The Emerald Rose

One of my “wall of Fame” quotes, from Helen Keller, and man did SHE live it!

Years ago and I’m talking me about 12 or 13, my Dad entered some contest or another wherein you had to answer hundreds of questions and identify quotes, and stuff like that. So it seemed like Sunday afternoon he took me and my little sister and off we went to the main branch of the daunting “Boston Public Library”. The building is HUGE, and dates back well, when Irish immagrints and Blacks hauled the heavy granite blocks and built the thing by hand. It is so big and has so many nooks and crannys you could spend a year just exploring the place. Which of course I did. But I digress.
It was there my Dad introduced me to “Bartletts book of Quotations” which was a library within itself, all cross referanced by speaker,subject, etc. For you youngsters who’ve never heard of Bartletts, well think of it as a collossal printed copy of fantastic “sound bytes”. Got it? Anyhow I had a highly developed attention span at that time (probably 15 seconds then versus ten seconds today) and I found the quotes fascinating. So since then I started paying attention to every quote I see anywhere, on the side of subway cars, billboards, posters, articles, newspaper stories, fly leaves of books, they are everywhere,…if you look for them.
Over the years I’ve found some that just jump out and crack you right between the eyes, lights, bells and whistles go off in your brain, and guess what, you have just found a “gem”, a “pearl” , a guidepost along your journey through life. Now I know a lot of folks who read’em, perhaps grunt, “Um..yeah”, maybe even commenton them, “Yo,…you see this?”,… but then they get sent to the nearest trash receptacle, flushed from the grey cells and synapses, and they move on to another beer, or scratching their butt. Me? I save them, like the little treasures that they are to me.
Almost eveything around me has quotes I’ve found or saved either in their original form, or hand-written by me. They are the “trail of crumbs” on my road of life. I thought I’d share a few with you. (Understand this blog could very well turn into a book larger than the Internal Revenue Service Tax Code if I did them all. So here’s a few I read from just where I’m sitting, …in “The Pit”
“Never, Never, Never Quit.” – Winston Churchill

“Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t,..you’re right!”
– Henry Ford

“Freedom is worth more than a pound of sausage.” – a Russian Soldier commenting to Mike Wallace after the fall of the old Soviet Union. Wallace was interviewing Russian Citizens and the soldier was there to keep order, but chimed in with his two cents worth anyway.

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt

“it takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”
poet, e.e.cummings (noted for never using upper case)

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Any of you have favorites, or “guideposts” in your life you’d like to share?

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