quotations – Plain and Fancy

Red, Yellow, Green Apples, Fall’s Traffic Lights: Purple Passages September 2015

September 30, 2015October 1, 2015 marianbeaman50 Comments

Humorous Slices

A green apple, a yellow apple, and a red apple, it’s like a fruity traffic light you can eat . . . . Did you know that my love has the consistency of applesauce? It’s true—and juicy. ~ Jarod Kintz

I ate a slice of humble pie, and it tasted like apples. ~ Jarod Kintz

Thoughtful Slices

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man. ~ Henry David Thoreau, “Wild Fruits”

Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed. ~ Robert H. Schuller

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don’t plan on harvesting Golden Delicious. ~ Bill Meyer

Healthy Slices

Eating apples is good on so many levels. There’s fiber in the skin that’s really good for you. It helps with digestion and helps you absorb all the nutrients of everything you’ve eaten that day. Apples are a really good thing. ~ Rebecca Romijn

A Story Poem

Grandma Longenecker’s Apple Schnitz

Grandma Longenecker dried apple slices locked in nutrients and flavor on a vintage food dehydrator similar to this updated one.

The flavor was concentrated, tart, and oh so chewy. Uh-um-good! These look just like Grandma’s! Later Aunt Ruthie Longenecker took over the tradition.

Red, Amber on Green Background – Van Gogh’s Apples

Do you associate apples with this season of the year? Any favorite recipes with apples? Thank you for adding quotes, recipes, or anything else that comes to mind here!

Purple Passages with a Weather Forecast

February 21, 2015February 21, 2015 marianbeaman37 Comments

To my friends both in the northern and southern hemisphere, some thoughts about the weather. All quotations from BrainyQuotes.

Sometimes I wish I was the weather, you’d bring me up in conversation forever. And when it rained, I’d be the talk of the day. — John Mayer

I like the cold weather. It means you get work done. — Noam Chomsky

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. — Anthony J. D’Angelo

Scarves, mittens, and hats are a great way to express your personality in the cold weather. — Brad Goreski

Where’s my hat? Freezing temps on Chincoteague Island, VA Chic Dumps? Best guess: Chicken and Dumplings

People don’t notice whether it’s winter or summer when they’re happy.

— Anton Chekhov

For there is no friend like a sister / In calm or stormy weather; / To cheer one on the tedious way, / To fetch one if one goes astray, / To lift one if one totters down,/ To strengthen whilst one stands. –– Christina Rossetti

(from “Goblin Market”)

A friendship can weather most things and thrive in thin soil; but it needs a little mulch of letters and phone calls and small, silly presents every so often – just to save it from drying out completely. — Pam Brown

The forecast: Spring will come!

Paperwhites from the narcissus family, with their “delicate color and sweet, musky fragrance,” a forecast of spring to come.

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. Genesis 8:22 KJV

I’m guessing you agree with some quotes more than others. One or two you may completely disagree with.

Can you add another one? We’ll be listening . . .

Coming next: Wanda: Boring in Beige or Beautiful in Blue?

Purple Passages and a Teddy Bear

October 15, 2014October 14, 2014 marianbeaman30 Comments

LEAVES

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. – Albert Camus

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons. – Jim Bishop

Quotation, noun: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. – Ambrose Bierce

(In September’s Purple Passages, I published one of Bierce’s quotes on photography. The one above was contributed later by photographer son Joel.)

CAREBEAR

A bear grows more alive with age. No one with one ounce of sensitivity could ever consign a bear to the dustbin. – Johnnie Hague

Mom with sheepish look holding teddy bear 1992

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. “Pooh?” he whispered.

“Yes, Piglet?”

“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s hand. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

― A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh.

The cell phone has become the adult’s transitional object, replacing the toddler’s teddy bear for comfort and a sense of belonging. – Margaret Heffernan

People go to the zoo and they like the lion because it’s scary. And the bear because it’s intense, but the monkey makes people laugh. – Lorne Michaels

HUMOR

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs. It’s jolted by every pebble on the road. – Henry Ward Beecher (Contributed by blog reader Carolyn Stoner)

It is bad to suppress laughter. It goes back down and spreads to your hips. – Fred Allen

* * *

Your opinion please: the quote about the teddy bear and cellphone. A comment on something else? Obviously, I like to chat too.

Coming next: Train Lovers, Welcome Aboard

Happy Birthday, Will!

April 23, 2014April 23, 2014 marianbeaman25 Comments

News Flash!

To mark Shakespeare’s 450^th birthday, “the Royal Shakespeare Company is spearheading a three year Jubilee, between 2014 and 2016, that will involve theatre performances, events and live streaming cinema around the world.”

* * * * *

Florida State College students: Of course they're discussing Shakespeare! — Florida State College students: Of course they’re discussing Shakespeare!

It’s April 23 in my college class of English Lit students. Each has brought in a can of Coke, Dr. Pepper or bottled water. I bring cupcakes—chocolate and vanilla for the party.

Reputedly, April 23, 1564 is the birthday of William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon. It is also the date of his death in 1616, but we are celebrating his life, especially the writing of his gushy love sonnets (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”) and his play, King Lear, which we have just read with all that fussing about a father’s will, sister sniping, revenge and murder. The body count is always high in Shakespeare’s tragedies.

A fixture at every birthday party, Shakespeare wore a bow today. — A fixture at every birthday party, Shakespeare wears a bow today.

