This morning, as I was putting away The Quotable Ronald Regan, I happened upon a[n] crappy old book of quotes. Earlier, I posted a quote that had been bookmarked by someone not me– something said by Marion Mitchell Morrison, a man who truly loved his country. 

The house is clean, supper’s in the crockpot, The Dogs and The Girls seem happy enough so I’m skimming randomly through the quotes book.

From the “Adversity” section:

Ad astra per asperta. (To the stars through hardship.) Motto of the State of Kansas

That might work in Kansas but after a stroll around the World Wide Web, I think a lot of folks in Staten Island wouldn’t agree.

From “America and Americans“:

The true America is the Middle West, and Columbus discovered nothing at all except another Europe. W. L. George

From that infallible source, Wikipedia, we learn that George (1882-1926) was an English writer born and raised in Paris– who didn’t bother to learn French until he was 20! According to Orwell, George was,  “a ‘natural’ novelist, not inhibited by ‘good taste’.”

There will be a map presented to the general public on or about November 7, 2012 which will confirm George’s assertion. 

From “Books and Reading“:

The true university of these days is a collection of books. Thomas Carlyle 

Carlyle, 1795-1881; “Dickens used Carlyle’s work as a primary source for the events of the French Revolution in his novel A Tale of Two Cities.” (Wikipedia on Carlyle)

Did I mention that I’ve enrolled in a Hillsdale College on-line course on the Constitution? For free! You can have the best of both worlds! If my power goes out and I can’t access the World Wide Web, well… I still have multiple copies of the Constitution of the United States of America– and the Declaration of Independence— in several crappy old books.

I’ll end with this one from Thomas Paine in the “Liberty and Human Rights” section. I swear, I really did just semi-randomly open the quotes book up. (“Semi-” because I started at the beginning of the book.) 

And I’ll not introduce Thomas Paine (1737-1809) other than to say he spent the first 37 years of his life in England and was an apprentice to his father, a corset maker. Ad astra per asperta! … . 

Sadly, for Paine, his star crashed and burned. 

[Those with access to the Farm’s crappy university of books can find a brief biography of Paine in Webster’s American Biographies, 1979, edited by Doran & MacHenry, or in one of the encyclopedia volumes. Those without access– well, look it him up.]

Those who expect to reap the  blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. 

[All quotes from The Harper Book of Quotations, Third Edition, edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, published in 1993 by HarperPerennial]