Oscar Wilde
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
E. B. White
Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
Ezra Pound
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
We should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe.
Dear Emma,
Thursday seems to
be the only day for
you to come as I
couldn't get a card
to you earlier than
Wed. Is ten o'clock
A.M. too early for you?
It won't take only about
an hour + a half, if connections
are good, to make the trip + we
will be at #10 at ten
(continued on front of card)
o'clock sharp for you. If you should
happen to miss a car or anything else come
up just 'phone us when you get to Biddeford.
'Phone number is Goodwin's Mills - 9 - 4 (or
9 - ring 4.)
Winnifred
Be sure + bring your friend with you.
Samuel Johnson
The purpose for which letters are written when no intelligence is communicated or business transacted, is to preserve in the minds of the absent either love or esteem.
Lord Byron
Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.
Anatole Broyard
In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.
Copyright statement from The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony SnicketBook the First: The Bad Beginning
To Beatrice --
darlling, dearest, dead.
Book the Second: The Reptile Room
For Beatrice --
My love for you will live forever.
You, however, did not.
Book the Third: The Wide Window
For Beatrice --
I would much prefer it if you were alive and well.
Book the Fourth: The Miserable Mill
To Beatrice --
My love flew like a butterfly
Until death swooped down like a bat
As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said:
"That's the end of that."
Book the Fifth: The Austere Academy
For Beatrice --
You will always be in my heart,
in my mind,
and in your grave.
Book the Sixth: The Ersatz Elevator
For Beatrice --
When we met, my life began.
Soon afterward, yours ended.
Book the Seventh: The Vile Village
For Beatrice --
When we were together I felt breathless.
Now, you are.
Book the Eighth: The Hostile Hospital
For Beatrice --
Summer without you is as cold as winter.
Winter without you is even colder.
Book the Ninth: The Carnivorous Carnival
For Beatrice --
Our love broke my heart,
and stopped yours.
Book the Tenth: The Slippery Slope
For Beatrice --
When we met, you were pretty, and I was lonely.
Now, I am pretty lonely.
Book the Eleventh: The Grim Grotto
For Beatrice --
Dead women tell no tales.
Sad men write them down.
Book the Twelfth: The Penultimate Peril
For Beatrice --
No one could extinguish my love,
or your house.
The Beatrice Letters
To Beatrice
and
From Her.
No part of this book may be used, reproduced, destroyed, tampered with, or eaten without written permission except in the case of brief, possibly coded quotations embodied in critical articles, reviews, and subpoenas. Allegedly printed in the United States of America. For information address HarperCollins Children's Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1350 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019, although the people at this publishing house have no idea where the documents enclosed in this book came from. If you recognize yourself in any of the photographs or illustrations in this book you may find yourself in Very Frightening Danger and/or slightly embarrassed but there is nothing you can do about it. Please note that the author has been called a fraud, a criminal, a bestseller, a corpse, a fictional character, an unreliable narrator, an objective flaneur, an embattled gentleman, a magnetic field, an arsonist, and late for dinner by an odd number of dubious authorities. Send help at once. All rights reserved. Wouldn't you rather read about ponies?
The summer and autumn had been so wet,
That in winter the corn was growing yet,
'Twas a piteous sight to see all around
The grain lie rotting on the ground.
Every day the starving poor
Crowded around Bishop Hatto's door,
For he had a plentiful last-year's store,
And all the neighbourhood could tell
His granaries were furnish'd well.
At last Bishop Hatto appointed a day
To quiet the poor without delay;
He bade them to his great Barn repair,
And they should have food for the winter there.
Rejoiced such tidings good to hear,
The poor folk flock'd from far and near;
The great barn was full as it could hold
Of women and children, and young and old.
Then when he saw it could hold no more,
Bishop Hatto he made fast the door;
And while for mercy on Christ they call,
He set fire to the Barn and burnt them all.
"I'faith 'tis an excellent bonfire!" quoth he,
"And the country is greatly obliged to me,
For ridding it in these times forlorn
Of Rats that only consume the corn."
Dear Carrie,
It is now two weeks
since I came here, and
I am sure I have been
improving in my legs for
I get about much better.
Our stay is half over,
and then home, but not
the home of a year ago.
