Discover Your Wings in Literature...
Thursday October 12, 2006
The first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the United States was on October 12, 1792. Columbus Day was then recognized in 1892 upon the 400th anniversary of the Columbus voyage. Walt Whitman once wrote Prayer of Columbus:
"A batter'd, wreck'd old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island's edge,
Venting a heavy heart."
Here are a few quotes about discoveries:
"For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying, and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves." - Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams--daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing--are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization." - L. Frank Baum
"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." - André Gide (1869-1951)
"From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings." - Helen Hayes (b. 1900)
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) - Walden
"A batter'd, wreck'd old man,
Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home,
Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months,
Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death,
I take my way along the island's edge,
Venting a heavy heart."
Here are a few quotes about discoveries:
"For those who intend to discover and to understand, not to indulge in conjectures and soothsaying, and rather than contrive imitation and fabulous worlds plan to look deep into the nature of the real world and to dissect it -- for them everything must be sought in things themselves." - Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
"Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams--daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing--are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization." - L. Frank Baum
"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." - André Gide (1869-1951)
"From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings." - Helen Hayes (b. 1900)
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) - Walden
Comments
These are wonderful quotations and so apt. In addition to feeding our brains, we are also feeding our vocabularies and journeying to places we could only dream of as well as getting insights in many, many cases to what makes us tick. This may sound “silly”, but reading “The Razor’s Edge” several times gave me insights into my own personality and what drives me that were spot-on.