Tolerance - Bigotry, Free Love

Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. (Gene Roddenberry)
Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me. (Zora Neale Hurston)

When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one. (Leonard Matlovich)

All cruelty springs from weakness. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)

The state has no place in the nation's bedrooms. (Pierre Trudeau)

If you have bright plumage, people will take pot shots at you. (Alan Clark)

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools. (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

There's no race, no religion, no class system, no color, nothing, no sexual orientation that makes us better than anyone else. We are all deserving of love. (Sandra Bullock)

In all my work, my thing has always been not to be ashamed of who you are, your body, your physicality, your desires, your sexual fantasies. The reason there is bigotry, sexism, racism, and homophobia is fear. People are afraid of their own feelings, afraid of the unknown and I am saying: don't be afraid. (Madonna)

Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to Suffering. (Yoda)

I don't care if you're black, white, straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, short, tall, fat, skinny, rich or poor. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. Simple as that. (Eminem)

There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked. It always seems to me that people who hate me must be suffering from some strange form of lunacy. (Sei Shōnagon)

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us. (Hermann Hesse)

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. (Nelson Mandela)

All throughout history — both human and American — there have been people who didn’t fit into whatever the norms were of that time. In time, the norms change, and we change with them. Gay people certainly know what I’m talking about here. And maybe it’s time we all try to let go of all the rest. Who cares if someone is poly, or gay, or bisexual, or asexual, or, or, or, or. Who cares... Well, I’m going to try and not be uncomfortable by the way anyone lives their sexual lives. I still don’t get rooting for the Yankees and Eagles, but one thing at a time (Jeff Edelstein, columnist at The Trentonian)

Love and do what you will. (St. Augustine of Hippo)

The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three. (Alexandre Dumas)

Tolerance is the one essential ingredient. (Prince Phillip)

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other. (Jane Austen)

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. (Karl Popper)

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character. (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear. (Gene Roddenberry)

Miscellany - A little of everything.

Sometimes we all forget just how great we are (and there are far too few people who remind us of that fact).

You're only given a little spark of madness. You musn't lose it. (Robin Williams)

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.  (Albert Einstein)

Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. (Carl Zwanzig)

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. (Salvor Hardin)

Ohhh! The Infinite Value of the Humble Gospel Helpers!  Thousands of people who have no gifts as leaders are Number One Helpers. How grand revival work moves along when Red-Hot Platoons of Fire-Baptized Helpers crowd around God's Heroic Leaders of the Embattled Host!  (Brother Godbey)

No gift that serves others is little.

One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop. (G.M. Weilacher)

Here are we -- and yonder yawns the universe. (H.P. Lovecraft)

Don't be too worthwhile. Always keep a few character defects handy. People love to talk about your frailties. If you must be noble, keep it to yourself. (Edward D. Stone)

Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

A 'good' landing is one from which you can walk away. A 'great' landing is one after which they can use the plane again.

God gives and forgives, people get and forget.

You know you're in trouble when the strange noise from your car is the mechanic laughing underneath it. (Priceless, Dave Ramsey)

Football combines the two worst features of American life: violence and committee meetings. (George Will)

It is a happy talent to know how to play. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Drive On. We'll sweep up the blood later! (Katherine Hepburn)

It has been my experience that people who have no vices have very few virtues. (Abraham Lincoln)

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. (Edmund Burke)

Only when we walk in the dark can we see the stars.

A man said to the Universe, "Sir, I exist!"

"However," the Universe replied, "The fact has not created within me a sense of obligation."

Has it ever occured to you that there might be a difference between having an open mind and having holes in one's head? (Richard Schultz)

We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about 'and.' (Sir Arthur Eddington)

The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough. (Bede Jarrett)

When the game is done, the King and the Pawn go into the same box. (Italian Proverb)

"If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee."  (Lady Astor to Winston Churchill)

"If you were my wife, I'd drink it."  (Winston Churchill, in reply)

Die, v.:  To stop sinning suddenly. (Elbert Hubbard)

Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live. (Henry Van Dyke)

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. (Mark Twain)

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. (Galileo Galilei)

Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? (Kelvin Throop III)

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. (Samuel Johnson)

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back. (Chinese Proverb)

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Albert Einstein)

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward. (Baltasar Gracian)

Whines are the product of sour grapes.

