Yoiks! I think that church forgot about Deborah in the book of Judges who led 10,000 men into battle somewhere between 1380 and 1050 BCE.

Here is a quote I like from a speech given by writer Isaac Bashevis Singer when he accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1978. Many of his books were written for children, and he said there were five hundred reasons he writes for children:

Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics... . They... don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation... . They... still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff... . They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know it is not within his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions."
From Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac", July 14, 2004

I LOVE Garrison Keillor's radio Lake Wobegone series!

Oh goodness, Griff....I've been doing that since I started reading the Hardy Boys when I was 7. I can't tell you how many 'quotes' I've lost. I now have literally hundreds of them.

"It was a small town by a small river and a small lake in a small northern part of a Midwestern state. There wasnÂt so much wilderness around you couldnÂt see the town. But on the other hand there wasnÂt so much town you couldnÂt see and feel and touch and smell the wilderness. The town was full of trees. And dry grass and dead flowers now that autumn was here. And full of fences to walk on and sidewalks to skate on and a large ravine to tumble in and yell across. And the town was full ofÂ.
Boys.
And it was the afternoon of Halloween."
Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

Literature says nothing to those human beings who are satisfied with their lot, who are content with life as they now live it. Literature is the food of the rebellious spirit, the promulgator of non-conformities, the refuge for those who have too much or too little in life. One seeks sanctuary in literature so as not to be unhappy and so as not to be incomplete. To ride alongside the scrawny Rocinante and the confused Knight on the fields of La Mancha, to sail the seas on the back of a whale with Captain Ahab, to drink arsenic with Emma Bovary, to become an insect with Gregor Samsa: these are all ways that we have invented to divest ourselves of the wrongs and the impositions of this unjust life, a life that forces us always to be the same person when we wish to be many different people, so as to satisfy the many desires that possess us.
Mario Vargas Llosa

An advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any earthly force.
Dorothy L. Sayers

Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity . . . we cherish books even if unread; their mere presence exudes comfort; their ready access, reassurance.
A.E. Newton

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."
Mark Twain's note in Huckleberry Finn

What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change.

Jerome K Jerome - preface to The Idle Thoughts of an Idle fellow

I'm so thankful for the people who can put into words my own amorphous thoughts that I also like to jot down the ones that strike my fancy. Here are a few on the subject of books and reading:

We read to know we are not alone. C.S. Lewis

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. Emilie Buchwald

Richer than I you can never be; I had a mother who read to me. Strickland Gillilan

Books may well be the only true magic. Alice Hoffman

And keep this one in mind at all times:

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it. P. J. O'Rourke

As for excerpts from books-- for consistently beautiful and mystical writing, Ray Bradbury is one of the best.

Froniga - that O'Rourke one is brilliant - thanks! I'll pass that on to all my friends.

A couple of my favorite:

"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages." -Terry Pratchett Wyrd Sisters

"Although all cat games have their rules and ritual, these vary with the individual player. The cat, of course, never breaks a rule. If it does not follow precedent, that simply means it has created a new rule and its up to you to learn it quickly if you want the game to continue." - Sidney Denham The Literary Cat....always reminds me of my oldest cat Gracie, who is always changing the rules of the game.

I've been collecting quotes for a couple of years now. I was a bit panicky when I couldn't find my quote book after our move - but I eventually dug it out of the box it was hiding in.

I used to save quotes in HS and college. A few years back, in trying to get rid of what I thought was junk, I tossed the notebooks. What was I thinking? I've started again, but I really wish I had those!

A friend gave me this one in her bday card to me when I turned 50:

>I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you (Agatha Christie)

It still speaks to me.

One of my favorite sources for good quotes is Twain. For example

>the difference between the right word and almost right word is the difference between a lightning rod and a lightening bug.

Another Mark Twain - I may not get it exactly right, but I have the sentiments correct!

When I was fourteen, I was appalled at the ignorance of my parents. But when I got to twenty-one, I was amazed at how much they had learned.

Having three ex-teenage step-children, I can really relate to that one!

