Apologies for the clumsy thread title, but let me try to explain. This thread is not about the book you read that changed your ideas about life, the universe, and everything. This is about the phrase or sentence or paragraph you read that had some lasting influence on what you do or think, be it ever so teeny-tiny. My examples:
I once read a book wherein the main character mentioned that she could not go to sleep without brushing her teeth because she would just lie awake imagining she could feel her teeth soften. Ever since then, damn it, I can’t go to bed without brushing my teeth.
Another book I read was about a nun’s experiences in a convent. One of her jobs was to sweep a room, and the Mother Superior kept sending her back to do it over and over again. The lesson she was supposed to learn from this was that because her job performance reflected to the glory of God, she should do everything perfectly. Although not a religious person, I carried away the idea that it is possible to clean a floor perfectly. When I sweep or mop a room, I get really obsessive about it, and it is directly linked to this book I read as a kid.
Have you ever been unduly influenced by your reading material in this way?
I have an instance I think fits this bill. I’m not sure what the book was; it was a YA book about an Indian girl struggling with her heritage… but in the book is a Sanskrit poem about a general and the sweeping romance of it has always stayed with me. It is this poem:
Jewel of all my Kingdom
Although I conquer all the earth,
Yet for me there is only one city.
In that city there is for me only one house;
And in that house, one room only;
And in that room, a bed.
And one woman sleeps there,
The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom
Reading old books, some authors used so much degrading black speak I can’t edit enough to listen to the material. Yesum massar. I have a macro to change stuff like that to yes sir, but sometimes I have to give up on reading it for historical content, because it makes we want to scream. There are some books with nasty backwoods speech out there I can’t read as well. I can tolerate a lot by saying that was the term of the day, but some authors put to much heart into the demeaning of classes they weren’t part of.
Okay, what are the odds that someone else would come up with exactly the same rather obscure one that immediately came to my mind when reading the OP? In four posts?
Pretty good, I guess!
BTW, it was “Peanuts.” There was a strip about Linus being “aware of his tongue.” Ever since then, I sometimes become aware of my tongue.
There was another “Peanuts” strip where Linus was asking Lucy whether the cheesecake in the fridge was any good, and she said she wasn’t sure. He then threw it away, saying he “had no desire to be racked up by a bad cheesecake.” I think about this often when deciding to toss something iffy in the fridge.
During Liet’s death scene in Dune, the last thing that goes through his mind before the spice blow kills him is something like “The only two constants in human existence are confusion and error.”
After reading that, I thought it over for a minute or so and realized that yeah, it explained a lot.
In one of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books, a remark is made about odors being particulate (meaning that you are inhaling actual particles of the stinky thing). Somehow I’d managed to live for many decades without thinking about this, but now it skeeves me out.
When I was about about 13 years old I was reading a book by Brian Aldisswhere he described some character eating apples whole, including the core, in big, hungry bites. I thought that was cool and I’ve eaten apples that way ever since.
I’ve since decided that the core is the tastiest part of the apple
oh I have one of these and it is SOO weird. I am an atheist, but foreverago, when I was a child, when I read that someone, not Ghandi, but I think a political figure, perhaps from ?India or Pakistan? was assasinated, he murmurred Manu, Manu or Mani, Mani, or Ramu or Rami and died. I read on that in?Hinduism or whatever the religion it was that is the perfect man. Does anyone know what it was? I have fantasized about doing that when I’m dying and it be this GIANT mystery for everyone that ever knew me.
It’s so odd, because I’m female and an atheist, but it has stayed with me.
The whole thing where seemingly ( no, they ARE!) random moments in your life stay in your memory crystal clear is so bizarre…
Years ago I read a book about an aircraft carrier in the last months of the war, and at one point in it the author is anticipating an immediate attack by kamikazes. He says the line of a poem repeated in his head:
“Take your last look at the sky and the brook,
and send your last word to the Czar.”
For some reason this stuck with me, and a few years ago as I was taking my cat to the vet to be euthanized, the words repeated over and over in my mind.
They re-occurred to me during my late wife’s last few days as well.
They sound rather Kipling-esque, but I don’t know what poem they came from. Any suggestions?
When I was in high school, I read C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet. There was a sentence in there that I liked so much that I committed it to memory:
To every man, in his acquaintance with a new art, there comes a moment when that which before was meaningless first lifts, as it were, one corner of the curtain that hides its mystery, and then reveals, in a burst of delight which later and fuller understanding can hardly ever equal, one glimpse of the indefinite possibilities within.
Whenever I’m learning something new, and get that “a-ha moment,” I think of that sentence. (Most recently, it occurred as I was learning the intricacies of indexed universal life insurance.)
