Monday, July 28, 2008

Favorite Quotes, anyone?

So I was talking to a dear friend of mine who pointed out the fact that I don't post very often. And I realized that she is right. It certainly feels like I do, but when I looked at the dates of the posts...well, I saw the truth. SO...the question is...what to post about?
I have several ideas but I thought that perhaps an interactive one would be my best option. :-)

Here goes...

What is one of your favorite quotes?
Here's ONE of many of my favorites:




"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
- William Shakespeare

P.S. I'd be interested to hear what y'all's are! :-)

17 comments:

Seth Ben-Ezra said...

I keep a sizeable quote file and am constantly adding to it. So, here are a few random samplings from the file:

"Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.

There is a saying of the elders' that goes, "Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting." This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.
—Hagakure"

"“It is said that what is called ‘the spirit of an age’ is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world’s coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same.

For this reason, although one would like to change today’s world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. This is the mistake of people who are attached to past generations. They have no understanding of this point.

On the other hand, people who only know the disposition of the present day and dislike the ways of the past are too lax.”—Hagakure"

"It is not a matter of hope. It is simply a matter of time."--Morpheus, Matrix Reloaded

"[English doesn't] just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."-James Nicoll

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."--Henry David Thoreau

"Like virtually all of the software projects we've been involved with, clients never seem to know exactly what they want - until they don't get it."—William Vaughn

“May God stand between you and harm in all the empty places you must walk.”—ancient Egyptian blessing, according to Babylon 5

“I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”—James Arthur Baldwin

“City folk need not feel sorry for themselves or be pessimistic about the soil in which Christianity is planted to live and bear fruit. The Christian faith was made for contest, and its best fruits are always produced out of the harsh soil of difficulty and danger.”--Theodore C. Speers

And I have more! But, um, I'll stop here.

Raquel said...

I just snagged one of those for my quote file, so I suppose that obligates me to share too. :-)

Here are a couple of my current favorites:

"So long as we love, we serve; so long as we are loved by others I would say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend."
Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important
than fear." ~Ambrose Redmoon

"To be normal is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful." Carl Gustav Jung

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." C. S. Lewis

Anonymous said...

I have a lot of favorite quotes, but I'll spare you, and just post three or four of the short ones here. :)

Toothless, impotent Christianity is a gold mine for statism: It keeps men’s attention focused on the clouds while the State picks their pockets and steals their children. ~David Chilton

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. ~Thomas Paine

When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author Unknown

Now for a fun one (we use it a lot in our everyday conversation)! :D

There's a double meaning in that...
~Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

Laura

Justin said...

I just have one. :)

“The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people, but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.” - Dr David Butler

Unknown said...

Here is one of my favorite quotes that I put at the bottom of every email that I send out.
'The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of christian,But the fact that I am a christian does make me a different kind of woman.'
Elisabeth Elliot

Jesi

Jared said...

"I'm not coveting, I'm planning for the future"

-One of the McDonald girls

Elissa said...

Well I have a ton of favorite quotes, but I'll just post a few.

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." - Jane Austen

"When thee asks or suggests I am like putty in thy hands. But when thee forbids, thee is barking up the wrong tree!" Gary Cooper in Friendly Persuasion

WARNING. This next one is LONG but well worth the read if you have the time :)
"I am most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Women's Rights," with all its attendent horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping. Were woman to "unsex" themselves by claiming equality with men, they would become the most hateful, heathen and digusting of begins and would surely perish without male protection.I love peace and quiet, I hate politics and turmoil. We women are not made for governing, and if we are good women, we must dilike these masculine occupations."
- Queen Victoria, 1870

Well, since I put the really long one, I won't put any more :)
~Elissa

Anonymous said...

Little did Jessica know I'm the girl who reads quotationarys:-D It's rather hard to chose favorites...

The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself. - Benjamin Franklin

I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the US Congress. - Ronald Reagan

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, "You're tearing up the grass." "We're not raising grass," Dad would reply. "We're raising boys." ~Harmon Killebrew

Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly. ~Ambrose Bierce

A father carries pictures where his money used to be. ~Author Unknown

I've now decided my favorites are unlimited....

miss you,
Talya

Anonymous said...

Oooh! I like Jared's!!! :)

Laura

Anonymous said...

Jessica~
What a great question! (And I got some really good quotes for my "quote book" from the other comments.) Here's a few of my favorites...

"The best portions of a good man's life are in his little nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love." ~William Wordsworth


"Associate yourself with men of good quality." ~George Washington

"Better to close your mouth and remain a mystery, than to open your mouth and erase all doubt."
~Judge Dunwoody

May the Lord bless your day~
Achaia

(PS We're having a giveaway on our blog that one of your little sisters might like... a twirly ruffle skirt!)

Anonymous said...

I like my sisters quote the best:

You can't piddle if you aren't in a rush- C.B.

Kyle B.

Anonymous said...

Hi Jessica,

I'm a what you call it, "blog lurker." Therefore, I'm a first-time commenter. ;-) Here's a few of my faves! :-)

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Give us the faith to accept Your will." ~Dale Midkiff (Love's Unending Legacy)

"A womans heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him first to find her."
~Maya Angelou

"A true man doesn't need to romance a different girl every night, a true man romances the same girl for the rest of her life!" ~Anonymous

"You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans." :-)
~Ronald Reagan

Shalom! :-)

Anonymous said...

This is my favorite,

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf" -George Orwell

Jessica McDonald said...

Thank you so much y'all for sharing the quotes with me! I'm always on the look out for new ones!

A few comments of my own,

Laura, that last quote is hilarious.We actually use it a lot as well... :-D

Jared, HaHaHa. :-D What a clever person to have said that! That person should like...go to Harvard or something. lol.

Elissa, that one by Queen Victoria is incredible. She was so amazing. Don't you just hate how people try to make every famous woman into a feminist? When in reality, most of them had brilliant things to say (like QV)that were utterly un-feministic?

Talya, lol! I love the one by Ambrose Bierce!! :-D TOO funny! :-D Miss you too!!!! *hugs*

Kyle, Ha! That is hilarious! :-D

Sydney, Hi! It's great to meet you! I like the second to last one by Annonymous a lot. Thank you for commenting!

Garrison, I love that quote!! That is why we don't mind TOO much that you're going to join the Marines. :-)

Thanks again, Everyone!!

God Bless,

Jessica

Elissa said...

Okay, here just one more that I couldn't resist sharing.It's my new favorite quote!!!! haha.

"I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it." — anonymous

Anonymous said...

I love Elissa's last one! I think I've seen that on a bumper sticker before. LOL! ;-)

I also had to add another one:

"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road, they get run over." ~Franklin P. Jones

Shalom! :-)

Bailey said...

Oh, well, this isn't as brilliant as anybody else's, but my family has been saying it too much:

Eustace: A Narnian ship? Oh, I see. You're still playing your old game.

Edmund: Shouldn't you knock before entering, Eustace?

Eustace: I'm trying to think of a limerick--something like this!
"Some kids who played game about Narnia,
"Got gradually balmier and balmier!" [laughter]

Edmund: Narnia, and balmier DON'T rhyme.

Eustace: It's assonance.

From Focus on the Family's radio dramatization of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader". Sometimes I wish I could use Eustace's excuse for my poety. :P