If your high school was like mine, each senior got an individual portrait in the yearbook, underneath which was a list of their activities and a quote (or quotes) of their choice. What was yours? And for context, if you care to provide it, in what year?
We had a fair amount of space to ruminate in our yearbook, so I wound up using three quotes, in addition to the usual shout-outs and whatnot (this was in 1998):
“Going slowly does not stop one from arriving.” – West African saying
“Sometimes the best move is just to knock the board over and say ‘oops.’” – Dad
“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” – Bob Dylan
That first one was a bit of a jab at myself – that is, a nod to my repuation within the school as especially lazy and unmotivated.
(While on the topic, here is an entertaining article on yearbook quotes from sportswriter Bill Simmons.)
“I am a part of all that I have met; yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades forever and forever as I move.”
That’s from the poem “Ulysses” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. I graduated from high school in 1976. We didn’t have on-line yearbooks in those days of course, but we had the old-fashioned kind.
All I remember is that it was annoyingly pretentious and after seeing another kid’s quote, I wished I quoted Fred Flintstone instead (Yabba-Dabba-Doo!). This was in 1984. Today, the words of another great, albeit animated, philosopher might be appropriate (D’oh!).
We weren’t allowed to choose a quote, nor was one chosen for us. I went to a large high school and the yearbook editors didn’t want to spend the time, nor did they have the inclination, to check every single quote for content. So they just didn’t have them.
Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit.
– H. D. Thoreau
“Pooh, promise you wont forget about me, ever. Not even when I’m a hundred.”
Pooh thought for a little.
“How old shall I be then?”
“Ninety-nine.”
Pooh nodded.
“I promise,” he said.
Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh’s paw. . .“Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won’t you?”
“Understand what?”
“Oh, nothing.” He laughed and jumped to his feet. “Come on!”
“Where?” said Pooh.
“Anywhere,” said Christopher Robin.
“The world’s a stage, but the play is badly cast.” From H.G. Wells, IIRC. At the time, I was feeling I was being groomed for a role in life that didn’t fit me.
A friend of mine used “Grasp firmly.” It was mysterious – no one knew what it meant or where it came from, or even what it referred to (though there were guesses ). A few years later, I discovered it in “The Quotations of Chairman Mao.”
). A few years later, I discovered it in “The Quotations of Chairman Mao.”