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but one capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Remember - if it never rained, there would be no rainbows.

Three Wise Women Would Have...

Asked directions,

Arrive on time,

Helped deliver the baby,

Cleaned the stable,

Made a casserole,

Brought practical gifts and

There would be Peace on Earth.

I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. (Donald Trump)

A good neighbor doubles the value of a house.

I saw the lightning's gleaming rod

Reach forth and write upon the sky

The awful autograph of God.

(Joaquin Miller, "The Ship in the Desert")

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. (Mark Twain)

"Hallo, Rabbit," [Pooh] said, "is that you?"

"Let's pretend it isn't," said Rabbit, "and see what happens." (A. A. Milne)

There wouldn't be a sky full of stars if we were all meant to wish on the same one. (Frances Clark)

No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. (Turkish Proverb)

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take but by the moments that take our breath away.

An after-dinner speech is like the horns of a bull - with a point here... and a point there... and an awful lot of bull in between. (Castilian Proverb)

The history of the world is but the biography of great men. (Thomas Carlyle)

A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water. (Nancy Reagan or Carl Sandburg)

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. (Mark Twain)

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

The wits of the wise the brew can beguile; and make the sage frolic, and make the sad smile. (Homer)

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid manikin. (Twinkle, twinkle, little star.)

KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotsmen in America and Americans in Scotland. (Ambrose Beirce)

I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. (Winston Churchill, on his eightieth birthday)

Life's most urgent question is: What are you doing for others? (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Do what good you can today - you may not be here tomorrow.

God made the world round so we can never see too far down the road.

When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

There's nothing like biting off more than you can chew, and then chewing anyway. (Mark Burnett)

A peacock that rests on his feathers is just another turkey. (Dolly Parton)

If you're quiet, you're not living. You've got to be noisy and colorful and lively. (Mel Brooks)

"I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." ~Henry David Thoreau

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear;

Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. (William Shakespeare - Julius Caesar)

"My teeth are tingling again. I feel like I've just got to bite somebody before sundown or I shall go stark raving mad. And yet I know that society frowns on such an action. So what happens? I'm stuck with tingly teeth." (Snoopy, YAGMCB)

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and chemistry. (H.L. Mencken)

The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had marked. (James R. Newman)

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, "I'm with you kid. Let's go." (Maya Angelou)

Glitter is the herpes of the craft world

Life can be understood backward; but must be lived forward. (Soren Aabye Kierkegaard)

"I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other." Quote from Mary Shelly's troubled Frankenstein's Monster


Better than I deserve (Dave Ramsey)

When the wonders of science and the mysteries of faith

come together, a miracle is born -- Hope.

Respect is when I can look up to you, but you never look down on me.

I wish the buck stopped here. I sure could use a few...

The man who runs in front of the car gets tired.

The man who runs behind the car gets exhausted.

Get in the car!

Kids in the back seat cause accidents;

Accidents in the back seat cause kids.

I like cats, too. Let's exchange recipes.

It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion. (Dean Inge)

Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity. (Don Cupitt)

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. (T.S. Elliot)

The best fame is a writer's fame: it's enough to get a table at a good restaurant, but not enough that you get interrupted when you eat. (Fran Lebowitz)

We must travel in the direction of our fear. (John Berryman)

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. (Vaclav Havel)

Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. (Alfred North Whitehead)

It is better to wear out than to rust out. (Bishop Richard Cumberland)

The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. (Richard Dawkins)

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. (R.D. Lang)

Someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December. (J. M. Barrie)

Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television. (Gore Vidal)

Everything I Need to Know, I Learned from Firefly and Serenity

How you get to where you're going is the worthier part.

