I talked about my quote books with a friend recently and feel like I’ve rediscovered them. Leafing through the very first one (first entry: May 23 1985) I was struck by how young and cliched I was. These are notable to me in large part because they were words that moved me when I was so young (11 to 15) though they have current echoes as well.
Do I dare disturb the universe? – TS Eliot (reminds me of stopping the motor of the world, denting the universe, and was my high school yearbook quote)
my friends, let us sing now each and fortissimo, America, I love you – ee cummings (reminds me of a friend who reminds me of all the things to love about this country)
Take me, I’m yours, because dreams are made of this – Squeeze (reminds me of my running mix and running friends)
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
– John Magee
(reminds me of my uncle Jonathan and also of Atlas Shrugged)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
– TS Eliot (reminds me of life’s surprising twists, cyclical developments, and the way the past and the present sometimes feel interwoven)
We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us with nothing to show for our progress but a memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered. – Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Gildenstern
… the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. – Fitzgerald, Gatsby (reminds me of rereading Gatsby last year, and of the things that still inspire wonder in me)
But I’ll see you in the sky above, in the tall grass, in the ones I love. You’re going to make me lonesome when you go. – Dylan (reminds me of the people I love best and think of all the time)
She walked up to me so gracefully and she took my crown of thorns. “Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm.” – Dylan (reminds me of those I want to give shelter to)
The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places – Hemingway
you are the light by which my spirit’s born, you are the darkness of my soul’s return, you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars – ee cummings (one of the most romantic passages ever, I think, and reminds me of special people)
Come, my friend, ’tis not too late to seek a newer world. For my purpose holds to sail beyond the sunset. We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven. That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts. Made weak by time and fate but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. – Tennyson (reminds me of reading out of Norton’s with Dad on the back porch in Cambridge by candlelight; random trivia – I almost wrote my thesis on Tennyson’s epic poetry)