A friend gave me a lovely little early Christmas present, a book of beautiful quotes fondly named ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’. Its title and content are based on the old British ‘pull yourself together’ attitude which inspired the production of three posters by the British Government’s Ministry of Information around the start of the second world war. The posters were to be used as reassurance for the public should the German’s look likely to succeed in invading. These posters were fortunately never needed and therefore not distributed, although one of these posters was discovered in later years by bookseller Stuart Manley in a dusty box. Manley hung the poster in his bookshop and due to it’s popularity, the phrase was then applied to many other items which are now sold across the UK.
I was reading quotes from the book on my train journey out of London the other day when I realised the women sitting on either side of me were reading it with me! The three of us ending up discussing a number of topics relating to the quotes we read as I turned the pages. What a pleasant journey, it reminded me that strangers are just people like me who I don’t know yet…
Here are a few quotes from the book… it was a challenge to choose only twenty, this is the best bible you could ask for. Take the time to read them, they will make you smile!
1. ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it’s just possible you haven’t grasped the situation.’ (Jean Kerr)
2. ‘If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.’ (George Bernard Shaw)
3. ‘The only function of economic forcasting is to make astrology look respectable.’ (John Kenneth Galbraith)
4. ‘The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket’ (Frank Hubbard)
5. ‘Catch a man a fish, and you can sell it to him. Teach a man to fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.’ (Karl Marx)
6. ‘A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don’t need it.’ (Bob Hope)
7. ‘Expenditures rise to meet income.’ (Parkinson’s Second Law)
8. ‘Luxury: The lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master.’ (Kahil Gibran)
9. ‘We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.’ (Winston Churchill)
10. ‘A life spent making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spend doing nothing.’ (George Bernard Shaw)
11. ‘Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.’ (Winston Churchill)
12. ‘Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.’ (Plato)
13.’The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.’ (James Oppenheim)
14. ‘A vigorous five mile walk will do more for an unhappy but otherwise health adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.’ (Paul Dudley White)
15. ‘You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.’ (Dale Carnegie)
16. ‘There are plenty of ways to get ahead. The first is so basic I’m almost embarrassed to say it: Spend less than you earn.’ (Paul Clitheroe)
17. ‘Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant.’ (Robert Louis Stevenson)
18. ‘Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.’ (Swedish proverb)
19. ‘My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.’ (Michel de Montaigne)
20. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.’ (W C Fields).
