"Yesterday is gone, tomorrow has not yet come, we have only today. Let us begin." -- Mother Teresa. A fitting quote just as we enter a new year. I'm not quite sure of where the time has gone, it's flown past far too rapidly. And I have tons of wonderful work to complete as yet, so off I go to organize 'stuff' before I launch myself into what awaits me in 2016 ... Cheers.
As always, the printable above (as well as the rest from 2015) is free to subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter, so if you'd like this to print at home, then just sign up HERE. Cheers.
"Change Your Thoughts and you'll Change Your World" -- Buddha
I've always believed that it's we decide our own futures. Our thoughts dictate our attitudes, choices, interests, and that in turn decides our lives and the paths we choose to take upon our journeys through it. It just makes complete sense to me.
In the last couple of years I've been reading books and watching videos by certain spiritually and/or positively motivated individuals, some of whom have become my mentors as far as this approach to life is concerned. I'm going to share a few of these in case anyone else out there is interested, so just click on the links below ...
Apart from all this refreshing philosophising and thought meandering, I've been at work on my new project whenever I have the time, and will be launching a new blog all about it soon. Meanwhile, have been sketching more elephants, and here they are:
If you've been following me on my facebook page you'll have seen some of these already, and I'll keep posting more there as soon as they sneak themselves into the sketchbook.
Cheers.
This is a fun one, and I do love the quote:
"Alice: This is Impossible.
Mad Hatter: Only if you Believe it is."
Enjoy it, no matter what you believe. As always, it's available as a free printable exclusively to subscribers of the Floating Lemons monthly newsletter. Click here to subscribe: Floating Lemons Newsletter.
Wishing you a week full of positive belief & energy. Cheers.
Here are a few in-progress images of my watercolour steps ... before I took it into photoshop for a clean-up:
I truly do believe that there is no limit to love or loving. You can give one person all of your love and still have an infinitude left over for your family, friends, pets, neighbours, your work, your life, the world. It's immeasurable -- and powerful too, yes, because when it's given freely and unconditionally it gives the giver all the strength that comes from the joy of the giving of it.
Valentine's Day is celebrated in February. This month, why don't you express your love to all of the special people in your life. Spread the love and experience the joy of it.
I normally give my monthly free printables away only to subscribers of the Floating Lemons newsletter, but this month I'm giving this one away to anyone who wants it, freely and with only one request: that you in turn give it away freely and not use it for any commercial purpose. To get the free printable (A4 size), just click on the very first image of this post, or HERE.
If you'd like to sign up for the monthly newsletter, and receive future free printables or giveaways, just click HERE.
Wishing you an abundance of love. Cheers.
"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." -- George Bernard Shaw.
Simply handwritten.
I have a couple of places into which I hand-draw quotations on an irregular basis: a small moleskine specially set aside for text designs, or my large moleskine journal. They're not cleaned up at all and not necessarily "pretty", but I thought I'd start sharing them as I do like the quotes themselves.
This one is from the large journal, quite apt for the moment as I'm trying to regain the balance between work (far too much of it recently) and Life (enjoying the small pleasures of ...).
‘Politics feeds your vanity and starves your self-respect,’ according to the journalist Matthew Parris. In the video below, filmed by George Miller, Antony Jay discusses what makes a good political quotation.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Sir Antony Jay is the editor of Lend Me Your Ears: The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations. He is most famously the co-creator of the classic British 1980s sitcoms Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
View more about this book on the 
Lauren, Publicity Assistant
For years, the public has not been able to get enough of Paris Hilton. She’s famous as a socialite, heiress, model, and now for joining the likes of Socrates and Mark Twain on the pages of the 
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. No, she’s not quoted for saying, “That’s hot.” Ms. Hilton is instead immortalized for her advice, “Dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.”
But Paris’s entry is only one of more than 20,000 new quotations added to 7th edition. Other notable inclusions come from Sarah Palin, Stephen Hawking, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Philip Pullman. Here, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations editor Elizabeth Knowles reflects on the history of the almost 70-year-old treasury, and how new entries are chosen. To learn more check out the companion site here.
A classic reference book like this has to be regularly remade, without compromising its essential identity. Can we in fact have the modern and frivolous without damaging our book? I would say most definitely yes, where usage so dictates, and adduce in support two luminaries of the Oxford University Press of over sixty years ago. In 1931, planning the book, Kenneth Sisam, who identified an “intelligent elasticity” as an essential editorial quality, wrote to a colleague, “We shall have to guard against things quotable, as apart from things commonly quoted.” And in 1949, when the second edition was being planned, Humphrey Milford (formerly Publisher to OUP) commented, “I think the levity—comparative—of ODQ is partly the reason for its success.” In other words, the diversity of the book, and its mixture of the deeply serious and the frivolous, based on what people are quoting, is part of its essential nature.
Quotations are part of the fabric of the language: we use, and meet them, every day. We quote when we find that the words of another person, in another time and place, express exactly what we want to say. Or, events bring certain quotations to prominence, as the last year has given new relevance to Thomas Jefferson’s comment that, “Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”
A dictionary of quotations is not a roll-call of the great and the good, nor a listing of an editor’s favorite passages. Although having said that, of course we all do have items in which we take a particular pleasure. I was especially pleased that the formulation, “We must guard even our enemies against injustice” (attributed to the radical Tom Paine) was revealed as the writer Graham Greene’s paraphrase of Paine’s more formal eighteenth-century diction. The history of this misquotation—linking two significant figures across the centuries, and coming to light through its resonance today—was very satisfying to explore.
At Oxford, we track language to ensure that we have the quotations people are most likely to look up, so that the next time a half-remembered quotation is on the tip of your tongue, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is ready with the answer. Inclusion is based on usage: evidence that a spoken comment or written passage is being quoted by others. And while there is a common quotations stock (Shakespeare, the Bible), we all have our own quotations vocabulary, that which we remember and quote because we encountered them at a time when they were particularly significant. The antique and serious often rubs shoulders with popular culture. The same newspaper column, for example, may quote from both the Book of Common Prayer and the Rolling Stones. The result is marvelously diverse, and properly so.
Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none. Jules Renard
When I am dead, I hope it may be said:'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.' Hilaire Belloc
Happy Friday to all! Welcome back to those of you who were at BEA last week. While you have been schmoozing I’ve been surfing the web. Check out the bounty below.
Heal the world, make it a better place…(be glad you can’t hear me singing.)
The history of third-party candidates.
Have you seen “unnecessary” quotation marks?
I hope this turns out as good as the book.
Daily life in Afghanistan.
On endowments.
Can’t make it to Disney? Explore in 3-d!
You call it trash. I call it art.
On group marriage.
Is the future now?
Why talking it out is always better.
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Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who moved to Britain in the late 1950s. He spent 5 years studying medicine before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays and is currently a producer for BBC Radio. In his new book, Negro with a a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey Grant looks at one of the most controversial figures in African-American history. Both worshiped and despised, Garvey led an extraordinary life as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had branches in more than 40 countries. In honor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s birthday, which is tomorrow, Grant has taken a closer look at the relationship between Du Bois and Garvey.
A great excitement swirled around the garden reception for W.E.B Du Bois in the grounds of the royal governor of Jamaica’s official residence. On 3 May 1915, the island’s representative men assembled to honor the Harvard-educated African American, feted by the local papers as a scholar who certainly ‘belonged to the aristocracy of intellect in America’. A stocky dark-skinned black man was one of the last in line to extend a proud hand of welcome. Du Bois later recalled his ‘remarkable intensity’ but other than that, little impression was made on him by the man who was destined, over the next decade, to become his nemesis: Marcus Garvey. (more…)
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