- Fred
Postcard Batch 1
Postcard Batch 2
Postcard Batch 3Top Left (same lake in Webster, Mass.)
No Date
Natives here say –
This means
“I fish here
You fish there
Noone fishes in the
middle.”
Middle Left (Surf Bass Rocks, Gloucester, Mass.)
July 19, 1912
The hotel - isn’t it a
lovely location.
I am anxiously
waiting for some
news of your health.
Hope you are doing
nicely.
- SEP
Bottom Left (Newton, Mass. Charles River)
No Date
This place is just out of
Boston and your husband will
explain it to you. You tell
him he is an awfully good
man to get you cards etc,
but he isn’t quite so nice
as my husband.
Top Right (Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Old Pump)
April 24, 1908
(front) Do you remember the drink
we had from this pump? B.G.P.
(back) Dear Mamma,
Will try to get a chance
to write you Fri – have
been very busy this week.
This has been a fine day
real warm. As it was a
holiday, “Fast Day,” we went
on a trolly ride to Pinedale
and Massitesic (?) Lake; and
are going to theatre this eve.
Have not heard from Wallie
yet so don’t know how
the marmalade arrived.
I will now get ready for
the theatre. With Love
Blanche
Middle Right (New Library and Memorial Church, Springfield, Mass.)
April 12, 1929
Dear Sunshine and Sunbeams,
I missed you so much, but
thank you for the gladness you
left around you. Auntie and Joe
came 7.30 but Auntie has an awfull
cold. Today we bought that
little house, and I hope it
will be pleasant when you get in it
again. Baby has had a
hard day today. I forgot
all about the 25 cents I
borrowed and you shouldn’t
give Azalia any more money – You spoil her for me.
Happy dreams to you.
May they all come true –
Your Auntie Ada.
Bottom Right (Newton Upper Falls, Mass. Echo Bridge)
February 25, 1909
Dear Flossie
I am on my way
to bring Mother home.
They sent for me
this morning.
- Ida
Series of Unfortunate Events #4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket
The Beatrice Letters
(can you tell I'm getting ready for #13 to arrive?)
Water Street (loved the cover)
A Northern Light
Fly By Night
Eragon (on to-be-read list for much too long)
Eldest (ditto)
The Amulet of Samarkand (ditto)
The Stolen Child
The Immortal Game
Dragon Fire
Forgetfulness
The Children's Blizzard
Salem's Lot (ditto)
S is for Silence (ditto)
A Death in Belmont (ditto)
Monday Mourning (ditto)
2 others in the car that I don't remember
And Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, to re-read
Muriel Rukeyser
Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.The blessing is in the seed.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert H. Schuller
Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.
Seed Prayers
I pray you’ll be safe.
I pray for your family.
I wait, breath held these long months,
For the brittle crunch as your other shoe drops.
I would hold out my hand to you
But my hand holds no grace, no welcome, no answers.
If I were to give you a gift –
Some talisman to represent my prayers –
It would be a seed for fresh planting.
No magic acorn to give you a tree of solid gold.
Just one ordinary seed – maybe a tomato, or a marigold.
Something beautiful, something hardy.
For now I offer nothing but the prayers,
And the prayer that the prayers will take root.
A Nauseous Nocturne
Another night deprived of slumber,
Hours passing without number,
My eyes trace 'round the room. I lay
Dripping sweat and now quite certain
That tonight the final curtain
Drops upon my short life's precious play.
From the darkness, by the closet
Comes a noise, much like a faucet
Makes: a madd'ning drip-drip-dripping sound.
It seems some ill-proportioned beast,
Anticipating me deceased,
Is drooling poison puddles on the ground.
Robert Frost
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
Isaac Asimov
The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it - there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
Gore Vidal
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Elias Canetti
There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the Earth.
Douglas Adams
It's no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase "As pretty as an airport" appear.
asphodel
fawn
dawn
chalice
anemone
tranquil
hush
fructify
kumquat
quahog
crepuscular
kakkak
gargoyle
cacophonous
imbroglio
gossamer
ephemeral
susurrous
texts
angst
gobbledygook
carbuncle
lily
synesthesia
illusive
hallowed
turkey
edited
hacker
hiccough or hiccup
View from a sailboat #1
View from a sailboat #2
View from a sailboat #3
First Mate and Captain
Winston Churchill
Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it.
