<p>It’s customary for the senior parents to buy “With Love” ads for the yearbook. These are full page, half page or quarter page ads, usually with several photos of the student at various ages or family snapshots, along with a heartfelt message about how proud we are of how they have succeeded and wishing them love and luck for their college years. Some of them have relevant quotations or poems beneath the photos.</p>
<p>I’ve been looking for just the right quotation to use on a small ad for my son. There was a CC thread a while back about quotes for the classroom wall and I was amazed at the great quotes that everyone posted here. I’m counting on you all to come up with some other good ones relating to success, achievement, new beginnings, etc. I’ve googled the quotations pages on the web and found a few good ones, but I know you guys can do better </p>
<p>Something humorous would be great, or a snippet of a song lyric, maybe. I don’t want anything too somber or serious. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Not a specific quote, but an idea of how to find the right one. We have the same tradition for our high school. In thinking of the right quote, I remembered the time DS had to memorize a poem for 5th grade. We were headed on a family trip to Montreal to watch my step-grandson play in a hockey tournament. Plenty of time on the multi-hour trip for S to memorize his poem, rehearse it with us as audience, etc. </p>
<p>Naturally, when he rummaged around in his typical-boy-backpack and pulled out the crumpled copy of his poem, it wasn’t “his”, but the one chosen by the kid who had happened to be sitting next to him in class that day. So when we got to Montreal, we went to a beautiful book store (two stories, lots of sitting areas, etc.) and found a beautiful copy of Robert Frost poems ( DS had chosen The Road Less Travelled). He did spend much of that trip on the memorizing, so naturally all 3 of us now know it by heart.</p>
<p>I used 4 lines from that poem for our ad, because of the memory, and because they fit him:
So you might think about some poem, quote or song which had meaning for him somewhere along the way in his 12 school years.</p>
<p>There has never been a day when we have not been proud of you, we said to our son, though some days we are louder about other stuff so it’s easy to miss that. </p>
<p>Everyday stuff can easily take over our dialogs with our kids…I have a creature sculpture that says the above, in my kitchen where we see it every day…being proud of our child/children is an integral part of all we do… ensuring that we can be proud of our kids…giving them the skills to make good choices etc etc… so, use it if you feel it fits what you want…</p>
<p>I had to send in my D’s already - it was really hard. Limited to 50 words. Couldn’t find something that fit D so perfectly because she is not solely focused on one thing. We did end with a cute German phrase, to acknowledge that part of her life. With S2, since he loves music, we used a quote from Mozart - “Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genuis. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” With each kid we tried to find a phrase that meant something to them. One of my favorite senior messages was from a mom to a daughter that just listed memories - single word things rather than sentences or phrases, from infancy to now. It was very sweet and nostalgic. Some of my least favorite are “charges” – directions to the kid to be good, don’t mess up, whatever. Although we did end S1’s with “Call your mother.”</p>
<p>Some very good ideas here already - thanks! S is into philosophy, so I’ve been searching quotes from a couple of his favorite philosophers. I’ve found some good ones, but philosophers aren’t exactly a laugh riot, so the humorous element is definitely missing I may have to use a couple of different ones to get exactly what I want. Keep the ideas coming, though!</p>
<p>Our quote was based on excerpts from S’s kindergarten commencement ceremony–“the joy is in the journey” and “remember your ABCs” (A was for appropriate dress, B for Be nice, and C for be Colorful). The speech given by the headmistress was so moving and memorable that these two sayings became family mantras over the years. The phrases therefore developed layers of personal meaning within the family based on oft repeated usage in moments where we seemed to be losing our way.</p>
<p>We used a couple different quotes for S… one serious, one completely not. He’s a huge Simpsons fan so we chose a “not serious” quote from Homer. He loved that one.</p>
<p>“Remember as far as anyone knows, we’re a nice normal family”.<br>
Homer Simpson</p>
