John Donne’s poem ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ it says to me, we’re all in this together. Somehow it flies in the face of a former president who was religiously faithful to his own quote, “. . . you can’t be too greedy.” Competition needs to strike a balance with cooperation or it doesn’t work at all. At this point I side with Donne. Death is the ultimate insult and every man’s fate, with its own unfolding, it reaffirms not only my journey but also our common destination. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. I remember the poem from college. Incredible how a few words can capture a powerful idea. That’s when I started collecting quotes.
There certainly is a lasting, formative effect that comes with writing something down that you don’t want to lose. If reduced to an equation it would stretch across the page with brackets, parentheses, symbols and scientific notation. The brain takes a mental prompt, searches through volumes of memory to identify and reconstruct meaning, transforms that into language (words in proper sequence) enervates muscles to either speak the words or move the pen on paper: “It tolls for thee.” When the brain goes through all of that, it tends to remember where it leaves things and how to recover them. Post It Notes have their place and I don’t know how I would survive without leaving reminders stuck on refrigerator doors and computer screens. But listening to your own speak or watching it go into print; somehow, for me a least, it is in the ‘doing’ and not so much in finding and rereading the notes you left behind. So I write lots of things down knowing if I never need it on paper, I’ll still have a link to it, buried down in a neural vault.
Favorite quotes go into both my computer file and my gray matter file verbatim. After I have revisited them several times, rewritten them, repeated and shared them, I can remember the source, what the quote had to do with and I can paraphrase. If I need the verbatim, I know where to find it. Probably, the next quote I took to heart was Shakespeare’s: “This above all things, to thine own self be true . . .” from Hamlet. I neither read nor saw a performance of ‘Hamlet’ but this couplet has a life of its own. It has been passed on and on with the listener free to associate any set or moral or cultural values that make sense at the time. After skimming the Cliff Notes I was glad I did something else with my time. It is a disgusting story that flaunts man’s worst instincts and equally dysfunctional characters.
Polonius delivers the famous line while giving advice to his son Laertes “. . . then you can not be false to any other man.”, whatever that is supposed to mean. We discussed it in a philosophy class without any of the backstory. As a group, we homed in on ‘True’ and‘False’ with moral connotations that were popular in the 1960’s. Our class’s interpretation on Polonius’ intent was that Laertes should be true. He would not only be of high moral standards and in doing so, not appear to be the opposite, or false. I remembered another discussion on logical fallacy, circular arguments in particular (the premiss is just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion). I didn’t want to leave my fingerprints on True & False morality and don’t recall having much input. But the quote is still fixed in popular culture. At the time, Polonius probably meant (I’ve since been informed) that the emphasis was on “Own Self” and “Other Men”, not so much on True or False. Do your own business, skillfully, taking care of your own need and be clear in that context. You don’t want to appear foolish, incompetent or someone who can be exploited. That would be about one’s moral responsibility the self rather that some greater good. I don’t default to it anymore but neither has it been downgraded in my reference catalog.
Writing this piece I intended from the start to close with another long held treasure from my Quote collection. Perusing through them, they all have worthy appeal and some go back so far, I can’t date them. How can I pick one over another; I don’t know. But the upside of that dilemma is that, whichever I choose, it will be well worn, well appreciated and absolutely proper for any reading, any situation.
The 1996 Summer Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. The torch had been on a running relay tour across the nation with torch bearers from every walk of life. The final runner’s identity was a closely guarded secret. From a distance, entering the stadium, everybody knew at first glance who it was. His slow gate and waning physical form could not diminish his legacy or conceal his identity. Muhammed Ali ignited a love fest in the moment.
His quotes are many and I could post a list, all of which would make your heart rise with hope and passion and good will. But I’ll choose one of his lesser known quips. Using it as a prompt, a good writer could write a great book. He said, “A man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years.” From my experience I would add, if the same man viewed the world at 80 the same as he did at 50, his failure as well as wasted years would have doubled.
There certainly is a lasting, formative effect that comes with writing something down that you don’t want to lose. If reduced to an equation it would stretch across the page with brackets, parentheses, symbols and scientific notation. The brain takes a mental prompt, searches through volumes of memory to identify and reconstruct meaning, transforms that into language (words in proper sequence) enervates muscles to either speak the words or move the pen on paper: “It tolls for thee.” When the brain goes through all of that, it tends to remember where it leaves things and how to recover them. Post It Notes have their place and I don’t know how I would survive without leaving reminders stuck on refrigerator doors and computer screens. But listening to your own speak or watching it go into print; somehow, for me a least, it is in the ‘doing’ and not so much in finding and rereading the notes you left behind. So I write lots of things down knowing if I never need it on paper, I’ll still have a link to it, buried down in a neural vault.
Favorite quotes go into both my computer file and my gray matter file verbatim. After I have revisited them several times, rewritten them, repeated and shared them, I can remember the source, what the quote had to do with and I can paraphrase. If I need the verbatim, I know where to find it. Probably, the next quote I took to heart was Shakespeare’s: “This above all things, to thine own self be true . . .” from Hamlet. I neither read nor saw a performance of ‘Hamlet’ but this couplet has a life of its own. It has been passed on and on with the listener free to associate any set or moral or cultural values that make sense at the time. After skimming the Cliff Notes I was glad I did something else with my time. It is a disgusting story that flaunts man’s worst instincts and equally dysfunctional characters.
Polonius delivers the famous line while giving advice to his son Laertes “. . . then you can not be false to any other man.”, whatever that is supposed to mean. We discussed it in a philosophy class without any of the backstory. As a group, we homed in on ‘True’ and‘False’ with moral connotations that were popular in the 1960’s. Our class’s interpretation on Polonius’ intent was that Laertes should be true. He would not only be of high moral standards and in doing so, not appear to be the opposite, or false. I remembered another discussion on logical fallacy, circular arguments in particular (the premiss is just as much in need of proof or evidence as the conclusion). I didn’t want to leave my fingerprints on True & False morality and don’t recall having much input. But the quote is still fixed in popular culture. At the time, Polonius probably meant (I’ve since been informed) that the emphasis was on “Own Self” and “Other Men”, not so much on True or False. Do your own business, skillfully, taking care of your own need and be clear in that context. You don’t want to appear foolish, incompetent or someone who can be exploited. That would be about one’s moral responsibility the self rather that some greater good. I don’t default to it anymore but neither has it been downgraded in my reference catalog.
Writing this piece I intended from the start to close with another long held treasure from my Quote collection. Perusing through them, they all have worthy appeal and some go back so far, I can’t date them. How can I pick one over another; I don’t know. But the upside of that dilemma is that, whichever I choose, it will be well worn, well appreciated and absolutely proper for any reading, any situation.
The 1996 Summer Olympic Games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. The torch had been on a running relay tour across the nation with torch bearers from every walk of life. The final runner’s identity was a closely guarded secret. From a distance, entering the stadium, everybody knew at first glance who it was. His slow gate and waning physical form could not diminish his legacy or conceal his identity. Muhammed Ali ignited a love fest in the moment.
His quotes are many and I could post a list, all of which would make your heart rise with hope and passion and good will. But I’ll choose one of his lesser known quips. Using it as a prompt, a good writer could write a great book. He said, “A man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years.” From my experience I would add, if the same man viewed the world at 80 the same as he did at 50, his failure as well as wasted years would have doubled.
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