Doing the impossible makes us mighty.

Even at the corner of "no" and "where" you are rarely alone as you think you are.

If ever someone tries to kill you, you try and kill 'em right back.

There's some things not to be mistaken for suggestions.

There is no defense against Naked and Articulate

It's important to be respectful of other cultures; some people juggle geese.

Tearing the clothes off your spouse is work work work, but hey, someone's gotta do it.

A stegosaurus and a T-Rex will never be friends for long; Betrayal is sudden but inevitable.

Swearing is okay in Chinese.

Nothin into nothin, carry the nothin is NOTHIN!

When you and you and your crew arrive in the nick of time, that makes you Big Damn Heroes.

Sometimes a thing gets broke can't be fixed.

Sometimes, it's very important to interrogate buffet tables.

You don't fix faith; it fixes you.

There is a special level of Hell reserved for Child Molesters and people who talk at the theater.

The Bible is against killin', but it's a mite fuzzy on the subject of kneecaps.

Sometimes the voices in your head are right.

We are all dreaming.

No power in the 'verse can stop me.

"Whore" is just another way to say "I love you"

It's important to fall in love with a man of mystery, because so few men are.

"A man can get a job, he might not look to close at what the job is. But a man learns all the details of a situation like ours, well, he has a choice."

"I don't believe he does."

It's not altogether wise, sneakin up on a fella when he's handling his weapon.

Ah, but a government is just a body of people, usually notably ungoverned.

People who wear blue latex gloves are not to be trusted.

There's a very big difference between seeing somebody undressed and seeing them naked.

When you can't run, you walk. And when you can't walk, you crawl. And when you can't do that... you find someone to carry you.

Just because you want to be in command of the ship, doesn't mean you can.

Even if you're on the losing side, it doesn't mean you're on the wrong one.

The wheel keeps turnin', but it only matters to those on the rim.

Never admit that you're unarmed.

There's always time for some thrillin' heroics.

Reputation? It's gossip; people talking.

You can't stop the Signal.

You shouldn't hit a man with a closed fist but it is, on occasion, hilarious.

‘Sanguine’ means both Hopeful and Bloody, which just about covers everything.

If you can't do something Smart, do something Right.

Telling someone you're going to shoot them doesn't give them incentive to talk.

Most History was written by someone hiding the truth.

Soar like a Leaf on the Wind

Just because you’re lost don't mean you're done.

What you plan and what takes place ain't necessarily gonna be similar. Be prepared for emergencies.

Sometimes, you've just gotta reassure everyone that everything's shiny. And frettin' ain't gonna change it.

If you ever go to kill someone, it's only fair to make sure that they're awake, facing you, and armed.

“I got people with me, people who trust each other, who do for each other and ain’t always looking for the advantage. There’s good people in the ‘verse. Not many, lord knows, but you only need a few.”

Time & Beauty - Growing Old & Staying Young

Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts. (Martin Buxbaum)

Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternatives. (Cato or Maurice Chevalier)

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. (Francis Bacon)

Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. (John Ruskin)

Charm... it's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have. (J.M. Barrie)

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. (Thomas Mann)

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. (Mark Twain)

I don't believe in vitamin pills. I swear by men, darling - and as many as possible. (Joan Collins)

The young do not know enough to be prudent and therefore they attempt the impossible - and achieve it, generation after generation. -Pearl S. Buck

When I am an old woman I shall purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
(Jenny Joseph)

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
(Dylan Thomas)

I'm not young enough to know everything. (J.M. Barrie)

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. (Dorothy Canfield Fisher or Arthur Pinero)

Children are a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster, too. (Lionel Kauffman)

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art. (Stanislaw J. Lec)

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been. (Mark Twain)

Age and treachery will always triumph over youth and exuberance.

