Valedictory Address Quotes & Sayings

We all, like Frodo, carry a Quest, a Task: our daily duties. They come to us, not from us. We are free only to accept or refuse our task- and, implicitly, our Taskmaster. None of us is a free creator or designer of his own life. "None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself" (Rom 14:7). Either God, or fate, or meaningless chance has laid upon each of us a Task, a Quest, which we would not have chosen for ourselves. We are all Hobbits who love our Shire, or security, our creature comforts, whether these are pipeweed, mushrooms, five meals a day, and local gossip, or Starbucks coffees, recreational sex, and politics. But something, some authority not named in The Lord of the Rings (but named in the Silmarillion), has decreed that a Quest should interrupt this delightful Epicurean garden and send us on an odyssey. We are plucked out of our Hobbit holes and plunked down onto a Road. — Peter Kreeft

Love making can produce a child, sex can produce pregnancy — Anonymousmale1

The sense that materialism has gotten out of hand is magnified by the pressures facing middle-class American families. — Robert Wuthnow

An interesting question: is it easier to motivate a learned individual that never does anything, or educate an ignorant individual that actually produces things? — John Carmack

The wonder of a single snowflake outweighs the wisdom of a million meteorologists. — Francis Bacon

I just can't stand the fact that they're going out on their own - I love having my kids around, and I'm angry at them for going out and becoming independent. I want to tuck them in and drive them to school in the morning, but they just won't let me do that anymore. — Tim Daly

Concentration is not thinking of one thing. On the contrary, it is excluding all thoughts, since all thoughts obstruct the sense of one's true being. All efforts are to be directed simply to removing the veil of ignorance. Concentrating the mind solely on the Self will lead to happiness or bliss. Drawing in the thoughts, restraining them and preventing them from straying outwards is called detachment (vairagya). Fixing them in the Self is spiritual practice (sadhana). Concentrating on the heart is the same as concentrating on the Self. Heart is another name for Self. — Ramana Maharshi

My name is not important, — Douglas Adams

I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can't be given. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Never face facts; if you do you'll never get up in the morning. — Marlo Thomas

It began with meetings, five months before the Apollo 11 launch. The newly formed Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing gathered to debate the appropriateness of planting a flag on the moon. — Mary Roach