📅 Thought for today:
‘Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.’
— Edmund Burke
#thoughtfortoday #grasshopper #noise #relevance #inhabitants #cricket #politicians #influencers
In an old school notebook, stamped with “City of Manchester Education Committee”, I have 23 pages of hand-written quotations, with dates. They are all from 1975 and 1976. I used to transcribe them from my parents’ daily newspaper, The Daily Express, which was in those days published in Manchester and a broadsheet. It had a daily quote feature – no thoughts or words, no description of the person, just a quote.
I have used some of those in the last few months. As we reach the end of another year and the end of Volume 3 of my Thoughts for Today eBooks, I dipped into that notebook from another time and place to find something that reflected the year just gone.
As I looked through pages and pages of wonderful quotes, not particularly relevant to the day in question, I found this quote from 1790 by Edmund Burke. It is longer than my usual choice, and I know long quotes tend to put people off. I can’t do much about that, I’m using it!
Remember that the noisy crickets in the field are not the only inhabitants, there are plenty of quieter inhabitants in the field, some unseen. We live in a world where the noisy crickets get amplified online, making them seem more important, more relevant, and more significant than they truly deserve.
And if you think I have been a noisy cricket this year, I’m sorry, I can’t help myself!
BTW – I had to learn the difference between a cricket and a grasshopper to choose a suitable picture.
Happy New Year, I hope 2022 is all you want it to be.
