Quotenik
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optimism

“Who knows what the day after tomorrow will bring—the very thing we most wanted and haven’t allowed our hearts to hope.”

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source: letter to Eudora Welty, January 24, 1967, in What There Is to Say We Have Said, ed. by Suzanne Marrs (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 213.

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medium: Letter

“At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive—‘I’m glad I’m not dead!’ sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect. (This is in contrast to a story I heard from a friend who, walking with Samuel Beckett in Paris on a perfect spring morning, said to him, ‘Doesn’t a day like this make you glad to be alive?’ to which Beckett answered, ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that.’)”

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source: “The Joy of Old Age. (No Kidding.)” New York Times, July 6, 2013.

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medium: Newspaper essay

“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet at last, “what’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
    “What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh. “What do you say, Piglet?”
    “I say, I wonder what’s going to happen exciting today?” said Piglet.
    Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
    “It’s the same thing,” he said.

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source: Winnie the Pooh (New York: Penguin, 2009).

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medium: Fiction

via: Kevin Lippert

“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.”

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source: “Any Time,” in Allegiances (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,1970), 67.

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medium: Poetry

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”

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source: The Sirens of Titan (New York: The Dial Press, 2006), trade paperback ed., 167.

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medium: fiction

via: Joe Delia

“Abstractly cheering thought: the millions of people around the world who will tonight sleep together for the first time.”

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source: Twitter, 2:22 PM Jan 27, 2010 via web

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medium: social media

“It is quite obvious that the human race has made a queer mess of life on this planet. But as a people we probably harbor seeds of goodness that have lain for a long time, waiting to sprout when the conditions are right. Man’s curiosity, his relentlessness, his inventiveness, his ingenuity have led him into deep trouble. We can only hope that these same traits will enable him to claw his way out.”

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source: Letters of E. B. White, rev. edition edited by Martha White (New York: Harper Perennial, 2007), 596.

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medium: letter

notes: letter to Mr. Nadeau dated March 30, 1973

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