Aphorisms by Anna Fitch Ferguson
Posted on January 18, 2010
Filed Under Aphorisms | 6 Comments
Jim Finnegan, proprietor of the ursprache blog, has done it again. He’s found yet another obscure yet fascinating aphorist, as he explains here:
“At a church book sale, I found a lovely little book—Bits of Philosophy: From The Letters and Journal of Anna Firth Ferguson (Concord, Mass.,1933)—written by a woman who lived much like Thoreau at Walden Pond; simply, close to nature, and with a similar urge to compose aphoristic and philosophic writings. From three short accounts of her life and ways, written by her friends in what looks to be a posthumously and privately printed book, I’m given to understand that Anna Fitch studied art in Boston, but early on left both Boston and the formal study of art. She had a cottage built near Concord, Mass, and there she gardened, raised vegetables and wrote. In 1902, she was married to Edwin Ferguson, a man of ‘delicate health’. Mr. Ferguson was a cleric, and after marrying they lived for a time in Washington state where he served a parish. However, after a short period in what was rugged country at the time, Edwin and Anna were forced by reason of his health to move to Colorado. There she bore a son. But in only the fourth year of their marriage, Edwin passed away, and Anna returned to Concord to live with her son in her cottage. In that cottage, which came to be called “Peace Cottage,” she spent the remainder of her life. A selection of the aphorisms:”
We give by being. One cannot give much until he becomes much.
One cannot take mental pictures of another without giving us a view of himself.
A condition for interchange is inter-need.
It is more difficult to live poetry than to write it.
We cannot find peace by building a floor over unanswered questions and living upon it.
A good moment appreciated comes again.
Better than a teacher is a desire to learn.
The first step towards knowing a thing is not knowing it.
We have left much rubbish at the door of truth, but none has got inside.
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The first step is always a blind step but one must take it.
When you think someone has a problem the problem is really yours.
Appreciation, not possession, makes a thing ours.
Collusive versions of the truth bury the truth.
I found and purchased this precious gem in a used bookstore in Reston, Virginia in 1986, while on leave from shooting M-79 grenade launchers at tanks in the jungles of a certain impoverished subcontinent (and by the way, I hit at least one – tank, jungle, subcontinent, it probably doesn’t matter now).
Check out Anna’s picture between pages 16 and 17. Not bad for the late 19th-early 20th century.
Anna lived virtually her entire life ‘under cover.’ What would any of us know about that?
Barry Commoner said “Nothing ever goes away.”
… Whatever happened to that guy?
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist. Then again, you can’t do the fist bump with an open hand either.
The *real* F-word is ‘future.’