<p>I don’t have a quote to help you, sorry. But since people are sharing, I was drawn to go into my kids’ rooms to look up their yearbooks. I cannot find D1’s yearbook of her senior year, just previous ones. But I found D2’s. And while I don’t have a quote for you, I can tell you that there are other ways to bring humor into it. In our ad, the humor was in the photos, but not the text. D2 is going into musical theater and has done it her whole life. We put in two photos. The first one is her very first musical, a professional production of Peter Pan. While there were professional actors in all the lead roles, they made the show funny because they cast very young kids as the Pirates. My older D was 6 and she was a Lost Kid but my younger D who was just 4 1/2 at the time, really wanted to be in it, though was younger than anyone in it. The producers/directors were friends/neighbors and the theater was 40 min. away and we had to sit at every rehearsal due to the distance and because D1 was in it. So, they put D2 in as the youngest pirate. The pirates all had these “swords” out of this spongy tubular material (was very funny looking) and I recall my D’s one line in the show was when Hook went down the line of the teeny Pirates and asked each to state his name, my little preschool kid makes this guttera fierce soundingl man’s voice and acts really tough and (was allowed to come up with her own character’s name) and says, “Harrrrrrdball!” and so we have this photo from before the show in her costume where she is growling with her sword, that is just so funny. Who knew at age 4 that this kid was going to go on in the theater world in college and beyond? So, we put that photo in the ad, along with her professional headshot for theater. The photos have meaning to her, from the first funny memory of her as an actress at age 4 to now in her professional headshots for college. Then we wrote:</p>
<p>(name),
You shine in every role you play, but the role you do best is being YOU. You light up the stage, you light up our lives, and now it’s time to light up the world. Keep reaching for your star, because you’re “gonna make it after all!”</p>
<p>We’re proud of you.
We love you.
We’ll miss you!</p>
<p>Love Always,
Mom, Dad, and “sister’s name”</p>
<p>Actually, there IS a quote in there : “gonna make it after all!” which is from a song called “We’re Gonna Make it After All” which was a song she sang two years prior when she played the lead, Ellie Greenwich, in Leader of the Pack. Ellie Greenwich is a songwriter from the 60’s who wrote many songs including “We’re Gonna Make it After All” and I think those lyrics fit the situation. Little did I know when I submitted this ad early in the school year that in March, she would land in intensive care and I only hoped she would make it. And so, she did after all.</p>
<p>I put this quote in my d’s senior ad. It is generally accepted to have been written by Ralph Waldo Emerson, though some disagree about that. Ironically, months after I sent the ad in, the school decided to use it for the graduation program. So, you might want to check and see if it is too ‘hard-worn’ at your school.</p>
<p>“To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.”</p>
<p>I also like this short one by Emerson:</p>
<p>“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”</p>
<p>Well, I guess this just got me to recall a quote my older D used at the end of her valedictory speech and I know where she got it as it is a quote used at the end of her younger sister’s yearly cabaret at her theater camp and I think it also had meaning for this D. From Shakespeare:</p>
<p>“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”</p>
<p>EDIT…while that is the Shakespeare quote…The way it is spoken in my younger daughter’s cabaret (musical revue) performance, which is called “Our Time Cabaret”, is right before the final song, “Our Time” by Sondheim (from “Merrily We Roll Along”). The actor actually says this, quoting Sondheim first, then Shakespeare:</p>
<p>“My final thought is a simple but mighty one: it is the obligation we have been given.
It is to not turn out the same. It is to grow, to accomplish, to change the world. It is to not to turn out the same, to not follow the roads paved in riches or power or prestige, but to follow what is in our hearts. Lastly, let us cling to these words of Shakespeare:” (the Shakespeare quote above, then follows.)</p>
<p>“There are two lasting gifts we can give our children. One is roots and the other is wings.” Hodding Carter Jr.</p>
<p>"Spirit of life, come unto me
Sing in my heart, all the stirrings of compassion
Blow in the wind, rise in the sea
Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice
Roots hold me close, wings set me free
Spirit of life, come to me, come to me
(Caroline McDade, 1978)</p>
<p>Your world is as big as you make it
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner
My wings pressing close to my side
But I sighted the distant horizon
Where the sky-line encircled the sea
And I throbbed with a burning desire
To travel this immensity.
I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
with rapture, with power, with ease!</p>
<p>“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt</p>
<p>“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
-Mark Twain</p>
<p>“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”
-T.S. Elliott</p>
<p>“There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long
I feel that this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide whats right for you.
Just listen to the voice that speaks inside.”]
-Shel Silverstein</p>
</p>