My mom started putting quotes in my lunchbox in, I think, 5th grade, maybe 6th. I distinctly remember having a note for every hour of the day on my first day of 5th grade, as it was the first year I was not in the same class as my best friend Jordan, and needed all the help my 11-year-old self could get to get through it. Whether or not these notes were directly related to the "Lunchbox Quotes," I can't remember....Either way, since 'round about that time I have been graced with adorable, funny, touching, beautiful, poignant, and wise sayings (almost!) every single day. I am so thankful for this, really, as the Lunchbox Quotes have been a constant, enduring presence in my life for so long. They've got me researching their authors, had me laugh out loud, influenced my love of literature and my sense of humor, caused me to record my favorite ones and put them up on my dorm walls, and made me smile with the knowledge that my mother was thinking of me, even in college when the quotes no longer come in lunchbox, but e-mail, form. So thanks, Mom, for the Lunchbox Quotes and everything they've done. :-) Here's today's:
Pied Beauty, by Gerard Manley Hopkins
Glory be to God for dappled things --
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled, (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
