Gratitude Friday 10-7-22 – Words Etched in Time

I cherish a good quote and I am grateful for the bounty of quotes. The art of putting thoughts to words, preserved through time to capture a thing in just such a way. One of the things that resonates with me is that across time, humanity reacts and thinks in remarkably similar ways. We really have not changed that much over the eons. We have similar aspirations and challenges as those who lived a millennia ago. We are capable of great deeds, foibles, and flaws. I regularly mine quotes for insight and inspiration. Here are a few that I have connected with over the last week.

“I guess I think differently than most folks. I think the reason the world is a mystical, enchanting place, is because of the cycle of life. My body will decompose, but maybe some little element of it will be transformed into a particle of dirt, over years and years, and then a glorious flower will be nurtured by this particle of dirt. Then this flower will nourish a random bumblebee, who in turn will be eaten by a raven. So, in some future life, I'll be able to fly. I look forward to that. I've always admired the freedom of birds.” ― E. M. Crane

“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” ― Harry S. Truman

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” ― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ― Albert Camus

“Your beliefs affect your choices. Your choices shape your actions. Your actions determine your results. The future you create depends upon the choices you make and the actions you take today.” ― Roy T. Bennett

“The older I grow, the more I am convinced that there is no education which one can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women.” ― Booker T. Washington

“It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine.” ― Malcolm Gladwell

“Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

“We're all fools," said Clemens, "all the time. It's just we're a different kind each day. We think, I'm not a fool today. I've learned my lesson. I was a fool yesterday but not this morning. Then tomorrow we find out that, yes, we were a fool today too. I think the only way we can grow and get on in this world is to accept the fact we're not perfect and live accordingly.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

“A torn jacket is soon mended, but hard words bruise the heart of a child.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“We’re not what people have done to us. We’re not what we’ve done to ourselves. We’re not the past. We’re the future. Not what’s been done. What we’ll do.” ― Caroline George, The Summer We Forgot

“Sometimes I think that my enemies are challenging me just to help me be a great person. Because, regardless of their attempts to overthrow me, I still rise above it all. I become more resilient with each of their attempts. Obviously, they're on my team, they're just unaware of it.” ― Mitta Xinindlu

“Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.”

― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Do you have a quote that resonates with you to share? Words that inspire or get you to think about something in a different way?

What are you grateful for today?