WIST

This week has been a bit spotty with WIST, as I’ve been in a flurry of holiday/vacation travel and activities.  I’m going to be taking a week off from WIST until after the New Year, since the coming week will be even more harried (and likely less connected).

Thank you all for your support and reading of this little hobby of mine.  I’ll be doing a more official tally in the New Year,  but I’ve added probably a good thousand quotes to the list, and had a great time doing so.

Here’s hoping you and yours have a wonderful holiday season, and that the new year brings you both joy and illuminating words to ponder.

I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.

Tom Stoppard (b. 1937) Czech-English playwright and screenwriter
The Real Thing, Act II, sc. v [Henry] (1982)

True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American author
Household Papers and Stories, Part 2, ch. 4 (1864)

He that knows how to make those he converses with easy, without debasing himself to low and servile Flattery, has found the true Art of living in the World, and being both welcome and valued everywhere.

John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher
Some Thoughts Concerning Education, #143 (1693)

The sophist sneers: Fool, take
Thy pleasure, right or wrong!
The pious wail: Forsake
A world these sophists throng!
Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) English poet and critic
Empedocles on Etna, Act I, sc. ii (1852)
Full text.

Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do — makes journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read.

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) American writer
East of Eden (1952)