The following are books I've read over so far this year. I included a few quotes/notes from some that caught my eye. If I had a pen and paper at all times there would be considerably more quotes. Several of these books could be one long marvelous quote.
The Noticer by Andy Andrews
“That’s why smart people get tripped up with worry and fear. Worry…fear…is just a misuse of the creative imagination that has been placed in each of us. Because we are smart and creative, we imagine all the things that could happen, that might happen, that will happen if this or that happens.”
“You must become a person that others want to be around!”
“One day, you will look back on this ‘worst time’ in your life as a fortuitous event. Even your worst times have value and can become, in retrospect, your best times.”
“Keep your fork…the best is yet to come!”
Rich Harvest, A Life in the Garden by Don Hastings
Anything Can Happen by George and Helen Waite Papashvily , 1940
“As I fell asleep, I thought to myself: Well, now, I have lived one whole day in America and---just like they say---America is a country where anything, anything at all can happen.”
“Yes, we was a pretty good company and once I made excuse to leave the table and go outside just so I could catch it all in my heart to keep----the voices floating way through the trees, the feathers of smoke rising from the chimney, the roasting baking buttery smell sifting out of the kitchen door, the windows shining with golden light---people being happy in my house.”
“So---for Home. I drink with pleasure,” I said. “For Home. Its floor is the earth; its roof is the sky.”
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, 1936
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, 1944
“I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.” –Alfred Tennyson
“Get busy. Keep busy. It’s the cheapest kind of medicine there is on this earth---and one of the best.”
Napoleon and Helen Keller are perfect illustrations of Milton’s statement: Napoleon had everything men usually crave---glory, power, riches---yet he said at Saint Helena, “I have never known six happy days in my life”; while Helen Keller---blind, deaf, dumb declared: “I have found life so beautiful.”
“It is physically impossible to remain depressed while you are acting out the symptoms of being radiantly happy!”
“There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.” –Logan Pearsall Smith
“Sometimes when I have too many things to do all at once, I sit down and relax and smoke my pipe for an hour and do nothing.” –Wilbur Cross
The True Measure of a Man by Richard Simmons III, 2011
“Men lust, but they know not what for: They fight and compete, but they forget the prize … they chase power and glory, but miss the meaning of life.” –George Glider
“Man would rather be envied for their material success than respected for their character.”– Christopher Lasch
Biographical Roundup by Dale Carnegie, 1944
“There isn’t a Jap living who can make me hurry.” –General Douglas MacArthur
Alone by Admiral Richard E. Byrd
Remarkable account of a great explorer who spent 5 months at the South Pole, ALONE, in 1934.
Below -60° cold will find the last microscopic touch of oil in an instrument and stop it dead. If there is the slightest breeze, you can hear your breath freeze as it floats away, making a sound like that of Chinese firecrackers. As does the morning dew, rime coats every exposed object. And if you work too hard and breathe too deeply, your lungs will sometimes feel as if they were on fire.
Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.
Four Years in Paradise by Osa Johnson
“Yes, ‘Remember!’----Certainly one of the loveliest words in the English language” –Osa Johnson
“What a life! Nothing but circus all day long and it doesn’t cost a cent!” –Martin Johnson
“…our friends think we’re having a tough time out here, and I suppose it isn’t any bed of roses by some of their standards, but to Osa and me it is paradise in every way. We are doing the work we want to do, living in the great sunny, healthy out-of-doors, enjoying good food from our own garden, accomplishing what we believe is useful and important work, and we feel richer than anyone we know…” –Martin Johnson”
“You know, Osa,” he said, “I think that we must be the two happiest people in all the world.
“I’m sure of it, darling,” I said (Osa)
“There’s nothing in the world quite like knowing that your friends haven’t forgotten you.” –Osa
“We felt that here at Lake Paradise, deep in the heart of Africa, we had really found the timeless peace on earth, goodwill toward men” –Osa at Christmas
“Always do right as you see it, and have Faith.”
“She gave her last pennies to carry me through. I could never forget her. Without her I would have been nothing.”
“And I was pleased as punch.”
“There we lay and watched the picture of our Africa in action, with everything seeming to eat everything else.”-Osa pg 318
“…only Osa and I and the elephants will know where Paradise is and Osa and I won’t tell.” –Martin Johnson pg 333
“It would be hard to leave this beautiful wilderness, and I said a little prayer that this spot might be kept as it was, to remain sanctuary for the animals who loved it.” pg 335
“I began to cry; it was too beautiful to leave.” pg 336
“Life is just too short,” Martin went on, “It’s a pity we can’t live five hundred years with so much beauty to enjoy and so much work to accomplish.” Pg336
“It’s a Garden of Eden, Martin. I hope it never changes.”
Mark Twain’s Autobiography, 1924 (published fourteen years after his death)
“What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible, thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water---and they are so trifling a part of his bulk ! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden---it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words---three hundred and sixty five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man---the biography of the man himself cannot be written.” –M.T.
“It kept us hoping and hoping during forty years, and forsook us at last. It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us --- dreamers and indolent. We were always going to be rich next year --- no occasion to work. It is good to being life poor; it is good to begin life rich --- these are wholesome; but to begin it poor and prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it!” p94
“The North thinks it knows how to make cornbread, but this is mere superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite so good as Southern cornbread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the Northern imitation of it. P97
P110-115 good stuff
Descriptions of estates in Florence, Italy where he lived at one point. Awesome. 195-232
“We boast a good deal in America of our fire departments, the most efficient and wonderful in the world, but they have something better than that to boast of in Europe---a rational system of building which makes human life safe from fire and renders fire departments needless. We boast of a thing which we ought to be ashamed to require. “ M.T. Florence, Italy 1892
“Late in the afternoons friends come out from the city and drink tea in the open air, and tell what is happening in the world; and when the great sun sinks down upon Florence and the daily miracle begins, they hold their breaths and look. It is not a time for talk.”
A Short Guide to a Happy Life by Ann Quindlen
“When you come to a fork in the rode, take it!” –Yogi Bear
“No man ever said on his deathbed, I wish I had spent more time at the office.”
“If you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.”
“I have found that one horrible year has given me a perspective on all those things I wouldn’t otherwise have had.”
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
“If everyone thinks you have a good idea, you’re too late.” –Paul Hawken
“Simplify, Simplify.” –H.D.Thoreau
“Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm…”
“For centuries in Ireland, women hand knit sweaters for their seafaring husbands. The bulky, cable-stitched wool was constructed to ward off harsh elements. Each woman used a recognizable, family-specific patter of stitches, both to reflect love and pride, but also to be used as a means of identification if the husband were lost at sea and his body washed ashore.” –unknown author
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever his doing, and leaves others to determine whether hie is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.” –Francois Auguste Rene Chateaubriand
