Walk the Quote Land

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Henry David Thoreau

"Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it." - Maya Angelou

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities." - Maya Angelou


"Learning without wisdom is a load of books on a donkey's back." - Zora Neale Hurston.

"Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose — a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye." - Mary Shelley.

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. - Virginia Woolf

"What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?" - Toni Morrison in Song of Solomon.

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." - Thomas Jefferson



the lesson of the moth

By Don Marquis, in "archy and mehitabel," 1927

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy

I was just going to put a quote from this one, but I reread it and just couldn't resist.

My favorite part:

-it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while-