out of it!"
And THE MORAL is this: Be it madam or miss
To whom you have something to say,
You are only absurd when you get in the curd
But you’re rude when you get in the whey!
My five (tough to pick just 5) "interesting blogs" are listed here:Find five new blogs that you find interesting.
...
Notify the five bloggers that you're recommending them on BlogDay 2006.
...
Write a BlogDay post today with a short description of each blog, and a link back to each one.
...
Add a BlogDay 2006 Technorati tag and/or link back to the Technorati BlogDay 2006 page.
...
Link to the BlogDay website.
If they try to rush me, I always say, I've only got one other speed and it's slower.
...
It's more difficult to go down a mountain than to go up. A lot of people don't realize that. Don't forget when you're going up you're looking at the side of the mountain. When you're going down, you're looking at nothing.
Lines spoken by Glenn Ford
From Gilda
Pardon me, but your husband is showing.
...
I hated her so I couldn't get her out of my mind for a minute.
From Blackboard Jungle
Yeah, I've been beaten up, but I'm not beaten. I'm not beaten, and I'm not quittin'.
From Charlotte's Web
"Do you understand how there could be any writing in a spider's web?"
"Oh, no," said Dr Dorian. "I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle."
From Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
He never knew how long he was in the creature's clutches; he only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for him to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders.
...Spiders. Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic.
3 years ago I moved into an old-ish house in New Jersey. The basement was pretty wide open, but had plenty of scary parts (not to compare with my current terrifying basement, which I only visit when the need is positively critical -- I think there are more spiders in there than in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)... okay back to my story...
I was doing laundry one day (current house has washer and dryer upstairs, thank god) and on my way back to the stairs, I saw a large black spider out of the corner of my eye. It was sitting halfway up the wall, and it was SO LARGE that my first thought was, who left that silly Halloween decoration down here? Seriously, it was at least 1 1/2 inches across the BODY ALONE. Plus big legs. Oh my god this was the biggest spider ever.
So I went upstairs and got my can of Raid. I never let my Raid supply run out -- it is more important to me than food or toilet paper. Back downstairs to face down Mega-spider. By now, the spider seemed to have doubled in size.
Deciding I needed a good strategy against a beast of this size, I first sprayed the Raid on the floor beneath the wall where the spider sat. I created a poison puddle about 18 inches wide and 9 inches out from the wall. Then, from a distance of about 8 feet away, I started spraying up the wall....
When I hit the spider with the Raid, the spider immediately dropped into the poison puddle. UNDAUNTED, the spider looked me in the eye and began walking out of the puddle towards me ("Ha! I spit at your puny poison, human!"). The distance between us got a lot smaller pretty quickly, and I backed up, and kept spraying and spraying the spider.
The fumes were overwhelming. I was seriously imagining myself fainting from the poison spray, and all I could think was that that THING would surely get me then.
At long last, the power of the spray pushed the spider in the other direction, and I continued to use the liquid to push the spider against another wall. I kept spraying until the spider drowned -- I don't think the poison touched him. (Okay, I know the poison finally got him, but it took half a can of Raid to do it!)
I called Orkin the next day, and have never been without an exterminator since.
Mary Dunbar
We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within.
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You cannot try to do things. You simply must do things.
...
I've never doubted myself; I've always been so completely devoted to libraries and books and authors that I couldn't stop to consider for a moment that I was being foolish. I only knew that writing was in itself the only way to live....
...
My stories run up and bite me on the leg-I respond by writing down everything that goes on during the bite. When I finish, the idea lets go and runs off.
More on my brief encounter with Bradbury in the post below.
Tom, Stay Well! Ray Bradbury
October 23, 1992
Damon Runyon
You can keep the things of bronze and stone and give me one man to remember me just once a year.
discombobulated
blackmail
edacious
namby-pamby
poppycock
vicarious
tawdry
cumbersome
procrastinate
intrigue
Ezra Pound
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Christopher Robin is going.
At least I think he is.
Where?
Nobody knows.
But he is going -
I mean he goes
(To rhyme with "knows")
Do we care?
(To rhyme with "where")
We do
Very much.
(I haven't got a rhyme for that "is" in the second line yet.
Bother).
(Now I haven't got a rhyme for bother. Bother)
Those two bothers will have to rhyme with each other
Buther.
A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.
Pluto has always been my favorite planet because it was named after Donald Duck's dog. (If you disagree with this, please send your letters to: P.O. Box 1234, Uninterested, Calif.) Granted, Pluto was a rather minor character in the Disney universe, but let's face it: When you're the ninth planet from the sun, do you really deserve to be called Mickey?
Blog copyright Nancy Rae Kienzler. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
