Quote of the Day -- Zora Neale Thurston

Those that don't got it, can't show it. Those that got it, can't hide it.

-- Zora Neale Thurston

Quote of the Day -- John Maynard Keynes

We were not aware that civilization was a thin and precarious crust erected by the personality and the will of a very few, and only maintained by rules and conventions skilfully put across and guilefully preserved.

-- John Maynard Keynes

Quote of the Day -- Elizabeth von Arnim

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

-- Elizabeth von Arnem

Quote of the Day -- Robert Penn Warren

If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it…if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

-- Robert Penn Warren

Quote of the Day -- William Butler Yeats

Education is not the filling of a pail, but rather the lighting of a fire.

-- William Butler Yeats

Quote of the Day -- Edward Luce

Cities are becoming too successful for their own good...  A thousand multicultural flowers are blooming. Yet in squeezing out income diversity, the new urban economies are also shutting off the scope of serendipity. The West's global cities are like tropical islands surrounded by oceans of resentment.

-- Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism

Quote of the Day -- Robert Anthony

Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.

-- Robert Anthony

Quote of the Day -- Pearl S Buck

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.

-- Pearl S Buck

Quote of the Day -- Pico Iyer

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

-- Pico Iyer

Quote of the Day -- James Madison

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

-- James Madison

Quote of the Day -- George Eliot

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

-- George Eliot

Quote of the Day -- Joseph Addison

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

-- Joseph Addison

Quote of the Day -- Ovid

Take rest; a field that has rested gives a beautiful crop.

-- Ovid

Quote of the Day -- Theodore Roosevelt

Comparison is the thief of joy.

-- Theodore Roosevelt

Quote of the Day -- Iris Murdoch

One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.

-- Iris Murdoch

Quote of the Day -- Elizabeth Enright

Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never become what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never become them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we miss them always. 

-- Elizabeth Enright, Doublefields

Quote of the Day -- Seneca

It is difficult to bring people to goodness with lessons, but it is easy to do so by example. 

-- Seneca

Becoming Prudence Sand

Four plus decades ago, I embarked on a graduate program in comparative literature. I was joined by a small cohort of equally earnest twenty-somethings and by... Prudence Sand.  At the time, Prudence seemed both ancient and eccentric to the rest of us. (I've since discovered she was in her mid sixties at the time, a long-time widow, and an accomplished poet.) The rest of us were intent on becoming college professors and shaping young minds. Apparently, Prudence was simply interested in learning for its own sake.

A few years later, I decided that a career in academia wasn't my cup of tea and left graduate school behind for a more pragmatic career, first in government, then in business. And I forgot all about Prudence Sand.

My career progressed, and we started a family.  Like many young working mothers, I loved my hectic life but bemoaned the complete lack of "me time." My only reading was either bed-time stories or work-related material. Not a good juicy novel in sight. I used to tell the occasional college student I met "Enjoy every minute of being a full-time student. You'll never again have the luxury just to read and learn."

Fast-forward 25 years and I find that "never again" threat to by an empty one. I do have the time and the luxury just to read and learn. Actually going back to school isn't really an option right now. I need flexibility to help with our grandkids and travel the world. Instead, I've embarked on a self-directed "masters of eclectic knowledge." I read widely and voraciously and enjoy it immensely. Learning just for the sake of learning. Lucky me.  I've become Prudence Sand.

Quote of the Day -- E.B. White

Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.

--E.B. White

Quote of the Day -- Ernest Hemingway

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Quote of the Day -- Edward Luce

This opening to his article struck me simply because the writing is so outstanding.

"It was not hard to entice Henry Kissinger to meet for lunch. Though he is 95, and moves very slowly, the grand consigliere of American diplomacy is keen to talk. He hops on and off planes to see the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping with as much zeal as when he played the global chess game as Richard Nixon’s diplomatic maestro. He loves to be in the thick of things. Persuading him to say what he actually thinks is another matter. Kissinger is to geopolitical clarity what Alan Greenspan was to monetary communication — an oracle whose insight is matched only by his indecipherability. It is my mission to push him out of his comfort zone. I want to know what he really thinks of Donald Trump."

Quote of the Day Malcolm Forbes

Anyone who says businessmen deal in facts, not fiction, has never read old five-year projections.

-- Malcolm Forbes

Quote of the Day -- George Moore

Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.

-- George Moore

Quote of the Day -- Douglas Adams

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

-- Douglas Adams

Quote of the Day -- Marcel Proust

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.

-- Marcel Proust

Quote of the Day -- Leonardo da Vinci

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. 

-- Leonardo da Vinci