Ellen Silverman sent us this image of a sign (artfully tacked up with duct tape) that was emailed to her by her friend Lisa Gustin:
Inspiration Comes of Working.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
The purpose of human life is to serve and show compassion and the will to help others. Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature. Life is an exciting business and most exciting when it is lived for others. You cannot do much about the length of your life, but you can do a lot about its depth and width.
The quote is signed “Delfonics”. We poked around and discovered that Delfonics is a Japanese stationary maker that uses this quote on some of it’s products, including notebooks and file folders. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” is actually something Albert Einstein said, which Delfonics’ graphic curiously fails to mention. We don’t know where the other words are from, perhaps the copywriter. They’re good anyway.
We looked on Delfonics site, which is mostly in Japanese. Under ‘Philosophy’ we read: “The stationary opens up your idea.”
Great!! We love to open up our IDEA.
(Free association: When we first saw the name “Delfonics”, we wondered if it was the soul group from the ’60s and ’70’s…
You can buy Delfonics’ stationary here.
Thanks Ellen and Lisa!
I got a similar folder from Madewell a couple of years ago. A bit of poking around the internet and the rightfully due credit can now be given for the quotes below 🙂
“The purpose of human life is to serve and to show compassion and the will to help others.” –Albert Schweitzer
“Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.” –Erif Hoffer
“Life is an exciting business and most exciting when it is lived for others.” –Helen Keller
“You cannot do much about the length of your life, but you can do a lot about its depth and width.” –HL Mencken
Ah and Charles Baudelaire for “Inspiration comes of working.”
So it looks like the stationary maker, Delfonics, compiled all of these into one rather piece-meal, but very inspirational, message.
Thanks so much for following the trail!
Wow.Great work. Want a job?