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Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. Achille-Claude Debussy		Thursday Nov 21, 2024
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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To look this way is to see. To see is to have vision. To have vision is to understand. To understand is to know. To know is to become. To become is to live fully. To live fully is to matter. And to matter is to become light. And to become light is to be loved. And to be loved is to burn. And to burn is to exist. Off and on. Robert Fulghum

Quote Author: Robert Fulghum

Robert Fulghum

Robert Fulghum

Robert Fulghum (born June 4, 1937) is an American author, primarily of short essays.

He has worked as a Unitarian Universalist minister (at the Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship in Bellingham, Washington from 1960-64 [1], and the Edmonds Unitarian Universalist Church in Edmonds, Washington amongst other communities well into the 1980s).

During this same period he taught drawing, painting, and philosophy at the Lakeside School in Seattle. Fulghum is an accomplished painter and sculptor. He sings, and plays the guitar and mando-cello. He was a founding member of the author’s collective rock-and-roll band, "Rock Bottom Remainders". Previous to his professional careers, he also worked as a ditch-digger, newspaper carrier, ranch hand, salesman for IBM, and singing cowboy. He grew up in Waco, Texas.

He came to prominence in the US when his first collection, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986), stayed on the New York Times bestseller lists for nearly two years.

Throughout this collection, subtitled "Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things," Fulghum expounds his down-home philosophy of seeing the world through the eyes of a child.

His prose style is very simple and direct, and finds life-affirming maxims in such mundane matters as zoos, leaf-raking and dusting.

His other collections include:

Other Robert Fulghum Quotes

The best feeling I have ever had about dogs came in a primitive Akah village in the mountains of northern Thailand. The Akah keep dogs like we keep chickens and pigs. They treat their cattle as useful working companions, give them names and would never, ever think of eating one. But they eat dogs. They are not pets dogs are simply food. There are other ways to look at dogs. I am embarrassed by how people talk to dogs. I wonder what dogs must think. You know what I mean. You have heard it. Even dogs think it is weird. Watch a dog when a human does this. The dog can not believe what his is hearing, either. 'Does Poochie wantum drinky? No. Poochie wantum go outside.'

When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my 'natural' talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.

To look this way is to see. To see is to have vision. To have vision is to understand. To understand is to know. To know is to become. To become is to live fully. To live fully is to matter. And to matter is to become light. And to become light is to be loved. And to be loved is to burn. And to burn is to exist. Off and on.

I once listed all the good things I did over the past year, and then turned them into resolution form and backdated them. That was a good feeling

If you notice phrases, ideas, and anecdotes that closely resemble those that appear elsewhere in my writing, it's not a matter of sloppy editing. I'm repeating myself. I'm reshuffling words in the hope that just once I might say something exactly right. And I'm still wrestling with dilemmas that are not easily resolved or easily dismissed. I run at them again and again because I am not finished with them. Any may never be. Work-in- progress on a life-in-progress is what my writing is about. And some progress in the work is enough to keep it going on.

Making a living and having a life are not the same thing. Making a living and making a life that's worthwhile are not the same thing. Living the good life and living a good life are not the same thing. A job title doesn't even come close to answering the question 'What do you do?'

Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon. A happiness weapon. A Beauty Bomb. And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one. It would explode high in the air explode softly and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air. Floating down to earth boxes of Crayolas. And we wouldn't go cheap, either not little boxes of eight. Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in. With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest. And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.

Share everything. Don't take things that aren't yours. Put things back where you found them.

There is really nothing you must be. And there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have. And there is nothing that you must know. There is really nothing you must become. However, it helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet.