Quotations Weblog

Getting the butterflies to fly in formation. How do I do that? Fear and anticipation are such motivators for me because I’ve always thought of them as pent up energy. For me, being scared and being excited feel exactly the same.

When I’m scared, I feel like I can’t sit still. I want to move. I want to act. The great thing about fear is that it tells me exactly what I need to do. There is direction. I need to get rid of whatever is scaring me.

Next time you’re afraid and you feel that anxious feeling in your stomach, remember the butterflies. Remember that they are pent up energy just waiting there for you to use. Use it to deliver that speech. Use it to win over the new people you have to meet. Use it to start that neighborhood watch program. Whatever it is that is making you feel fearful is no match to the reserve of energy that you have within you.

My sister emailed me a link. The subject line said, “Something Positive.” Even though it could have been spam or some evil virus, I clicked on it. It was a webcomic. Instead of reading the comic for the day, I started at the beginning. It took me about a month to read it from the beginning until the present day. I was hooked and I loved it.

I tried to get Mike to read it. “Yeah, I know about that guy. He dared his readers to pay him enough to quit his job and they did.” I hadn’t heard about that. I had read the entire collection of his comic without reading any of the author comments. I was too busy collecting great quotes from his work.

Now, I read his comic every day. I also keep abreast with the two side projects that he has: Midnight Macabre and New Gold Dreams. When I’m out of town, I check two things, my email and Something Positive. If he were able to do twenty comics a day, I would read them all. Enjoy my favorite quotations from his collection:

See all the quotations from Randy K. Milholland here:

Something Positive Quotations

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures lately. They have taken up most of my entries on Pick Me! lately. I haven’t written much there for awhile. That’s the nice thing about photography. I don’t have to think. All I have to do is find something interesting and hope the pictures turn out. If I take enough pictures, there is usually one or two that look nice. I just have to arrange them nicely.

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and I believe them. Sometimes, though, I like to think that words are more powerful. I tell myself a little lie to make me believe that writing is better than the truth that we have all memorized. One picture is worth a thousand words, but one thousand words is a dictionary, not a story.

Continuing the my favorite quotations series, here are a few of my favorite quotations from Robertson Davies.

Davies (1913 – 1995) is a Canadian writer, professor, and journalist who wrote 11 novels and a number of plays. Outside of Canada he isn’t very well known—I have to admit I hadn’t heard of him until I discovered that a few of my favorite quotations shared the same author’s name. If the quotations are any indication, I’m sure his written works are excellent.

• More quotations from Robertson Davies
• Robertson Davies biography and bibliography

USA Today has an article about questionable quotations from technology leaders—if you’ve ever heard the quotation above, or heard about IBM’s founder saying there was a world market for only five computers, or Bill Gates saying nobody could possibly need more than 640K of memory, read the article to see why you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

As for the “Everything has been invented” quote, this is one of those classic misquotations that persists because people want it to be true. Everyone loves to hear stupid words from the past that were later proven very wrong.

Of course, like many such quotations, it’s too good to be true. This one has been misquoted for literally more than a century, and pretty thoroughly debunked as early as 1940. Nevertheless, thanks to the Internet, it persists… Here’s lots more information about this misquote.

[via Ed Bott]