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08 June 2006
Taking Suggestions for a New E-Mail Signature Quote Got any wise ones?
I used to never do the sig-quote thing, but I decided to last year when I found it was a good way to remind myself of certain ideas (let alone convey to other what sort of guidance I was using). For the last few months, I've had these particularly useful ones:
Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - Helen Keller
and
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves...Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. -Rilke
So those have been great. Now I'm going to look for something hopeful and future-oriented. What do you use? What quotations do you love and find repeatedly useful?
“Isn’t every human being both a scientist and an artist; and in writing of human experience, isn’t there a good deal to be said for recognizing that fact and for using both methods?”
-James Agee from Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
“The time of getting fame for your name on its own is over. Artwork that is only about wanting to be famous will never make you famous. Any fame is a by-product of making something that means something. You don’t go to a restaurant and order a meal because you want to have a shit.”
-Banksy
I beg you to just see all existent phenomena as empty and to beware of taking as real all that is nonexistent. Take care of yourself in this world of shadows and echoes.
-Layman P'ang's dying words
"Then he suggested dinner in some dive, and he asked if I didn't like to break out of the everyday round and do crazy things like that.
'That's not difficult,' I said. 'What's unpleasant is having a dive as the center of your everyday round.'"
--Cesare Pavese, Among Women Only
Endurance athletes wake up tired and go to be exhausted.--Robert de Castella
Only God helps the poorly dressed.--Spanish Proverb
...But a curiosity like mine is after all the most pleasurable of vices—I beg your pardon! I meant to say: the love of truth has its reward in Heaven, and already upon earth. —Friederich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 45
In his Critique of Pure Reason Kant asks, "How is a priori synthetic knowledge possible?" Kant's answer? By means of a faculty. But unfortunately, not in five words. —Friederich Nietzsche
You, Kant, always get what you want. —The Rolling Stones
My father warned me about men and booze, but he never said a word about women and cocaine. —Tallulah Bankhead
I had the most ornate sig in high school, with four quotes, all boxed in and separated with @s. Then I got tired of trying to cram my personality into a sig, so now I just sign all my e-mails with "sic," meaning "thus." A little less pompous than "it is written." But it's a little reminder that each of my e-mails is just how I wrote it, for better or for worse, those were my words at that time to that person. Once sent, they're outta my hands.
I applaud you for trying to find a daily meditation or mantra though! Let my little story be a reminder that sometimes simpler is better.
One of my co-workers uses Gandhi's now-cliche-but-still-profound "Be the change you want to see in the world," which I end up using the same way you said you use yours -- a nice reminder in the middle of my day to breathe, and stay in the moment, and work for a better world.
Been looking around in quote farms. Some I'm considering:
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle
Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words And never stops at all.
--Emily Dickenson
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable. --Samuel Johnson
Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable certanity is that
nothing is certain or unchangeable.
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy
There is no hope of joy except in human relations.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The most beautiful music of all is the music of what happens.
- Irish proverb
Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. - Garrison Kiellor
But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en con- sidable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. - Mark Twain (in the character of Jim in Huck Finn)
We catched fish and talked, and
we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind ofsolemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking up at the stars, and we didn't ever feel like talking loud, and it warn't often that we laughed--only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us
at all--that night, nor the next, nor the next. - Mark Twain in the character of Huck.
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!
I've used this one for ages because it just has a really nice poetic feel to it.
African proverb - "Somewhere the Sky touches the Earth, and the name of that place is the End."
There is also, Herm Albright - "A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort."
Miko, I may be mistaken but I believe that story is one I've read by Thich Nhat Hahn, something along the lines of Be Here Now, about living in the moment.
Heh, Miko: "Emily Dickenson was wrong. Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers is my nephew. We're taking him to a specialist in Zurich." - Woody Allen (from memory possibly misquoted)
Heh, Miko: "Emily Dickenson was wrong. Hope is not the thing with feathers. The thing with feathers is my nephew. We're taking him to a specialist in Zurich." - Woody Allen (from memory possibly misquoted)
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle
And my Hotmail sig will be a fuller version of "The music of what happens". Turns out it's part of a Finn MacCool legend:
Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the Fianna-Finn as to what was the finest music in the world.
"Tell us that," said Fionn, turning to Oisi'n.
"The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," cried his merry son.
"A good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "what is to your mind the finest of music?"
"The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the stout lad.
"It is a good sound," said Fionn. And the other champions told their delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a loved one.
"They are good sounds all," said Fionn.
"Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what you think?"
"The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
--Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle
And my Hotmail sig will be a fuller version of "The music of what happens". Turns out it's part of a Finn MacCool legend:
Once, as they rested on a chase, a debate arose among the Fianna-Finn as to what was the finest music in the world.
"Tell us that," said Fionn, turning to Oisi'n.
"The cuckoo calling from the tree that is highest in the hedge," cried his merry son.
"A good sound," said Fionn. "And you, Oscar," he asked, "what is to your mind the finest of music?"
"The top of music is the ring of a spear on a shield," cried the stout lad.
"It is a good sound," said Fionn. And the other champions told their delight; the belling of a stag across water, the baying of a tuneful pack heard in the distance, the song of a lark, the laugh of a gleeful girl, or the whisper of a loved one.
"They are good sounds all," said Fionn.
"Tell us, chief," one ventured, "what you think?"
"The music of what happens," said great Fionn, "that is the finest music in the world."
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
-- E.M. Forster
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions.
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
What if they are a little coarse, and you may get your coat soiled or torn?
What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice.
Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Late, but here's one of my faves. I use it on my LJ user info page:
"Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you're in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman."
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
