Six Memorable Quotes

I’m not really a favorite quote person. Mainly because I'm not good at remembering things like that, but also because I find it annoying when people go around quoting other people and expect you to have the same epiphany about it that they do, and I don’t like to be annoying.  Without meaning to be, anyway.

If you have kids under the age of five, you probably have books filled with memorable quotes that your kids have said, like I do.  Yeah, I totally don’t.  I am the mom who documents almost nothing in my kids’ childhoods, save the twelve thousand pictures my husband has taken of them that threaten to overtake our home.  Little kids are quote machines; everything that exits their mouths is utterly share-worthy and worth preserving, or so it seems on Facebook.  Because I have no files of my kids’ quotes when they were small, and the memorable things that come out of their mouths these days are usually of the “YOU ARE THE WORST MOTHER EVER” variety, I have little to share of these types of things.

So I will share some quotes that appeal to my sensibilities.  Don’t ask me to tell you Who Said That a week from now.  Odds are I have to look it up, as I had to do with some of these memorable quotes I’m about to lay out here.  I said I'm not good at this.

“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” – Sarah Caldwell.  Now, I don’t know who Sarah Caldwell is, nor did I know this quote before I read it on a poster in my son’s middle school a month or so ago.  That probably tells you more about me than the fact that I like the quote does, but whatever.  I fully subscribe to the mentality behind this quote, which basically says “Don’t be too proud to pass up any opportunity to learn something from anyone, because someday you’ll kick yourself for being so stupid.”  Maybe Sarah Caldwell wishes she had said that instead.

“I don’t look as dumb as I am!!” – My little brother, circa 1984.  My little brother, 7 years my junior, confused the wording of the oldie but goodie “I’m not as dumb as I look” and spouted this attempt at a verbal smack-down to my older brother and I, who were probably torturing him with Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.  I forget the details of what happened that day, but I will never forget this quote, which still makes me cackle.

“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” – The Bible, New Testament, Romans 12:18 (New International Version).  I mean, you can’t really get clearer than this, can you?  Plus it’s from God, so it’s a command.  The part that I love is “as far as it depends on you.”  Come on world, get it together man.

“Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they’re rather stupid.” – Mrs. Banks (from Mary Poppins).  As an aside, I loved this movie when I was a kid.  Something about Mary Poppins and her no-nonsense confidence made me wish not that I had a nanny like her, but that I was her.  Maybe that’s why I’m a little bit of a neat freak.  Or why I own so many high-collared Victorian dresses.  Either way, this quote (which is a line from ‘Sister Suffragette,’ a song in the movie) always stood out to me, even though MP didn’t say it.  Seriously, though.

 “There are three types of people in the world: people that make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who stand around and say, ‘What the heck just happened?’” – Mary Kay Ash (paraphrased).  My senior class quote.  I spent so much time trying to get out of school my last year of high school that I completely missed the process by which this quote became significant to our class, which solidifies my membership in category #3 here.

“You are/he is/she is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” – Unknown.  This is more of an idiom than a quote, but damn if I don’t love saying this, particularly when observing my friends who have many children to parent.  I always laugh after saying it; they don’t.

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This post inspired by:

Mama Kat's Writing Workshop

Prompt #1: List six of your favorite quotes