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Alfred North Whitehead.

To know what you prefer instead of humbling saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

R.L. Stevenson.

It is in the midst of evil circumstances that grace is most clearly perceived.

Flannery O'Connor.

Burnout is a loss of will, motivation, idealism, moral purpose, or commitment to work. you can't burn out if you've never been on fire.

M. Cronin.

Oppression involves the failure of the imagination to recognize the full humanity of another human being.

Margaret Atwood.

If somehow I can, before I leave this earth, combine my absolutely mad freedom and excitement with Truth, then I will have done something.

artist Andrew Wyeth.

Courage is the resistance to fear, not absence of fear.

Mark Twain.

The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea.

Isak Dinesen.

For I have never ceased to be young, if being young is always loving.

(George Sand at 67, in a letter to Gustave Flaubert, 1871).

We do not see events or people as they are, but as we are.

Anais Nin.

It has become appalling obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

These are only a few from my large collection. I've been saving quotes I like since my University days....

A quote for today in honor and memory of the incredible RAF:

"Never in the field of human conflict, has so much, been owed by so many, to so few!"
Winston Churchill - September 1940

Froniga, well said! Thanks for sharing....

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"

"Great things have been done by the naive and poorly informed. Parenthood, for one thing."
Garrison Keilor

reader, that's a great quote! i'll have to write that one down. *L*

"Philosophy is at once the power of alienated thought and the thought of alienated power, and as such has never been able to emancipate itself from theology."

Guy Debord
The Society of the Spectacle

Griff-Rhys,
I know! He said it in the Prairie Home Companion radio show, and I rushed to get a pen and write it down.

Some that I have kept:

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- Wm Butler Yeats

A woman at a party once told James Thurber that sheÂd read a French translation of his My Life and Hard Times, adding "You know, the book is even better in French!" To which Thurber replied, "Yes  my work tends to lose something in the original."

"The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table." from Life of Pi

"Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then." -- John Wooden

Two from Albert Camus:

"In the midst of winter, I discovered that inside me was an invincible summer."

"I should like to love my country and still love justice."

"Kangaroos had moved on from destroying crops to snogging farmers and burning their children."

- Tank Girl: The Collection

You guys probably know these already .......

"Common sense is not so common." -- Voltaire

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." -- Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams was one of the funniest writers! His Doctor Who episodes were great too!

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy." -- Wm Butler Yeats

Sarah, that one brought a smile since I believe it may be only too true for so many. I wonder if it is limited to the Irish.

"How alike are the groans of love to those of the dying"ÂMalcolm Lowry Lowry in Mexico

The entire Hitchiker series is one big Douglas Adams quote fest. Love those books. And that quote reminds me of the line 'hyperspace is a lot like being drunk' 'whats wrong with that?' 'ask a glass of water'

Here's one that I think is appropriate for Thanksgiving. This is a mother speaking to her teenage son in Margaret Mahy's The Catalogue of the Universe:

"We've got so many reasons to be happy that it seems ungrateful not to be happier than we are."

"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."

"Be like a headland of rock on which the waves break incessantly; but it stands fast and around it the seething of the waters sinks to rest." ÂMarcus Aurelius

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading"
Logan Pearsall

Surely the motto of many readers.

"I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"

"Yea, and slimy things did crawl with legs upon the slimy sea."

"Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down by the mind before you reach eighteen." ÂAlbert Einstein

"The rich are different from you and me."

F.S. Fitzgerald.

"One can never be too rich or too thin."

Wallis Warfield, a.k.a. the Duchess of Windsor.

"Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else." Margaret Mead

Woodnymph2: Here's Ernest hemingway's equally famous reply to that F.Scott Fitzgerald quote ("The rich, they are different from you and me."):

"Yeah, they've got a lot more money."

"I do hope your Christmas has a little touch of Eternity in among the rush and pitter patter, and all. It always seems such a mixing of this world and the next --- but that, after all, is the idea."

Evelyn Underhill.

"But I ...have always thought of Christmas time...as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journies...."

(From A Christmas Carol, by C. Dickens).