Happy Birthday :)

November 30th

I found out a few days ago that today is Jonathan Swift, Sir Winston Churchill, and  Mark Twain's birthday. Pretty cool, huh? So, in honor of them, I found a bunch of their quotes. (What is it with me and quotes??) :)

Anyway, they were all pretty interesting men, so I hope you enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won. ~SWC

There are two things that are more difficult than making an after-dinner speech: climbing a wall which is leaning toward you and kissing a girl who is leaning away from you. ~SWC

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. ~SWC

“A kindness spontaneously offered to him who needs it, is doubly gratifying.” ~JS

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent. ~SWC

I think we never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead--and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead, and they would be honest so much earlier. ~MT

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it. ~MT

Oh, this infernal Human Race! I wish I had it in the Ark again--with an auger! ~MT

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest. ~JS                                 

God's noblest work? Man. Who found it out? Man. ~MT

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning. ~JS

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent. ~JS

I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. But when they descend to telling the truth about me I consider that this is taking an unfair advantage. ~MT

“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” ~JS


The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~SWC

“May you live all the days of your life.”  ~JS

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read. ~SWC

Soda

I'm considering taking sodas out of my diet. Thoughts? Opinions?

Cheers,

Lauren

A bucket full of dreams

Someday I'm going to look back on my 17-year-old self, and laugh at the things I think (thought) are (were) important. Oh well. Anyway, I know some people write letters to their future (or former) self, and I've been thinking about doing that, but it would probably just end up unbearably awkward. So instead, I've decided that I'm just going to publish (on the world-wide-interweb,) a list of things I hope to do in the future. Sort of like a bucket list, but not really.

Enjoy!

Someday, I want live in the middle of no-place, own several wooded acres, and have a blueberry farm and llamas. 

Someday, I want to grow a garden like this: 

Someday, I want to hang-glide. 

Someday, I want to mountain-unicycle. 

Someday, I want to milk a cow.

Someday, I want to climb a mountain.

Someday, I want to be a published author. Like of a book. Preferably Books. 

Someday, I want to be a Wife, Mother, Grandmother, and Great-grandmother. 

Someday, I want to travel the world.

Someday, I want to be an amazing cook.

Someday, I want to speak in front of 1,000 people. Or maybe 10,000 people.

Someday, I want to run a marathon.

Someday, I want to be a good snowboarder. ( I guess this mean I should snowboard someday?)

Someday, I want to live (for at least 2 years,) in another country.

Someday, I want to pogo a mile.

Someday, I want to be an American Sign Language Interpreter.

Someday, I want to work with kids.

Someday, I want to (short-term) work in a museum. (Smithsonian? Library of Congress?)    

Someday, I want to look back on my life, and say "I have really lived. And not because of me, but because I have lived for God."

~~~~~~ 

"In my world everyone is a pony, and they all eat rainbows, and poop butterflies!" 

Fears

What I fear most, is coming to the end of my life and finding I've wasted it by doing nothing, or by fighting for the wrong things.  If I"m going to live, I want to make a meaningful difference.

Confession: If I died tomorrow, my worst fears would come true.

What do you fear most?

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

- Emily Dickinson

Going For Water
The well was dry beside the door, And so we went with pail and can Across the fields behind the house To seek the brook if still it ran; Not loth to have excuse to go, Because the autumn eve was fair (Though chill), because the fields were ours, And by the brook our woods were there. We ran as if to meet the moon That slowly dawned behind the trees, The barren boughs without the leaves, Without the birds, without the breeze. But once within the wood, we paused Like gnomes that hid us from the moon, Ready to run to hiding new With laughter when she found us soon. Each laid on other a staying hand To listen ere we dared to look, And in the hush we joined to make We heard, we knew we heard the brook. A note as from a single place, A slender tinkling fail that made Now drops that floated on the pool Like pearls, and now a silver blade. ~Robert Frost

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
                           -Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871

To be alive is power-
Existence in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.

To be alive and will
'Tis able as a god!
The further of ourselves be what-
Such being finitude?
                         -Emily Dickinson, c. 1864