Nuts and Bolts: Inspirational Quotations.

 Inspirational quotations clearly have their roots in proverbs, but a full-on inspirational quotation, that is, something to encourage and inspire (and inscribe on a pendant or print on a tea towel) is rather a new thing. 

To me, anyway. 

Not that I'd have one of the blasted things anywhere I could see it.

(Oh, and by the way: despite the name, they're not usually quotations.)

A quick search on Google yields five typical examples:

When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let it go. 

[Unless, presumably, it involves the destruction of all the trees on the planet, the elimination of people with ears, or dancing with puff adders.]

Nothing is impossible

[Yeah, right. Look, word of advice: learn how to fly up to the top of a building before you try flying down.]

There is nothing impossible to they who will try

[Which is the same thing as the one before, but with agonisingly pompous (and some would say dodgy) grammar.]

The bad news is time flies

[Has this person never waited for a train?]

Keep your face always towards the sunshine and shadows will be behind you

[And you won't be able to see the lorry that's about to run you over, either.]

So, it's an interesting genre, the inspirational quotation.

But on the whole I hope it's going to be short-lived.

Thing To Test Today: the inspirational quotation. These are basically designed for morons. The word inspire comes from the Latin word spīrāre, to breathe. The word quote comes from the Latin word quotāre, which means to assign reference numbers to a passage, from quot, which means how many?.

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