Jamie Mobley > Jamie's Quotes

“While gazing at myself from yourself, I was beautiful.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, The Shape

“What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another.”
― Chris Maser, Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.”
― Walt Whitman

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged. Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
― Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

“it makes such difference where you read”
― Walt Whitman

“Thought
Of equality- as if it harm'd me,
giving others the same chances
and rights as myself-
as if it were not indispensable
to my own rights
that others possess the same.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“Isn’t it amazing, amazing, amazing that something so specific can be so resonant? These are the filaments, filaments, filaments from that Walt Whitman poem. It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonely because I don’t think anyone else thinks them, are also the thoughts that have the most potential that make me feel connected. I just have to get them out some how gossamer thread.”
― Ze Frank

“English majors want the joy of seeing the world through the eyes of people who—let us admit it—are more sensitive, more articulate, shrewder, sharper, more alive than they themselves are. The experience of merging minds and hearts with Proust or James or Austen makes you see that there is more to the world than you had ever imagined. You see that life is bigger, sweeter, more tragic and intense—more alive with meaning than you had thought.

Real reading is reincarnation. There is no other way to put it. It is being born again into a higher form of consciousness than we ourselves possess. When we walk the streets of Manhattan with Walt Whitman or contemplate our hopes for eternity with Emily Dickinson, we are reborn into more ample and generous minds. "Life piled on life / Were all too little," says Tennyson's "Ulysses," and he is right. Given the ragged magnificence of the world, who would wish to live only once? The English major lives many times through the astounding transportive magic of words and the welcoming power of his receptive imagination. The economics major? In all probability he lives but once. If the English major has enough energy and openness of heart, he lives not once but hundreds of times. Not all books are worth being reincarnated into, to be sure—but those that are win Keats's sweet phrase: "a joy forever.”
― Mark Edmundson

“I will be your poet, I will be more to you than to any of the rest.”
― Walt Whitman, Selected Poems

“The morning grass was damp and cool with dew. My yellow rain slicker must have looked sharp contrasted against the bright green that spring provided. I must have looked like an early nineteenth century romantic poet (Walt Whitman, perhaps?) lounging around a meadow celebrating nature and the glory of my existence. But don’t make this about me. Don’t you dare. This was about something bigger than me (by at least 44 feet).

I was there to unselfishly throw myself in front of danger (nothing is scarier than a parked bulldozer), in the hopes of saving a tree, and also procuring a spot in a featured article in my local newspaper. It’s not about celebrity for me, it’s about showing that I care. It’s not enough to just quietly go about caring anymore. No, now we need the world to see that we care. I was just trying to do my part to show I was doing my part.

But no journalists or TV news stations came to witness my selfless heroics. In fact, nobody came at all, not even Satan’s henchmen (the construction crew). People might scoff and say, “But it was Sunday.” Yes, it was Sunday. But if you’re a hero you can’t take a day off.

I’d rather be brave a day early than a day late. Most cowards show up late to their destiny. But I always show up early, and quite often I leave early too, but at least I have the guts to lay down my life for something I’d die for. Now I only laid down my life for a short fifteen-minute nap, but I can forever hold my chin high as I loudly tell anyone who will listen to my exploits as an unsung hero (not that I haven’t written dozens of songs dedicated to my bravery).

Most superheroes hide anonymously behind masks. That’s cowardly to me. I don’t wear a mask. And the only reason I’m anonymous is that journalists don’t respond to my requests for interviews, and when I hold press conferences nobody shows up, not even my own mother.

The world doesn’t know all the good I’ve done for the world. And that’s fine with me. Not really. But if I have to go on being anonymous to make this world a better place, I will. But that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about changing my hours of altruism from 7-8 am Sunday mornings to 9-5 am Monday through Friday, and only doing deeds of greatness in crowded locations.”
― Jarod Kintz, Gosh, I probably shouldn't publish this.

“WOMEN sit, or move to and fro — some old, some young;
The young are beautiful — but the old are more beautiful than the young.”
― Walt Whitman (1819-1892), Leaves of Grass

“All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain.”
― Walt Whitman, Poems by Walt Whitman

“Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.”
― Walt Whitman

“History without context is just data.”
― Stephen Smoke, I, Walt Whitman

“Re-examine all that you have been told, dismiss that which insults your soul.”
― Walt Whitman

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
― Jack London

“Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an interesting past.”
― Jack London

“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
― Jack London

“[Speaking to a group of wealthy New Yorkers]

A million years ago, the cave man, without tools, with small brain, and with nothing but the strength of his body, managed to feed his wife and children, so that through him the race survived. You on the other hand, armed with all the modern means of production, multiplying the productive capacity of the cave man a million times — you are incompetents and muddlers, you are unable to secure to millions even the paltry amount of bread that would sustain their physical life. You have mismanaged the world, and it shall be taken from you. ”
― Jack London

“Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.”
― Jack London

“Pray do not interrupt me," he wrote. "I am smiling.”
― Jack London, The Sea Wolf

“He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish.”
― Jack London

“I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”
― Jack London

“Show me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with
an interesting past.”
― Jack London

“All I wanted,' London said later, 'was a quiet place in the counry to write and loaf in and get out of Nature that something which we all need, only the most of us don't know it.”
― Jack London

“PLEASE DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT KNOCKING.
PLEASE DO NOT KNOCK.”
― Jack London

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart”
― William Wordsworth

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.

I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.”
― Langston Hughes