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. (John Barrymore)

It's true, some wines improve with age. But only if the grapes were good in the first place. (Abigail Van Buren)

Don't complain about growing old - many, many people do not have that privilege. (Earl Warren)

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. (Lucille Ball)

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age. (Jeanne Moreau)

You know you're getting old when the candles cost more than the cake. (Bob Hope)

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday, but never remembers her age. (Robert Frost)

I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a whole lot more as they get older. Then it dawned on me. They were cramming for their finals.

Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein. (H. Jackson Brown, Jr.)

Yesterday is history,

Tomorrow's a mystery.

Today's a gift,

That's why it's called the Present.

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. (Carl Sandburg)

As a white candle in a holy place,

So is the beauty of an aged face.

(Joseph Campbell, "The Old Woman")

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age. (Victor Hugo)

I'm not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as you feel. (Elizabeth Arden)

Old age is when you look the food over, instead of the waitress.

Few women admit their age... few men act it.

Inside every older person is a younger person -- wondering what the hell happened. (Cora Harvey Armstrong)

I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows. (Janette Barber)

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart. (Caryn Leschen)

A man has reached middle age when he is cautioned to slow down by his doctor instead of by the police.

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. (Henry Ford)

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

You know you're getting old when you stop buying green bananas.

I don't plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet. (Rita Rudner)

The key to successful aging is to pay as little attention to it as possible (Judith Regan)

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise (Alden Nowlan)

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday. (John Wayne)

Another candle on your cake?

Well, that's no cause to pout,

Be glad that you have strength enough

To blow the damn thing out.

I love everything that's old - old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine. (Oliver Goldsmith)

How to Stay Young: 

1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them.

2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.

3. Keep learning. Never let the brain idle. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, and the devil's name is Alzheimer's.

4. Enjoy the simple things.

5. Laugh often, long and loud.

6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on.

7. Surround yourself with love, whether it's family, pets, friends, or whatever.

8. Cherish your health: If it's good, preserve it. If it's unstable, improve it as much as you can.

9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to anywhere except where the guilt is.

10. Tell people you love them, at every opportunity.

Thoughts on Mid-Life (for Women Only):

Mid-life is when the growth of hair on our legs slows down. This gives us plenty of time to care for our newly acquired mustache.

Mid-life is when you can stand naked in front of a mirror and you can see your rear without turning around.

Mid-life is when you want to grab every firm young lovely in a tube top and scream, "Listen honey, the Roman Empire fell and those will too."

Mid-life is when you look at your know-it-all, beeper-wearing teenager and think, "For this I have stretch marks?"

Mid-life means that you become more reflective.... You start pondering the 'big' questions. What is life? Why am I here? How much Healthy Choice ice cream can I eat before it's no longer a healthy choice?

Mid-life also brings with it an appreciation for what is important. We realize that breasts sag, hips expand, and chins double, but our loved ones make the journey worthwhile. Maybe our bodies simply have to expand to hold all the wisdom and love we've acquired.

Art, Talent, Poetry, Imagination, Creativity, Passion

An Art is anything done so well that it takes on more than ordinary significance.

Any talent you may have is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. (Stella Adler)

Art is Man's nature. Nature is God's art. (James Bailey)

When my daughter was about seven years old, she asked me one day what I did at work. I told her I worked at the college - that my job was to teach people how to draw. She stared at me, incredulous, and said, "You mean they forget?" (Howard Ikemoto)

The truest expression of a people is in its dances and its music. Bodies never lie. (Agnes de Mille)

Dance is the hidden language of the soul. (Martha Graham

Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can. (Owen Meredith)

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. (Pablo Picasso)

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. (John W. Gardner)

When you hear a voice inside you say 'you cannot paint' then by all means paint, and the voice will be silenced. (Vincent Van Gogh)

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. (Wallace Stevens)

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. (Andre Gide)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. (Scott Adams)

Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art. (Tom Stoppard)

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. (Pablo Picasso)

Poetry should... strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance. (John Keats)

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it. (Danny Kaye)

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. (Emile Zola)

The poet's fate is here in emblem shown,

He asked for bread and he received a stone.

