Compost Buckets Under Each Arm

This is a participating post of Let's Blog Off. Today's topic: "What are you carrying?"

These days I don't have much time for writing or reading anything that isn't listed on a syllabus. But when I do get a chance to pick up a book or peruse an article on my own time, I often find myself reaching for my journal before I can finish a particular paragraph. Sometimes the entire paragraph makes it into the pages, transcribed by my hasty cursive, and sometimes a single line of enlightenment makes the cut. Sometimes I will add my thoughts or inspirations that have grown out of these little seeds. Other times, the lines are enough by their own virtue.
This is what I carry - to quote Hamlet -

Words, words, words!

These words are like compost in a garden of thoughts and ink. Perhaps "compost" is not the most romantic of images, but it is the most fit. Compost is made up of former vegetation - it is organic matter which is recycled to nurture new growth. These words come from the hearts and minds of various people - organic matter of souls. As it is recorded into my journal, this vegetation, which has already had its season, is stored and broken down again into new inspirations. Compost.

Hope is not found in the way out, but the way through. - Robert Frost

Memories were just photos printed on synapses. As such, he justified sharing some of them with the world while keeping others locked in hidden albums. - Ali Shaw, "The Girl With Glass Feet"

Peering through the plant clumps, they could catch glimpses of the smooth, glittering river, evidently much wider and swifter than the Enborne. Although there was no enemy or other danger to be perceived, they felt the apprehension and doubt of those who have come unawares upon some awe-inspiring place where they themselves are paltry fellows of no account. When Marco Polo came at last to Cathay, seven hundred years ago, did he not feel - and did his heart not falter as he realized - that this great and splendid capital of an empire had had its being all the years of his life and far longer, and that he had been ignorant of it? That it was in need of nothing from him, from Venice, from Europe? That it was full of wonders beyond his understanding? That his arrival was a matter of no importance whatsoever? We know he felt these things, and so has many a traveler in foreign parts who did not know what he was going to find. There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you. - Richard Adams, "Watership Down"

Everything is so fragile, and so glorious. He closed his eyes. Here it comes...here's the future...and here it goes again... - Audrey Niffenegger, "Her Fearful Symmetry"

You are a god, we are all gods - gods of small things and awesomely immense things - act like it. - Richard Holschuh, "Small is Beautiful, But Relativity Rules"

The stars above you are other suns scattered through the universe. - Michael A. Seeds, Dana E. Backman, "The Solar System"

Stars have died that we might live - Preston Cloud, geologist (referring to the atoms of life)

He'd only give away his food if the corners were cleanly cut, as he believed a homeless person would just feel worse eating food with ragged bitemarks at the edges - as if, he said, they are dogs. Dignity, he said, lifting his half-lasagna into its box, is no detail. - Aimee Bender, "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"

That if gold rust, what shall poor iron do? - Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue"

Each individual existence is based on mystery, which is perhaps why civilized man makes such a neurotic fuss about having his privacy respected. - Anton Chekhov, "A Lady With A Dog"

Snow devils have been dancing there all day,
their swirls of glee frenetic pirouettes
that dissipate so quickly
it is as if they were born
to sacrifice themselves to brevity. - Saxon Henry, "Fire and Ice"

I think perhaps there is only one love...really. Omnipresent...but inside - something to be tapped into, channeled. It is always there, a constant...like some sort of life source... - JB Bartkowiak, "Building Moxie Blogs Off...Again (The Luvvverrr Edition)"

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. I wouldn't be doing anyone a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it...Meet it as a friend, for you'll see alot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it. - George Moore

It is neither possible nor necessary to educate people who never question anything. - Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

The fragility of crystal is not a weakness, but a fineness. - "Into the Wild" (film)

Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe. - Philippians 2:14, 15

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matter compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasures of nest building that they hadn't noticed that it had been empty for years. - Maggie Stiefvater, "Shiver"

Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. - Jane Austen, "Sense and Sensibility"

The world had made him extravagant and vain - Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had lad him likewise to punishment. - Jane Austen, "Sense and Sensibility"

The world looked to them like a great roll of butcher paper unfurled on a table. - Luis Alberto Urrea, "Into the Beautiful North"

Two thirds of what we see is behind our eyes. - Chinese proverb

There are things extremely hard: steel, diamond, and to know one's self. - Benjamin Franklin

It takes brains not to make money...Any fool can make money these days and most of them do. But what about people with talent and brains? Name, for example, one poet who makes money. - Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"

It was the classic case of a man kidnapped while standing still. - Philip K. Dick, "Radio Free Albemuth"

Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Eyre; remorse is the poison of life. - Charlotte Bronte, "Jane Eyre"

In the entire history of our marriage, it was the only secret I kept from her, and eventually it became impossible to fix. With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not. - Sarah Gruen, "Water for Elephants"

Brooding. And on what? The things of the universe! I don't believe in this world sorrow...Make him understand that at the side of the everlasting 'Why?,' tehre's a "yes" and a "yes!" and a "YES!" - "A Room With a View," Mr Emerson to Lucy Honeychurch

Time can be a greedy thing - sometimes it steals all the details for itself. - Khaled Hosseini, "The Kite Runner"

A boy who won't stand up for himself becomes a man who can't stand up to anything. - Khaled Hosseini, "The Kite Runner"

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. - Khaled Hosseini, "The Kite Runner"

A murderous dog might be useful to a king, but he didn't want it sleeping at his feet. - Kristin Cashore, "Graceling"

We need daylight and to that extent it is utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity...And its low intensity - so much lower than that of daylight - makes us conscious that it is something added...that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again. - Richard Adams, "Watership Down"

...all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes... - e.e. cummings, "(anyone lived in a pretty how town)"

You wouldn't look twice - until you have looked twice. - Nancy Werlin, "The Rules of Survival"

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I realize this post was extra lengthy, and, no, my feelings won't be hurt if you didn't read every single quote. Now, if you're not exhausted from this post, and if you have interest in reading about what others carry around with them, here's a convenient list of other posters.