Answering Yesterday’s Question
When I looked at the t-t-t home page this morning, the random quote at the top was this one:
“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months’ consideration and observation he abandonded this theory in favor of a new one. If they don’t keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. ” - Douglas Adams
As a blogger, I say “ouch”.
Actually, I made a conscience effort to include a fair number of quotes in the random quote generator that illustrate something about human conversation or thought, as blogging represents a subset of those activities in many cases, and it is because it is a subset of those activities that it might have some value. The cynical Douglas Adams quote just turns out to be a funny example. Here are some others that might be topical, which might be appearing at the top of the page even right now:
“Not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.” - George Sala
That’s one I need eternal vigilance for..
“Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don’t just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.” - Theodore Zeldin
Errr… Maybe a bit metaphysical, but I perceive some truth in that.
“It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” - Mark Twain
Cynic!!
“I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The American’s conversation is much like his courtship. He gives an inkling and watches for a reaction; if the weather looks fair, he inkles a little more.” - Donald Lloyd
Inkle, inkle…
“Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know” - Andre Maurois
I think I need to write a WordPress plugin that will spider the archives and salt all my old posts with a healthy sampling of this phrase.
“Bore: one who has the power of speech but not the capacity for conversation.” - Benjamin Disraeli
Come on, Ben, give a fella a break. Nobody’s perfect.
“It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it.” - Joseph Joubert
Amen.
The real reason I (still) blog? It isn’t why I started, but it is why I continue: Blogging gives me an opportunity to talk with a self-selecting audience of people who have at least some vague interest in the same things I do. Barry poses his question - is there any point? Is anyone listening, outside his circle of blog friends? Well, to me, that is the point. There may only be 2 people who take the trouble to visit t-t-t intentionally each week, but they came to listen or talk about something that they thought might be discussed here. Great! There are a few who click a link from the UU News Aggregator, or Chattablogs, or the Rocky Top Brigade - because they noticed a subject line that interested them, or they read the first graf of a post and were curious. Great! Hundreds of people each week visit from a search engine - where they themselves decided what they wanted to see, and landed on a post here that was of interest to them (for most, this is the Big Catfish… for a few, it is the fake “Paul Harvey” letter…) Fantastic. Most of the visitors are here because they have something in common with me - even if it is just big Catfish. At home, work, even church (though less so there), I don’t have the luxury of talking with people who are interested in discussing the same thing I am at the moment. Here, I do. And being the type of person Doug Adams describes in this post’s first quote, that means a lot to me.
