"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things: of shoes ~ and ships ~ and sealing wax ~ of cabbages ~ and kings ~ and why the sea is boiling hot ~ and whether pigs have wings." ~ Lewis Carrol -aka- Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January, 1832 – 14 January, 1898)
(psst: go check out Joel Birenbaum's Lewis Carrol page!)

Inspired by Lewis Carrol's Walrus, I'm choosing to end my blog-year tonight by sharing a few proverbs, aphorisms and other quotes that have developed a special meaning for me in the last year. Feel free to pass them on - I didn't make them up. And please tell me what some of your favourites are.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a "profoundly sick society." ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti (11 May, 1895 – 17 February, 1986)

"I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out."
~ Paul Newman (26 January 1925 – 26 September 2008)

"It's too hard, and life is too short, to spend time doing something because someone else has said it is important. You must feel the thing, yourself."
~ Isidor I. Rabi (29 July 1898 – 11 January 1988; Nobel Prize in Physics 1944)

"Just because you're good at something doesn't mean it's a strength. If what you're doing completes you, it's a strength. If it depletes you, it's actually a weakness. Find something you are passionate about."
~ Marcus Buckingham

"In hell, people sit around large pots of bubbling, delicious food.They're all starving, though, because their only chopsticks are three feet long, and you can't feed yourself with three foot long chopsticks. In heaven, people also sit around large pots of bubbling, delicious food. They've also been given three foot long chopsticks. But in heaven, people are all well fed. The difference, is in hell, people try to feed themselves. In heaven, they feed each other."
~ Vietnamese parable

"If you think you're too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room."
~ Dame Anita Perella Roddick, DBE (23 October 1942 – 10 September 2007)

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try"
~ Beverly Sills (25 May 1929 – 2 July 2007)

"Fall down seven times. Get up eight."
~ Japanese proverb

"The music is the message and the message is:
fight for change, fight for inclusiveness, fight for compassion, fight for self-empowerment, fight for intelligence and ecstatic release, but don't forget the joy of the life you're fighting for."
~ Mr. Something Something (listen at www.mrsomethingsomething.com

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~ Anne Frank (12 June 1929 – early March 1945)

"You've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with Mister In-Between.
You've got to spread joy (up) to the maximum, bring gloom (down) to the minimum,
have faith or pandemonium liable to walk upon the scene..."
~ Johnny Mercer & Harold Arlen

"Half Full? Half Empty? You decide!... an empowering interpretation is just as valid as a disempowering one. You get to decide what impact life has on you. Make it positive."
~ Real Simple magazine, March 2007

"Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one!"
~ Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 - 18 April 1955)
and, for the knitterly inclined:
(and if you're not yet one of us, rest assured that we WILL ultimately bring you over to the string side)
"Knit on with confidence and hope, through all crisis." Elizabeth Zimmermann (9 August, 1910 – 30 November, 1999)