Be kind, for everyone you meet is facing a great battle.
Isn't that a good one? I was surprised I hadn't heard it before when my friend Toni said it. She said it was attributed to Plato, which would make sense, but then a scholarly gentleman said it was really Philo (say it Hee-lo) and Toni said well, that was what she had first heard but then someone had said it was Plato.
On the Internet, it says it is attributed to both Plato and Philo but not in Philo's extant works.
I think all the argument about attribution really takes away from the quote itself. Everyone I know is facing a great battle. Maybe Rupert Murdoch thinks he is not--but that's silly, because he must worry about how to get all the liberals, and Bill Gates must fret over how to get Microsoft chips into your and my heads, plus in everything else that exists in creation.
Be kind, for everyone you know is facing a great battle.
A friend of mine wrote an article that was sent back for revision and then rejected for not having the very thing she was told to take out! The editor who did that is foolish, and not kind, but I will bet you she is facing a great battle of some kind or other. And so is my friend. Maybe we should all go around with signs on ourselves saying "My battle is to get published" "My battle is to get my wife home safe from Iraq" "My battle is to live through highschool/freshman year of college/junior high/life. . . alive and uneaten."
I love my enthusiastic young readers. They remind me that I swore to keep my ideals unbroken, even when the world seems very dark to me. My young readers are fighting a great battle. Even if what they are reading now is acceptable, if they go on reading (and, oh, please go on reading! More and more books, from all the wonderful authors in the world!) somone may give them a hard time for being lliterate. To me this seems ridiculous, but I know enough and have heard enough to know that it's true. And it's unfair, because they have so many other great battles to go through.
Me. I was happy today because my agent told me that in NY, NY they have posters on phone booths, saying 'If you like Vamprie Diaries the TV show, try the Books! That made me smile.
That's all except that I am going to do some kind of all around change to this website. More vampires! New picturees! More stories and sneak-peaks and even a section of what has been cut out of books for space and content. And a new devotion to blogging.
See? I am trying to be kind because you are fighting a great battle, even if I never know what it isl I hope you win, or at least enjoy the fight.
