dual personalities

That was the title of a recent post at Cup of Jo, one of those blogs that I regularly read…but which often makes me roll my eyes. The post, which focuses on a Michelle Obama quote, ends with the line: “Maybe…it’s time for quotes to make a comeback.”

It’s news to me that quotes had ever gone out of vogue such that they’d need to make a comeback. As far as I know, quotes have always been a thing–cavemen were probably scratching memorably pithy remarks into stone walls, you know? Certainly in the nineteenth century, it was typical to have notebooks in which one copied one’s favorite quotes and passages–they were called commonplace books. And I know my mother has always kept such notebooks around the house for as long as I’ve been paying attention. During my camp-counselor phase, I once decoupaged a notebook for a friend and inscribed EVERY PAGE with an inspiring quote. From what I understand, she used it for to-do lists for over a year.

Well I don’t think I need to convince readers of this blog (which features quotations in almost every post!) that quotes making a comeback is a pretty silly idea. So I will just leave you with a few of my favorites, which I found stored in various moleskine notebooks.

“That’s why I’m talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
–John Steinbeck, from East of Eden

“They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned, and the sun forever shone, the blessed island of good boots.”
–Virginia Woolf, from To the Lighthouse

“Woman represents all the poetry that the ordinary man is capable of appreciating.”
–George Moore, from “Some Parishioners”

Some quotes are wonderful because we relate to them, or they articulate something we recognize. Some quotes are appealing simply for their turn of phrase. (I’ve always loved “the blessed island of good boots.”) And in putting this post together, I realized that quote books are also like diaries–I recall when I wrote each line. I read East of Eden my senior year of high school and was kind of transformed–I don’t think I’d ever loved a book so much, or so wholesale. I read George Moore while studying abroad in Dublin, and his stories were such a balm in what was otherwise a very harsh environment.

And then there is always Ralph Waldo Emerson, whom I could quote pretty much at random from any essay and feel good about it. Can you read my cool-girl-handwriting, above? Apparently I noted that the “last paragraph [is] crucial,” so I’ve looked it up:

Every spirit builds itself a house; and beyond its house a world; and beyond its world, a heaven. Know then, that the world exists for you. For you is the phenomenon perfect. What we are, that only can we see. All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and earth; Caesar called his house, Rome; you perhaps call yours, a cobler’s trade; a hundred acres of ploughed land; or a scholar’s garret. Yet line for line and point for point, your dominion is as great as theirs, though without fine names. Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreeable appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests, madhouses, prisons, enemies, vanish; they are temporary and shall be no more seen. The sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up, and the wind exhale. As when the summer comes from the south; the snow-banks melt, and the face of the earth becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit create its ornaments along its path, and carry with it the beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it; it shall draw beautiful faces, warm hearts, wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of man over nature, which cometh not with observation,–a dominion such as now is beyond his dream of God,–he shall enter without more wonder than the blind man feels who is gradually restored to perfect sight.

From Nature

So…what’s your favorite quote? 😉