Quotation For My Mum's Birthday Gift

March 13, 2006 10:06 AM

QuoteFilter: For my mum's seventy*coughcoughcough*th birthday this year, I found a bunch of postcards from her hometown in England. I'm putting them into a book, and I'd like a nice quotation or something to write in nice script on the outside. Something about roots or birthplaces or something, and amusing Oscar-Wilde-style or touching-but-not-saccharine would be preferred to glurgey-sugary-weepy.
posted by biscotti to Grab Bag (7 answers total)

I've always been fond of William Inge's quote:

Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.

I also just googled this, although I'm not super fond of it.

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
posted by saladin at 10:24 AM on March 13, 2006

The past is a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind.

- Douglas Adams
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:46 AM on March 13, 2006

There is a lovely poem by Kenneth Koch titled "To My Old Addresses." I can't seem to find it online; I saw it published in the New Yorker some years ago and I'm sure it's been collected in one of his books.
posted by scratch at 10:57 AM on March 13, 2006

The place we grew up is always green,
no matter the years that have passed between.


Will that do it?
posted by JB71 at 11:07 AM on March 13, 2006

Can't beat the Beatles.

"There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed."
posted by GaelFC at 12:12 PM on March 13, 2006

"All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted."

-Saint Teresa of Avila

It's not witty, but it shouldn't make anyone want to gouge their eyes out either.
posted by n-clue at 12:26 PM on March 13, 2006

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
-- Robert Frost
posted by bunglin jones at 8:28 PM on March 13, 2006