(Samuel Wesley, "On Butler's Monument")

At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. (Salvador Dali)

Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid. (Jules Feiffer)

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I have... a terrible need... shall I say the word?... of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars. (Vincent van Gogh)

A good painter need not give a name to his picture, a bad one must. (Polish Proverb)

PAINTING, n. The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. (Ambrose Bierce)

The world is but a canvas to the imagination. (Henry David Thoreau)

Great dancers are not great because of their technique; they are great because of their passion. (Martha Graham)

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. (Steve Martin)

God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He just goes on trying other things. (Pablo Picasso)

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business. (Mikhail Baryshnikov)

Do it big, do it right and do it with style. (Fred Astaire)

Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul. (Vincent Van Gogh)

The very impulse to write, I think, springs from an inner chaos crying out for order, for meaning, and that meaning must be discovered in the process of writing or the work lies dead as it is finished. (Arthur Miller)

Character, Persistence, Honor, Manners

Live your life as an Exclamation, not an Explanation.

Be the kind of person that, when speaking of you, people say "That crazy old broad," not "That poor child."

Be sure of what you stand for, lest you fall for anything.

Patience is bitter but its rewards are very sweet.

Rule No. 1-Don't sweat the small stuff.  

Rule No. 2-It's (almost) all small stuff.  

Life is made up of small stuff that becomes big only if we sweat it.

Remember the tea kettle.  Though up to its neck in hot water, it continues to sing. (Priceless, Dave Ramsey)

Honour is better than Honors. (Abraham Lincoln)

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. (Dalai Lama)

The only difference between a stepping stone and a stumbling block is the use to which each is put.

What we see [in life] depends on mainly what we look for. (John Lubbock)

The greatest oak was once a little nut that held its ground. (Priceless, Dave Ramsey)

Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes. (Chinese Proverb)

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them. (Mark Twain)

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. (Sir Winston Churchill)

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot. (Clarence Thomas)

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor 4:8-9)

A lot of maturing takes place between "It fell" and "I dropped it."

Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man. (Benjamin Franklin)

To keep your character intact, you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time. (Katherine Hepburn)

Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look at the stars. (Henry Van Dyke)

When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere. (La Rochefoucauld)

Talent develops in quiet, alone; character is sharpened in the torrent of the world. (Goethe)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. (Albert Einstein)

Good character, like good soup, is made at home.

We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers - but never blame yourself. It's never your fault. But it's always your fault, because if you wanted to change, you're the one who has got to change. (Katherine Hepburn)

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. (Dennis Wholey)

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Long ago... I resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. (Booker T. Washington)

Be the kind of person you want your kids to be when they grow up.

The man who has confidence in himself gains the confidence of others. (Hasidic saying)

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)

The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection. (Thomas Paine)

People will treat you exactly the way you allow them to treat you.

The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax return; it's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale (Arthur C. Clarke)

Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking.

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. (Malachy McCourt)

If you haven't found something worth dying for, you aren't fit to be living. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with. (Dr. Wayne W. Dyer)

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it, so it goes on flying anyway. (Mary Kay Ash)

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip. (Will Rogers)

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. (Mohandas Gandhi)

Courage is being scared to death - but saddling up anyway. (John Wayne)

The time is always right to do the right thing. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

When I focus upon the small steps right in front of me, I rarely have time to worry about the big ones down the road somewhere.

It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness. (Chinese Proverb)

Worry is stewing without doing.

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change you attitude. Don't complain. (Maya Angelou)

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not. (Oprah Winfrey)

If you have a terrible tragedy, you come out of it either enhanced or diminished. (Art Linkletter)

A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

Hatred and anger are but slow methods of suicide.

What the world needs is more warm hearts and fewer hot heads.

We can't choose what we go through but we can choose how we go through it.

