Within one of these books, Creative Writing by Stephen May, was a reminder of lessons way back in the sixties!

Inky Deighton, our then well into his 70s English teacher, in his attempts to instill profound meaning in our English classes taught us that:

William Wordsworth wrote to his wife saying “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart”!

In a later letter he described poetry to a Lady Hamilton as “Emotion recollected in tranquility”!

I wonder what was going down between Lady Hamilton and Bill….?

Those words today elicit deep emotion bringing this, as yet still a student, close to tears! Way back then I was focused on motorbikes, water sport and survival( the babes had yet to wheedle their way into my thoughts! I was a late starter!)

Famous words, or inspirational quotes, are everywhere in our lives! On the pages of our diaries, Facebook, clever entrepreneurs post them around their places of work, in greeting cards etc etc! It is said, (I have never seen the quotes!), that Franscois Pienaar had inspirational quotes posted around the Rugby World Cup winning  Springbok’s change room, inciting them to a winning performance against my beloved All Blacks in 1995! (My team was poisoned, remember!)

Winston Churchill’s famous and defining speech of June 4th 1940, mentions: “We shall fight on the seas and oceans” and “We shall fight on the beaches” then later “We shall never surrender……..!”

Albert Einstein is famous for this pearl: “Women marry men, hoping they will change. Men marry women, hoping they will not! So each is inevitably disappointed!”

Speaking of women! What about some famous women’s words: Loretta Lynn’s “You have to be different, great or first!” and Mother Teresa’s “Be faithful in small things, because it is in them that your strength lies!”

 

And then the course that keeps many men away away from the women most Saturdays:

Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech of August 1963 inspired most Americans, and the World! It was also a Prayer, which made it very special!

Facebook has again been the source of, this time the most beautiful photographic study of Wellington, New Zealand, inspiring a poem that, I hope, is worthy of the city itself, and of my youth growing up there!

 

Unmistakably Wellington!

My mind often wanders there

Leather clad on throbbing steed

Throttle wound at fullest speed

Sparks flying at every bend

Thrilling ride must never end

The long wait in Featherston

For fellow bikers slow to come

Then Sunday when the mood is right

A more gentle cruise in morning light

Around the bays which never end

To swim in icy water with the friends!

A City that turns it on: long sunny days that start at 4am, so cold in winter we slept with newspaper stuffed around us, when the wind blows, you know! The odd earth tremor kept us on our toes! Rain? Yep it can rain there! Party? Wellingtonians know how to party!

MarkTwain, whose writings are revered the World over, had the necessity to travel in order to grow with the World, truly sussed in his famous quote:

I was honoured to be given a copy of 2014 Man Booker Prize winner, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North for my recent birthday. (My 4 x 16th…!) The book is a beautiful and sexy love story, but with lengthy moments spent in the jungles of Burma, building a railway for the Japs, many more emotions are incited within Flanagan’s words, than feelings of love or desire!

The man is an absolute master within his words, coming up with a parable just a couple of pages into the book: “A happy man has no past, while an unhappy man has nothing else!” This is one book you don’t loan out, as you must go back to search out the moments that brought you close to tears, and why! Later on Flanagan starts paragraphs with: “Of A day………..!”

F R David’s Words did it for us back in 1982:

St Vincent School for The Deaf,  where words are taught to be heard!

St Vincent School For The Deaf