If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.

–Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

 

We’re lost, but we’re making good time!

 –Yogi Berra to his wife, Carmen, en route to his induction in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., 1972

I see with great pleasure this growing inclination in all persons who aim to speak the truth for manual labor and the farm. It is not that commerce, law, and state employments are unfit for a man, but these are now all so perverted and corrupt than no man can right himself in them, he is lost in them, he cannot move hand or foot in them.

 –Ralph Waldo Emerson in his journal, 1840

Oh, I ain’t worried, Miss. Gave myself up for dead back where we started.

–Humphrey Bogart, The African Queen, 1951

A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and industries mend their ways.

–Wendell Berry

All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song – but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and believing in a common destiny.

 –Pablo Neruda

There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, / and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.

–Ogden Nash

The winning team like the conquering army claims everything in its path and seems to say that only winning is important. Yet like getting into a college of your choice or winning an election or marrying a beautiful mate, victory is fraught with as much danger as glory. Victory has very narrow meanings and, if exaggerated or misused, can become a destructive force.

 –Bill Bradley, Life on the Run

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

 –John Steinbeck

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

 –Anonymous

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

 –Frank Lloyd Wright

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

–Sir Isaac Newtown

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater.

 –Isaiah 55:10

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

 –Adlai Stevenson

Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth.

 –Calvin Trillin, Third Helpings

 

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

 –E.B. White

May you live all the days of your life.

–Jonathan Swift

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)