Quite Quotable

On my MSN homepage, I have a quote of the day.  Today's was wonderful.  It was attributed to James Baldwin.

James Arthur Baldwin was born in Harlem, New York City, Aug. 2, 1924 and died on Nov. 30, 1987 in France. He offered a vital literary voice during the era of civil rights activism in the 1950s and '60s. The eldest of nine children, his stepfather was a minister. At age 14 , Baldwin became a preacher at the small Fireside Pentecostal Church in Harlem. After he graduated from high school, he moved to Greenwich Village. In the early 1940s, he transferred his faith from religion to literature. Critics, however, note the impassioned cadences of Black churches are still evident in his writing. Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), his first novel, is a partially autobiographical account of his youth. His essay collections [Notes of a Native Son (1955), Nobody Knows My Name (1961), and The Fire Next Time (1963)] were influential in informing a large white audience. As an openly gay man, long before being gay was "in", he became increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against the gay population.

The quote that caught my attention was:

The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

Here are a few others that are also thought worthy:

Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.

The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden by the answers.

Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck -- but, most of all, endurance.

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is growing up.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

I think he would have been a scrapbooker if he had lived a little longer.  Deep thoughts.

Comments

[Nancy]

Many good quotes. I especially like the camera one.