From my FaceBook page

On Collecting Quotes

On FaceBook, the only thing I post that gets even 1/3 the likes as pictures of my really smart, still looks like she’s 35 years old, loving and gracious wife, are quotes. I can understand why people like to see photos of Kim, especially those in my extended family who may have never met her. The likes for quotes were harder for me to understand.

It was, I think, the American philosopher Richard Rorty who said, “90% of everything philosophers say is wrong. But, the 10% they get right explains 90% of everything.” Quotes are like the philosopher's 10%. They distill the essence of an idea down into a pithy, insightful, humorous, or provocative statement condensing a whole book’s worth of wisdom into a sentence or two.

For a long time, I didn’t realize that you could collect quotes like people collect silver spoons or stamps but you can, and evidently, I have. I didn’t think of myself as a collector of pithy sayings until recently. I sort of approached my list of quotes like the actor Edward G. Robinson did cigars when he quipped, “I didn't play at collecting. No cigar anywhere was safe from me.” Quotes were things I used like he smoked cigars. They were references for research papers and the dissertation. They were tools to advance a career.

And yet, I have a word-processing file that is several pages long with just quotes. In fact, I’ve had several such lists over the years, and a couple of them have gotten lost. I don’t know the number of insightful quotes, limericks, or oneliners I’ve tried to keep. Many were made by people who are unknown to me; I have no idea who they are or were. I have some favorites but others I just found.

I’ve been thinking about this over the past several days.

Why do I collect quotes? I can't really say. However, I think that if, "joy is," as C.S. Lewis wrote, "the serious business of heaven," then quotes are the everyday business of wisdom. Look at Western Philosophy. It starts with Aesop and his fables. Notice how most of those fables end with a pithy saying or proverb. Something easy to remember and that cuts to the heart of the moral issue being presented. That's what good quotes do.

David Furnish said, “A good art collection is emblematic of the people collecting it.” Quotes are, I think like art. The sayings you remember, the words that inspire you reveal a lot about who you are.

What is particularly interesting to me is that some of the best quotes come from fiction and fiction writers. Great scientists, politicians, philosophers, theologians, and engineers do not seem to have the market cornered in truth or wisdom. Maybe that shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. In the end, I guess I have to agree, as I so often do with Mark Twain's acerbic remark that “It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction, fiction has to make sense.”

That evil genius Nietzsche thought that “All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.” I don’t agree. Most of my truly great thoughts occur when I am trying to sleep but can’t. There seems to be something about the conscious process of relaxing, trying to sleep that on a subconscious level triggers my mind. While trying to get to sleep last night, tossing and mumbling to myself in bed at 3:30 in the morning, I had a much more extensive essay planned out. Now, in the light of day with the grass begging to be mowed, the flowerbeds wanting weeding and the floor screaming to be mopped, I can’t remember half of what I wanted to write.

But, as the French say, "C'est la vie"