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Inspirations

One reason it is rewarding for me to represent students and their parents on legalmatters relating to education, is that learning, itself, has held meaning and enjoyment for me since my own elementary school days.

I am an avid reader: biographies, novels, stories, histories, diaries, plays, poetry, memoirs, newspapers, magazines …. The printed word – – a ticket to expanded knowledge in the mind and heart.

The authors of great works open windows onto the vast, varied and ever-surprising wider world. They stir us to stretch, breathe, and imagine with strengthened understanding.

In celebration of several writers who have handed down to all of us a generous endowment of their craft, their stories, and a record of their times, this site presents a gallery of what I call “Inspirations”.

Welcome, and I hope you enjoy your visit.

Please note: On the slider below, if you hold your mouse on any section of the slider, it will pause rotation.

“…[an author] will notice in the course of time, as his reading goes on, that the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter-’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

Mark Twain

Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain), in The Art of Authorship: Literary Reminiscences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners/Personally Contributed By Leading Authors of the Day, compiled and edited by George Bainton (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1890).

“Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”

Isaac Newton, in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica [1687], Laws of Motion, I, cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: Fifteenth and 125th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Enlarged by John Bartlett, edited by Emily Morison Beck (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), p. 313 [footnoted to Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy [1729], translated by Andrew Motte).

“Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”

William Shakespeare, As You Like It [1598-1600], Act II, Scene I, cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations: Fifteenth and 125th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Enlarged by John Bartlett, edited by Emily Morison Beck (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), p. 210.

“Now my dearest Frank I will finish my letter…. God bless you. – I hope
you continue beautiful – & brush your hair, but not all off. – We join in an
infinity of Love. – Yours very affectionately
Jane Austen”

Jane Austen, Letter to her brother, Franklin Austen, Captain of HMS Elephant, in the Baltic Sea off coast of Sweden [July 3 – 6, 1813].

“My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent,
inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom imaginable, freedom
from violence and lies, no matter what form the latter two take. Such is
the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist.”

Anton Chekhov, Letter to Alexei Pleshcheev [October 4, 1888] (translated by Simon Karlinsky), cited in Bartlett’s Familiar Quoatations: Fifteenth and 125 th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Enlarged by John Bartlett, edited by Emily Morison Beck (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1980), p. 695.

“There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow,
There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow.
The corn is as high as a elephant’s eye,
And it looks like it’s climbin’ clear up to the sky.

Oh, what a beautiful mornin’ . . . .”

from “Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin’ “, in Oklahoma! [1943],
by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

from The Negro Speaks of Rivers [1926], by Langston Hughes

“Last summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a season of intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a traveling companion James Quayle Burden — Jim Burden, as we still call him in the West. He and I are old friends — we grew up together in the same Nebraska town – and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things . . . . ”

Willa Cather

Willa Cather, My Ántonia [1918], INTRODUCTION.

“Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the same horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men. Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.”

Zora Neale Hurston, from Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

“When your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”

Nora Ephron, from I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006)

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