Quotations Weblog

I’m a Truth-Sayer, mostly because I have a hard enough time keeping reality straight in my head. I can’t add a pack of lies to the mix and have any hope of keeping things straight. Being a Truth-Sayer means that I accidentally offend people with what I say. I used to think this effect was a negative thing.

In this month’s O Magazine, there is an article about telling the truth. The author suggests asking yourself if it’s kind before you ask yourself if it’s true. I don’t have filters enough in my head to judge every word that I say, yet it made sense to me. Putting kindness above truth sounds like a noble thing.

If accidentally offending people is the negative effect of being a Truth-Sayer, earning a tight-knit group of friends that really love me is the benefit. I end up offending the kind of people who can’t have truth spouted at them often, so those kinds of people don’t end up in my group of confidants. I’ve always cursed my tongue that is unable to censor like others can; now it seems to be an asset.

Continuing the my favorite quotations series, here are a few of my favorites from our most popular subject, and the most general of all subjects: Life. We have lots of quotations on this topic and it’s hard to choose, but these are some that are meaningful to me—or at least funny.

• Read all of our “life” quotations

This guy has obviously never heard Jake Shimabukuro play a ukulele. Check out this fabulous video of him playing As My Guitar Gently Weeps.

• Jake Shimabukuro – As My Guitar Gently Weeps

Here is a link to Jake’s official website. I’m sure glad a record company signed him. He’s absolutely amazing.

:: Jake Shimabukuro Official Web Site ::

This advice is so hard for me to follow, especially when I’m starting something new. I am a Lecture Monkey. I will spew a lecture at you like a gorilla will throw vomit at the zoo. Preventing myself from lecturing innocent victims is very difficult for me to control. There is only one way I have learned to avoid it.

I lecture in private. I write down all the things that I think I should have said to someone in my journal every day. Writing them down keeps them from escaping involuntarily from my lips the next time I see that person. When I am tempted to lecture, I think to myself, “I have to write that down later.”

Ironically, this has been the best thing in the world for me. The truth of the matter is the lecture has nothing to do with the innocent victim. No matter what they did to spur my instinct to give them advice, my advice has nothing to do with them. What I feel like I need to tell them so desperately has more to do with me and my life than with them.

I’ve found that it helps me to write down the lectures that I spared others the joy of receiving. The good advice that I was going to give them is usually something that I need to hear. I’ve found that taking a few quiet moments with the computer keys clicking under my fingers is far more beneficial to me than it could ever be to the intended focus of the lecture.

Next time you feel like you need to help someone along in this world with some “friendly” advice, try my technique. Take a few moments and write the lecture down. Reread it as if you were receiving the advice. It will probably help you out in the strangest of ways.

When I tell people I run a quotations website, almost all of them ask “what are some of your favorite quotations?” I always have trouble answering this question—the real answer is that if I could choose just a few favorites, I wouldn’t need this huge website to keep track of them all. I had a short list of favorites back in high school, but since then it’s grown into the website you see here, including nearly 3,000 of my “favorites” in my personal collection.

Nevertheless, there are some quotations I enjoy more than others, so I’m going to start highlighting them in posts like this one, with a few favorites from an author or subject.

This weeks entry: Douglas Adams was probably my favorite writer in high school, and he’s still one of my favorites although he died in 2001. His Hitchhiker’s Guide series is some very funny science fiction, and I enjoy his writing style even more than the characters and plots. Here are a few of my favorite Douglas Adams quotes:

• More quotations from Douglas Adams