LOL, wut?
I worry at times that I'm too pedantic. I spend the majority of each day looking for meaning in the written word, and sometimes I can't put that skill to bed. But seriously? Context, yo.
(from Real Simple, June 2009) The Right Quote, The Right Note
Struggling with what to say on the card? Let some great writers and speakers of old, plus a few clever modern thinkers, help you out.
For Graduations
There is nothing like a dream to create the future. - Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Granted, I haven't read Les Miz since grade school, but I vaguely recall all the young, idealistic dreamers dying horribly at the barricades. And the point of the story is that Valjean can never escape his criminal past, and therefore has no future. It's called the miserable ones, for Christ's sake!
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. - B.F. Skinner, "Education in 1984" (1969)
And apparently what sruvives in Orwell's dystopian 1984 is that the characters have forgotten humanity and compassion and been educated in lies, prejudice, and fear. How nice of Skinner - he who used his infamous black box of positive and negative reinforcement to train his own children - to remind us that humanity are essentially stupid cattle. Why not go ahead and quote Hobbes on the card - the lives of human beings are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". It'll bring a smile to your graduate's face for sure. (Disclaimer: I have no idea if Skinner was referring to the novel when he wrote that article, or picked some future date out of a hat. Still.)
For Weddings
There is no remedy for love, but to love more. - H.D. Thoreau
How well did that work out for the never-married, not-romantic-except-possibly-with-Emerson Thoreau? Unless he was talking about his love of trees and civil disobedience.
He is husband, she is wife. / She fears not him, they fear not life. - Robert Frost, "On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind"
Oh. My. God. Leaving Frost's reputed misogyny aside...what? I'm glad she doesn't fear her husband, at least. Probably they sleep on either side of a fence - I hear that makes for good neighbors.
For Thank-Yous
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark / Our coming and look brighter when we come. - Lord Byron, "Don Juan"
BWAHAHAAAHA! Who wants to email Real Simple and tell them what "coming" means in this poem's context? Anyone? Whatever, write an essay on it to be on my desk by Monday. Playboy pays for stories and I'm broke.
XD
(from Real Simple, June 2009) The Right Quote, The Right Note
Struggling with what to say on the card? Let some great writers and speakers of old, plus a few clever modern thinkers, help you out.
For Graduations
There is nothing like a dream to create the future. - Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Granted, I haven't read Les Miz since grade school, but I vaguely recall all the young, idealistic dreamers dying horribly at the barricades. And the point of the story is that Valjean can never escape his criminal past, and therefore has no future. It's called the miserable ones, for Christ's sake!
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. - B.F. Skinner, "Education in 1984" (1969)
And apparently what sruvives in Orwell's dystopian 1984 is that the characters have forgotten humanity and compassion and been educated in lies, prejudice, and fear. How nice of Skinner - he who used his infamous black box of positive and negative reinforcement to train his own children - to remind us that humanity are essentially stupid cattle. Why not go ahead and quote Hobbes on the card - the lives of human beings are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". It'll bring a smile to your graduate's face for sure. (Disclaimer: I have no idea if Skinner was referring to the novel when he wrote that article, or picked some future date out of a hat. Still.)
For Weddings
There is no remedy for love, but to love more. - H.D. Thoreau
How well did that work out for the never-married, not-romantic-except-possibly-with-Emerson Thoreau? Unless he was talking about his love of trees and civil disobedience.
He is husband, she is wife. / She fears not him, they fear not life. - Robert Frost, "On the Heart's Beginning to Cloud the Mind"
Oh. My. God. Leaving Frost's reputed misogyny aside...what? I'm glad she doesn't fear her husband, at least. Probably they sleep on either side of a fence - I hear that makes for good neighbors.
For Thank-Yous
'Tis sweet to know there is an eye will mark / Our coming and look brighter when we come. - Lord Byron, "Don Juan"
BWAHAHAAAHA! Who wants to email Real Simple and tell them what "coming" means in this poem's context? Anyone? Whatever, write an essay on it to be on my desk by Monday. Playboy pays for stories and I'm broke.
XD