My one secret desire
To write an aphorism so wise, eloquent and beautifully formed that it will be quoted for years to come. There I’ll be under the As in Bartlett’s quotations, with just that one perfect phrase.
And there people of the 22nd century will be, washing a Jetson’s breakfast down with powdered beaver’s milk, lazing over that page – dawdling between Aristotle and Arnold (not Schwarzenegger). They’ll stop and scoff in the typical 2148 way, Huh, who the oxygen is she? How sad, is that all she ever wro– Whoa! I… whoa!
And then they’ll read it again.
(Now all I need is to get wise.)
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Comment
- Don’t we all.
— listless Apr 1, 9:52pm # - I hope you write something ethereal. Something quotable and laughable. Something worth putting on a button, on a t-shirt. Something worth printing in gold lame’ on a countertop or a gravestone of someone famous. Something singable, edible with crumpets and warmed milk. Something that swims off the tongue like a butterfly with trousers on heading to a party.
— james Apr 2, 2:35pm # - On a smaller scale, teachers are always trying something similar; to make students stop in their mental and emotional tracks and think and feel the profundity of something. To put it in such a way that it really sinks in and makes them gasp with the truth of it. And think, just for an instant, that we’re just a teensy bit cool.
— wizmo Apr 3, 6:03pm # - For years, I’ve been occasionally encountering the Orson Rega Card quote “Among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken.” It’s a compelling line, and it’s found its way into my thoughts at some very relevant times.
I’ve always been curious who this person was (partly because I’ve wondered if there was any relation to Orson Scott Card, who is doubtless my favorite contemporary author), and every six months or so, when I ran across the quote, I’d Google the name, but all I ever turned up was that same quote. It’s been one of those little mysteries of my life.
Of course, in preparing to post this comment, I Googled it again and now the answer’s in the first page of results (he is related to OSC; his grandfather). So some of the mystery and romance is gone.
But I would imagine by 2148 he’ll have sunk back into obscurity, with what is apparently the one line he did speak causing an occasional “Whoa” moment for people that have already absorbed your wisdom and skipped over the Bs.
— Dan Ridley Apr 27, 9:12am #
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