Being a Better Bartlett's

Day 5 -- your favorite quote

Picking my favorite quote is no easier than selecting my favorite song, movie, tv show, or book.  I have several and no one quote fit every occasion or every facet of myself.

My current email signature quote comes from The Proclaimers song Sean:

Sean, I sat a while on clouds, to ask God if He's living; I should have spent some time on knees in thanks for what He's given.

It serves as a reminder to myself that even when I am asking why and what, I should be be grateful for what I have. And I have a great deal, just sometimes in my greed and haste to have all I want, when I want it, I forget that.

The Oliver Wendell Holmes quote I have at the top of the left-hand sidebar:

Our greatest danger in life is in permitting the urgent to crowd out the important. 

is a current favorite, and plays to the same meaning as my email signature quote -- stopping and taking stock of what I have been given, rather than what I want or need.

One of my favorite books, Anne of Green Gables, gives me another of my favorite quotes

I went looking for my ideals outside myself, and found it's not what the world holds for you, but what you bring to it.

which plays along the same theme.  It's obviously an important theme.  But this quote is also a reminder that I need to be myself, and please myself before I please other people.  That's a lesson I forget sometimes.

The last contender for favorite quote comes from one of my favorite movies, The Trouble with Angels.  Mother Superior is discussing handling the troublemaking duo of Mary Clancy and Rachel Devery.  She comments that the Church has been patient with her and she cannot be anything less with the students.  She describes her struggle to be the best person she can as a struggle:

to bend, but not to break; to yield but not capitulate; to have pride but also humility.

It's a struggle I can identify with, because I have the same struggle to be the best person I can be.

The most meaningful quotes are the ones you can find facets of yourself in.  I see bits of myself -- the person I am, and the person I want to be, in all of those quotes.  Taken together, they are my reminders to be the best Lynn I can be.