Purple Passages with a Camel

via Google Images
via Google Images

Birthdays 

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.    – Madeleine l’Engle

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.    – Aldous Huxley

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.    – Zora Neal Hurston

It takes a long time to grow young.    – Pablo Picasso

Friendship

Throughout our lives, friends enclose us like pairs of parentheses. They shift our boundaries, crater our terrain. They fume through the creaks of our tentative houses, and parts of them always remain . . . .

–  Beth Kephart, memoirist and National Book Award nominee.

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.  – St. Thomas Aquinas

Friends are a reflection of the issues we are working on. – Melody Beattie

Be Yourself

Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!    – Dr. Seuss

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.   – Gilbert K. Chesterton

Camel w cigar_4x3_300

Humor

Some of us suffer from a debilitating mental disorder called irony deficiency. Seeing a doctor won’t help, but seeing a paradox will.”   – Swami Beyondananda

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s why it is called the present.   – Bill Keane, comic strip creator “The Family Circus”

GiftBag

And a Question:

Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?    – T. S. Eliot

Your answer: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ !

 

I look forward to your response and to your musings on anything else that strikes your fancy. While you’re at it, why not add a quote too. The humor section could use some beefing up.    🙂

Thank you.

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Purple Passages II with Pictures

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Purple Passages made its debut on July 10. Here is the August 10, 2013 installment.

My stack of journals minus the fatter one on my nightstand
My stack of journals minus the fatter one on my nightstand

Why people read

1.7.94  We read books to know we are not alone.  William Nicholson  

Love to children

4.2.89  The love you give your children is like black paper: it absorbs and you can’t see it, but you know it’s there. Mary Kalegis

Patio pose, little readers frozen in time
Patio pose, little readers frozen in time

My Hometown

Courtesy: City of Jacksonville
Courtesy: City of Jacksonville

7.27.91  Jacksonville  . . . an Oz of blue-green skyscrapers, a city of dreams at the end of the pine-green tunnel . . . shines from a number of angles like a jewel being turned in your hand.    John Updike, Rabbit at Rest

On Relationships

10.21.91 Relationships with the opposite sex reflect our efforts to find answers for problems with our parents. Relationships with our friends represent our efforts to find solutions for problems with our siblings. (Quoted by Shirley McLaine, who undoubtedly quoted from someone else.)

On Sanity

7.19.92 It occurred to her that her sanity was becoming intermittent, like a sudden stretch of intact road in an abandoned region. Or radio music, blatant after months of static.   K. Braverman, Tall Tales from the Mekong Delta

On Birthdays

blowing out candles HappyCakeJ&me

2.10.96  The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose the other ages you’ve been.   Madeleine L’Engle

On Angels

5.8.97  Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.   G. K. Chesterton

On Hope

7.11.95  As long as matters are hopeful, hope is a mere  . . . platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength. Like all Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.   G. K. Chesterton, Heretics

Make one of your own!

Well, you can coin a new quote, but you could also begin or continue your own journal of purple passages:

Purple Scrapbook

White pages would be easier, or computer pages with a pale purple background. How about it?