Words of Wisdom from Eliz. von Arnim

Just finished reading Elizabeth von Arnim’s charming Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)–one of those books where nothing really happens, but the author is so good at vignettes and characters and dialogue. This passage struck me:

“Submission to what people call their ‘lot’ is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don’t listen to the shrieks of your relations, to their gibes or their entreatries; don’t let your own microscopic set prescribe your goings-out and comings-in; don’t be afraid of public opnion in the shape of the neighbor in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.”

Bravo! And on a ligher note, she says that “Relatives are like drugs–useful, sometimes, and even pleasant, if taken in small quanitites and seldom, but dreadfully pernicious on the whole, and the truly wise avoid them.”

I like it. I’d embroider it on a pillow but I’d be afraid I would develop some kind of repetitive motion injury.

This is so going in the Christmas cards next year.

Eve becomes an ubermensch. Film at eleven.

I believe you’re about 4 years too late.

:smiley:

Yer killin’ me!