C.Q.C. - Confirmed Quote Collector

I've caught it. It's fatal. It's final. It's unstoppable. I'm doomed.

I am a Confirmed Quote Collector.

It started when I came across a couple of quotes which fired my imagine and raised my aspirations to a new level. Then I came across a quote that made me laugh. Quotes, I decided, were something special. You could really gather some great thoughts, with very little trouble, from reading some quotes when they happened to fall in your way.

I needed something nice to say to a friend, but just couldn't quite get to exactly the phrases I wanted, so I could have that nice rounded feeling to my words. I remembered that I had come across this quote about friendship that seemed to say it in a nutshell, but I couldn't remember the whole quote and I couldn't remember where I had seen it. Brilliant Idea Number One. Real problem solver. Maybe, just maybe, there might be a copy somewhere out in cyber-space. It was worth trying.

The first, irrevocable step had been taken.

Not only did I find the quote that I had been looking for, but during the course of my search I found hundreds - literally hundreds - of amazing quotes and all of them were about friendship. Brilliant Idea Number Two. If there were so many good quotes on the Internet about friendship, what about ... say ... being happy?

Goals, Life, Inspiration, Adventure ... the list could go on for as long as you could think of words. I soon found out that the quotes were not all of the best quality. Not only did I find some inspirational thoughts, I also discovered some totally wacky ideas about life. The chaff was sifted out and the wheat left behind was enough to give me fuel for my journey to becoming a Quote Collector of the First Degree.

I don't look quotes up on the Internet every day, every week, or even every month. I don't think I've looked quotes up on the Internet for about five months. No, my method is a little more subtle.

Every time a friend sends me a quote and it captures my imagination - off the quote goes to my special quote collection. Every time I read a good quote on a notice board - out comes pen and paper and as soon as I get home that quote will get stashed away. On a website a quote will catch my eye and then my mind - a couple of clicks on my mouse and the quote is numbered amongst the other quotes I have stored away.

My collection doesn't grow extraordinarily quickly. I don't add to its number just for the sake of getting another quote. I take great pride the in the quality of my quotes. They have to inspire, motivate, encourage, make a good point, make me laugh, say something ordinary in an extraordinary way or capture the essence of a thought which is normally illusive.

My Quote Collection is an exclusive Quote Collection.

My Quote Collection still has a little way to go before it reaches the height of organization. Maybe quite a long way to go. If someone talks about their "collection", I usually think of a glass cabinet full of plates or figurines; a row of hooks with a mug hanging from each hook; a neat book full of stamps; a box with carefully organized postcards from many different countries.

My Quote Collection likes to take the air and be seen - in all kinds of places. Some quotes are stuck up on my bulletin board, others are typed neatly into a computer file, more have been copy and pasted untidily from a website into a document, a good number are stored away in a file full of useful pieces of paper, while another dozen or so have been hand-written into a notebook full of all kinds of jottings and other random thoughts. Nowhere have I got a complete set of all the quotes which form a part of my Collection.

Frustrating though this can sometimes be, this form of storage does hold an attraction which is not to be passed over lightly. At any given time of day, when looking for any given piece of paper, I could come across a quote which I had stored away because of it's inspirational qualities or its ability to make me laugh. Who knows what kind of a day I could be having, or what thoughts could be going though my head? Maybe that quote could be enough to give me a boost in the right direction or bring a little sunshine into my day. Maybe it could spur me on to greater effort or remind me of an important task left undone. Maybe it will give me a much-needed laugh in an otherwise gray day. I'll never know until it happens.

I still need to have a big collection which neatly holds all my quotes in one organized place, but when that happens, I think I will leave all the quotes which are scattered around, in their places where they are, ready for next time I'm looking for something else and come across a quote at just the right time.