There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Dorothy ParkerRead
This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.
Interpretation
Life is unpredictable and often not what we plan for.
Dorothy Parker's quote reflects on the often unplanned and chaotic nature of life. It suggests that despite our aspirations and projects, the essence of living may not align with what we consciously set out to achieve, highlighting the spontaneity of human experience and existence.
In practice
In a speech about embracing life's unexpected turns, I illustrated with Parker's quote.
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
I canβt write five words but that I change seven.
I'm worried that the audience is being conditioned. That's my real fear. Because if they don't want to see wrinkles on the screen, if they actually fear looking at them, then it's only going to get worse. Those of us who don't want to shoot up and cut and sew, we're just not going be cast.
Men have no special right because they belong to one race or another: the word man defines all rights.
One of the things I miss most is that I can no longer read, due to age-related macular degeneration. I get regular injections for this, and thankfully these seem to have arrested its progress, but it's still very difficult for me to read. That means it is hard for me to pick up my Bible and read it like I used to, and I miss that very much.
We are obliged to respect, defend and maintain the common bonds of union and fellowship that exist among all members of the human race.
In our loss and fear we craved the acts of religion, the ceremonies that allow us to admit our helplessness, our dependence on the great forces we do not understand.
I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness.
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