Until I was out of high school, I did not realize that my Mennonite Mom was referring to Shakespeare’s line “God has given you one face, and you make yourself another” (Hamlet) when she chided me for wearing makeup. “I’m happy with the face God gave me,” she would retort.

And Grandma Longenecker probably wasn’t aware she was quoting from Midsummer NIght’s Dream either when she tried to comfort me with the words of Lysander: “The course of true love never did run smooth” over my break-up with David, a boyfriend in college. And of various presidents, Truman, Eisenhower, or Kennedy, she would quote from Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” I can still hear her cracking the “C” in crown.

Other quotes you may know:

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.
If music be the food of love, play on.
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
O, had I but followed the arts!
‘Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
This above all; to thine own self be true.

What special sayings do you remember from your childhood?

What quotes by Shakespeare can you add to the list?

I love it when you comment!

Please check it out: My writer friend, Traci Carver, teacher at Valwood School, a college prep high school in Valdosta, GA, posted on her blog a creative classroom s cene from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet featuring foam pool noodles and Twitter hashtags. Creative and memorable!

Just for Fun: Signs Around Town

March 26, 2014March 26, 2014 marianbeaman18 Comments

Signs . . . they’re everywhere . . . billboards in the city, stickers on cars, comments on Facebook. I found some wise ones in a novelty shop, on a car, on a piece of paper, on a writer’s sweat shirt. Some you’ve seen before. Others, I hope, are new. Silly video at the end!

Quotation now thoroughly engrained in pop culture from the Tom Robbins’ novel Still Life with Woodpecker, an un-fairy tale with princess Leigh-Cheri and outlaw Bernard.

“Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” a popular NPR broadcast on Saturday mornings . . . what we do at traffic signals, the post office, a doctor’s office. . . counsel from the Lord we resist hearing:

Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.

Psalm 27:14

“I won’t fix my car until YOU learn your lesson,” this driver insists.

Easy to say — until it actually happens to you!

Favorite come-back of my colleague, Dr. Laura, when students plead for a better grade.

Yes, pigs actually DO fly at the Ole Country Buffet in Valdosta, Georgia (Cliff on the road)

Her sweat shirt warning vengeance, I watch my step around Jennifer, a writer friend.

What quotes on plaques or signage have you seen around your town? Somewhere else?

Inquiring minds have to know!

Purple Passages with a Pig – October 2013 edition

October 12, 2013October 11, 2013 marianbeaman11 Comments

Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. Maya Angelou

READING

“Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” Mason Cooley, aphorist (1927- __ )

“Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head.” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

8.28.97 Cats look down on you, dogs look up at you, but PIGS look you straight in the eye!

Peter Mayle, Chasing Cezanne

BOOKS

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.” Franz Kafka

“Book love . . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.” Anthony Trollope

“A house without books is like a room without window.” Heinrich Mann, novelist (1871-1950)

“It lights the candle in the hurricane lamp of self; that’s why it survives.” Anna Quindlen. “Turning the Page.” Newsweek: April 5, 2010, (53).

* * * * *

8.28.97 Sometimes life is a bowl of harries! “plain and fancy girl”

10.16.98 When you love someone you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet this is exactly what most of us demand.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Your comments welcome. I will always respond!

Purple Passages iii with Pictures

September 11, 2013November 10, 2015 marianbeaman7 Comments

Quote from Bartlett himself — Quote from John Bartlett, who compiled over 11,00 quotations in the 10th edition of Quotations, 1919

Writing & Stories

4.10.99 Why stories are so effective:

The best stories begin as mental pictures which turn into personal mirrors before they become insightful windows through which we’re able to view life with greater clarity and understanding. Anonymous

12.15.95 I like everything about writing except the paperwork! Novelist Peter de Vries

9.9.00 I feel 10 times smarter writing on the computer. My student, ENC 1101

Travel

There’s no cure like travel

To help you unravel

The worries of living today.

When the poor brain is cracking

There’s nothing like packing

A suitcase and sailing away.

Cole Porter – Anything Goes.

7.15.13 The only real voyage of self-discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing it with new eyes. Marcel Proust

8.14.99 Distance lends enchantment to the view . . . . Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Ozarks

10.22.96 I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. Thoreau

7.28.90 The trip to heaven will be easy because I have sent my heart on ahead. Loretta Lynn

White-Water Rafting

Ocoee Rafting - Ducktown, TN — Ocoee Rafting – Ducktown, TN

White water rafting, especially level 3 or 4, is a grand metaphor for life:

1. Trust your Guide.

2. Stay IN the boat.

3. Have fun!

Dancing with the Stars

4.16.99 I don’t try to be better than anyone else. I try to be better than myself. Mikhael Baryshnikov, dancer

5.13.90 If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Thoreau

5.10.99 And frame your mind to mirth and merriment / Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life. Wm. Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

A merry heart doeth good like medicine. Proverbs 17:22.

Time and Happiness

3.17.00 Human time does not turn in a circle. It runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy; happiness is the longing for repetition. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

12.28.89 How plotless real life was [is]! Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

5.9.90 Don’t worry about the meaning of life; pursue meaning in life every day. Robert Fulghum

12.19.99 You are only one thought away from a good feeling! Sheil Krystal quoted in Rick Carlson’s Happiness

9.10.13 Sybil, in my book says, “Sometimes, the greatest gift you can give someone is the freedom to pursue their own happiness.” Red Clay and Roses SK Nicholls

Which quotes do you agree with?

Disagree?

Your turn: Share one you would add to the themes.

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