If you've seen [or read] A Walk to Remember, then you know about the infamous journal of quotes Jamie gave to Landon, that once belonged to Jamie's mother. As teenagers, my friends and I were obsessed with the quote book and began compiling one of our own. Over the years, I continue to jot down different quotes, poems, song lyrics, etc. that I stumble across. There's no pattern to the ones I add to the journal. Sometimes it's for aesthetic reasons, sometimes it just inspired me in whatever moment I happened to find it.
Every once in awhile, I skim through it again, and I'm always so excited when I rediscover some of these gems. They're too good to be kept to myself, so in order to share them out with the world, I started posting them periodically on my Instagram (@E.L.Daniel). I share these Wednesday Wisdom posts almost weekly, with a selected quote and some anecdotal thoughts. It's nothing amazing, but it makes me smile and gives my day some inspo. My hope is that it'll do the same for you!
Each season, I'll post the list Wednesday Wisdom shout-outs into an article for my non-insta friends to enjoy.
Here we go! Which one is your favorite?
September 29, 2021
Today's feature is Oscar Wilde, the wittiest man that ever was! Which of these quotes do you like the best? I think mine might have to be the fourth one.
"I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself." - Oscar Wilde
"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea."
- Oscar Wilde
"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
- Oscar Wilde
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."
- Oscar Wilde
October 6, 2021
Today's Wednesday Wisdom is an excerpt brought to you by Walt Whitman: So Long!
This is no book,
Who touches this touches a man.
(Is it night? Are we here together alone?)
It is I you hold and who holds you,
I spring from the pages into your arms--decease calls me forth.
O how your fingers drowse me,
Your breath falls around me like dew,
Your pulse lulls the tympans of my ears,
I feel immerged from head to foot;
Delicious, enough.
An unknown sphere more real than I dream'd, more direct,
Darts awakening rays about me,
So Long!
Remember my words,
I may again return,
I love you, I depart from materials,
I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.
October 13, 2021
A Halloween-themed excerpt for today!
I had no true appreciation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein until I was forced to read it in college. Afterwards, I changed my major to English and never looked back. Here's why:
"Of what strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on a rock. I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death--a state which I feared yet did not understand."
So much emotion in these three sentences!!!
October 20, 2021
Today's Wednesday Wisdom comes from Harlan Ellison, a prolific author of SFF, Mystery & Thrillers. He wrote for Star Trek and The New Twilight Zone. This one I like for purely aesthetic reasons and the vibes just seem to fit with the weather around here.
"Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared that we came this way for a brief moment."
It reminds me an invocation, so that I almost want to add an "Amen" to the end of it.
October 27, 2021
Today's Wednesday Wisdom brought to your by Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber (Book 2 in the Outlander series).
I don't know why I always think about this book in the fall. It could be the "amber" in the title, or maybe because the start of winter can be kind of melancholy and this is the book that has made me cry the most tears while reading.
(If you know, you know.)
I love this passage, though. One of my all time favorites:
The lights of watchfires had begun to spring up, small glowing dots in the far distance. We were silent for a long time, as the evening deepened. It was very quiet on the hill; I could hear nothing but Jamie's even breathing, each breath a precious sound.
"I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."
His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. "Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well."
- Dragonfly in Amber (Diana Gabaldon)
I'm not crying, YOU'RE crying!
November 10, 2021
Wednesday Wisdom brought to you by Elizabeth Hardwick, literary critic and novelist.
"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is moral illumination." - Elizabeth Hardwick
I wouldn't necessarily call a passion for reading cheap, but the rest is sure true.
November 17, 2021
Another Diana Gabaldon quote for today's Wednesday Wisdom because gahhh she is just so good.
"You invent yourself," I said softly, to the shadows inside the hair that had fallen over my face. "You look at other women -- or men; you try on their lives for size. You take what you can use, and you look inside yourself for what you can't find elsewhere. And always...always...you wonder if you're doing it right."
- The Fiery Cross (Diana Gabaldon)
November 24, 2021
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, ya'll!
I have two "John" quotes today from the Wednesday Wisdom journal.
"A man could do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one else could find fault."
- John Henry Newman
"The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest, for he has not earned it."
- John Lubbock
I hope this week you all WILL enjoy your time of rest because you HAVE earned it.
And that's a wrap for Fall 2021! Look for the Winter compilation toward the end of February / early March.
Have any good quotes you want to share? Share them below or send them to me via social media! If I like them, I'll add them to my journal, share in an upcoming #WW post, and give you a shoutout.
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