I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, but because it never forgot what it could do.
Interpretation
True fame comes not from grand achievements but from consistent reliability and capability.
In this quote, Naomi Shihab Nye suggests that the true essence of fame lies in being steadfast and dependable in one's abilities, rather than seeking glory through extraordinary actions. Just as a pulley and a buttonhole perform their functions quietly and effectively, true value is found in remembering and executing one's potential with humility and diligence.
In practice
Use this quote in a motivational speech about finding value in consistent effort.
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.
A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
I think whenever you love something or somebody it means that you have to extend yourself, you have to grow - get a little larger. You can't stay in your little comfortable - spot.
As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.
Knowledge is power. Information is liberating.
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
For everything that you find dreadful, there's usually something that is rather marvelous as well.
The infinite faith I have in people's ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.
Take stock of your fears now and see how many of them are senseless. If you are honest with yourself you will probably find most of them are groundless.
Once we accept our limits, we go beyond them.
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