Rather prosaic mine, but I learnt from the novel **Catch 22 ** that cod can be eaten raw, if need be, with no ill effects. It has always stuck with me, regardless of whether it’s true. I suppose in this age of sushi it isn’t that surprising…
In Mr God, This is Anna, the central character says that the answer (the ultimate answer) is : In my middle.
Where is God (or your concept of a higher power)? In your middle.
Where is the person you love? In your middle.
Where is the thing you most desire? In your middle.
Your ‘middle’ could be your heart, your mind, your soul - whatever. The things that *matter *are with you always. That concept still gives me comfort - 32 years after I first read about it.
Where is peace, contentment, forgiveness, love? In my middle.
That was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi - according to his secretary Pyarelal, anyway.. I don’t know if that would make him the perfect Man in a singular sense of the word, but for a lot of Vaisnavite Hindus the story probably shows that Gandhi was a man on the brink of enlightenment.
As for the OP: From Schopenhauer (translation: me). A small sentence of immense worth for anyone engaged in science or scholarship in any way:
“Any Intention is a direct threat to Insight.”
From Stephen King’s Insomnia: There is a big difference between being tired and being sleepy.
I’m a lifelong insomniac, and that thought never occured to me. People say “Don’t go to bed if you don’t feel tired.” Wrong. I don’t go to bed if I don’t feel sleepy.
It’s from an old camp song (google your phrase and you’ll find half-a-dozen entries)
The Sons Of The Prophet
The sons of the Prophet are brave men and bold
and quite unaccustomed to fear,
But the bravest by far in the ranks of the shah,
Was Abdul Abulbul Amir.
If you wanted a man to encourage the van,
Or harass the foe from the rear,
Storm fort or redoubt, you had only to shout
for Abdul Abulbul Amir.
Now the heroes were plenty and well known to fame
in the troops that were led by the Czar,
And the bravest of these was a man by the name
of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
One day this bold Russian, he shouldered his gun
and donned his most truculent sneer,
Downtown he did go where he tred on the toe
of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
“Young man,” quote Abdul,"has life grown so dull
That you wish to end your career?
Vile infidel know, you have trod on the toe
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
So take your last look at the sunshine and brook
And send your regrets to the Czar
For by this I imply, you are going to die,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar."
Then this bold Mameluke drew his trusty skibouk,
Singing, “Allah! Il Allah! Al-lah!”
And with murderous intent he ferociously went
for Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
They parried and thrust, they side-stepped and cussed,
Of blood they spilled a great part;
The philologist blokes, who seldom crack jokes,
Say that hash was first made on the spot.
They fought all that night neath the pale yellow moon;
The din, it was heard from afar,
And huge multitudes came, so great was the fame,
of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.
As Abdul’s long knife was extracting the life,
In fact he was shouting, “Huzzah!”
He felt himself struck by that wily Calmuck,
Count Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
The Sultan drove by in his red-breasted fly,
Expecting the victor to cheer,
But he only drew nigh to hear the last sigh,
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.
There’s a tomb rises up where the Blue Danube rolls,
And graved there in characters clear,
Is, “Stranger, when passing, oh pray for the soul
Of Abdul Abulbul Amir.”
A splash in the Black Sea one dark moonless night
Caused ripples to spread wide and far,
It was made by a sack fitting close to the back,
of Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
A Muscovite maiden her lone vigil keeps,
Neath the light of the cold northern star,
And the name that she murmurs in vain as she weeps,
is Ivan Skavinsky Skavar.
In grade school, we read a story about a boy who wanted to make some extra money by mowing lawns. He talked with an elderly neighbor lady who did want his service. When they were negotiating how much to charge for mowing the lawn, she said something like “I’d expect a typical mowing to be worth three dollars. An exceptional job might be worth four dollars. And I don’t think anyone could possibly do a job worth five dollars.”
He mowed the lawn, they examined his work, and she gave him three dollars.
He began to think about how he might do a better job, so the next time he did stuff like doing some trimming by hand, getting a fine rake to get out little twigs, and stuff like that. He took the lady out to the yard, and said it was worth four dollars this time. She examined his work, and did agree it was definitely worth the four dollars.
Then he became even more ambitious, and rose to the challenge of doing a five dollar job. (I don’t remember what all he did, but it was excrutiatingly detailed, dealing with the perfect evenness of the soil, the softness of the grass, etc.) He spent a long time, doing everything he could think of to make it a perfect lawn.
Finally, he brought the lady out, explaining everything he did, and made her take off her shoes and walk through the lawn to feel how luxurious it was, and how every square inch was cared for.
And she agreed, that incredibly, it was worth five dollars.
I think about that story when I mow my own lawn. And it goes through my mind that to do a great project, it requires going beyond the normal expectations of the job, and that it takes creativity, persistence, and attention to detail to produce something of excellent quality.