Oliver Wendell HolmesI find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Maxwell BodenheimPoetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.
Benjamin Franklin
The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
Thomas a Kempis
When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.
Ashleigh Brilliant
Sometimes I need what only you can provide - your absence.
Arthur Rubinstein
I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle.
Luciano Pavarotti
It's better to have a good acoustic, so you use all the color of your voice.
Leopold Stokowski
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
Robert Schumann
The painter turns a poem into a painting; the musician sets a picture to music.
Yep, I'm heading out. Will post if I can on Friday, and then sporadically over the next two weeks.Still, there is a calm, pure harmony, and music inside of me.
Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, conditioned by the dominate key, and under the influence of a particular light, in gay, calm, or sad combinations.
Pablo PicassoThe hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
Mother Teresa
We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
George Bernard Shaw
Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
Who brings their 3 young sons out to a nice neighborhood restaurant, and lets each of the boys watch his personal DVD player at the table? (Yes, 3 sons, 3 personal DVD players. Oh, and a raving lunatic mother who was miserable to the one boy who chose not to watch his DVD.)
Who picks up a pear from a box of free pears, takes a few bites, and then drops the half-eaten pear on the sidewalk? (Sorry, the fact that there are other pears there that have fallen from the tree does not make the sidewalk your trash barrel!)
Who emails an old friend and dis-invites her from officiating or even attending his wedding because she is "too fragile" from post-traumatic stress and might make a scene during his special day? (Thank goodness I don't know the couple well enough to have been invited in the first place!)
Becky
Christine M
Daisy
Eliza
Erin
Gregory K
Jen
Robinson
Julie Danielson
Kimmy
Leila the great
Libby
Little Willow
Loosy
Mary Lee
Readfaced
Renee
RM1(SS) (ret)
Stephanie
Stidmama
TadMack
Thebookdragon
Tim
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Be sincere; be brief; be seated.
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
Baltasar Gracian
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
...
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
...
I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure that it will cost to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the gloom I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory. I can see that the end is worth more than the means.
The U.S. Constitution has 4,440 words. It is the oldest and the shortest written constitution of any government in the world.
...
Of the typographical errors in the Constitution, the misspelling of the word Pensylvania” above the signers’ names is probably the most glaring.
...
Thomas Jefferson did not sign the Constitution. He was in France during the Convention, where he served as the U.S. minister. John Adams was serving as the U.S. minister to Great Britain during the Constitutional Convention and did not attend either.
...
The oldest person to sign the Constitution was Benjamin Franklin (81). The youngest was Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (26).
...
The word “democracy” does not appear once in the Constitution.
...
When the Constitution was signed, the United States’ population was 4 million. It is now more than 300 million. Philadelphia was the nation’s largest city, with 40,000 inhabitants.
...
There was a proposal at the Constitutional Convention to limit the standing army for the country to 5,000 men. George Washington sarcastically agreed with this proposal as long as a stipulation was added that no invading army could number more than 3,000 troops!
...
There was initially a question as to how to address the President. The Senate proposed that he be addressed as “His Highness the President of the United States of America and Protector of their Liberties.” Both the House of Representatives and the Senate compromised on the use of “President of the United States.”
Hank Williams
A song ain't nothin' in the world but a story just wrote with music to it.
...
A good song is a good song, and if I'm lucky enough to write it, well....! I get more kick out of writing than I do singing. I reckon I've written a thousand songs and had over 300 published.
-- From "Cold, Cold Heart"
There was a time when I believed that you belonged to me
But now I know your heart is shackled to a memory
The more I learn to care for you the more we drift apart
Why can’t I free your doubtful mind and melt your cold, cold heart
William Carlos Williams
Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels.
...
When they ask me, as of late they frequently do, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
-- "Pastoral"
THE little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest
them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and
no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
...................Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of
the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
.......These things
astonish me beyond
words.
With just under 4 days to go in the Great Antagonists of Children's Literature contest, we are up to 148 bad guys captured.
Blog copyright Nancy Rae Kienzler. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