I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.... 

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back.... 

I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. 

(Maya Angelou)

Ability may get you to the top, but it's character that will keep you there.

Courage is holding on just a few minutes longer.

Revenge gets you even with your enemies, forgiveness puts you above him.

If you can see some good in everybody, then almost everybody will see some good in you.

Be as friendly to the janitor as you are to the chairman of the board.

Meekness is not weakness, but strength under proper discipline.

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" (Sydney J. Harris)

Conscience is God's presence in man. (Swedenborg)

As long as we continue to live as if we are what we do, as if we are what we have, and as if we are what other people think about us, we will remain filled with judgements, opinions, evaluations, and condemnations. We will remain addicted to the need to put people in their place. (Brennan Manning)

Live every day like it's your last, 'cause one day you're gonna be right. (Ray Charles)

If you lack the courage to start, you have already finished.

The heaviest thing you can carry is a grudge.

Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. (James Dean)

A poor man is not that one without a cent.  A poor man is that one without a dream.

The optimist has no brakes; the pessimist has no motor. (Melvin M. Maxwell)

What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other. (George Eliot)

Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. (Albert Einstein)

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. (Herm Albright)

Reputation is what men and women think of us. Character is what God and the angels know of us. (Thomas Paine)

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self. (Ernest Hemingway)

Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen. (Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection)

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. (Albert Camus)

Catholics and Communists have committed great crimes, but at least they have not stood aside, like an established society, and been indifferent. I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate. (Graham Greene)

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. (Robert Heinlein)

Curtsey while you're thinking of what to say. It saves time. (Lewis Carroll)

One must dare to be himself, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair, let a child run his/her fingers through it once a day.

...

For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk along.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed,

revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand,

you will find one at the end of each of your arms.

As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands;

one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others.

(Audrey Hepburn's 'Beauty Tips')

Education, Books, Study, & Thought

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (Aristotle)

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. (Sydney J. Harris)

Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. (Roger Lewin)

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him. (Maya Angelou)

If your mind goes blank, don't forget to turn off the sound. (Red Green)

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. (William Butler Yeats)

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't. (Pete Seeger)

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try! (Theodore Geisel)

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't. (Emerson M. Pugh)

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions. (Mahfouz Naguib)

Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself. (Chinese Proverb)

We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand those laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moved the constellations. (Albert Einstein)

Better build schoolrooms for the boy, than cells and gibbets for the man. (Eliza Cook)

I do not feel obligated to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. (Galileo Galilei)

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience, and that is not learning from experience. (Archibald McLeish)

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. (Joseph Addison)

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them. (Mark Twain)

Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. (Bacon, Essays of Studies)

The brain is like a muscle. When we think well, we feel good. Understanding is a kind of ecstasy. (Carl Sagan)

I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. (Anonymous English Professor, Ohio University)

A home without books is like a body without a soul.

An open mind is not the same as an empty mind.

A good book is like an unreachable itch. You just can't leave it alone. (Laura Bush)

At the desk where I sit, I have learned one great truth. The answer for all our national problems - the answer for all the problems of the world - come to a single word. That word is 'education.' (Lyndon B. Johnson)

You'll never have any mental muscle if you don't have any heavy stuff to pick up. (Diane Lane)

If all the rich and all the church people should send their children to public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals. (Susan B. Anthony)

The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive, and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept everything they are offered. (Jean Piaget)

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Adams, John (1735 - 1826)

Letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780.

An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them. (Werner Heisenberg)

It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well. (René Descartes)

Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet. (John Dryden)

If you ask mathematicians what they do, yo always get the same answer. They think. They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary problems: they just write down the answers. (M. Egrafov)

 [The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. (Galileo Galilei)

To be a scholar of mathematics you must be born with talent, insight, concentration, taste, luck, drive and the ability to visualize and guess. (Paul R. Halmos)

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. (Jules Henri Poincaré)

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. (Julian Barnes)

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books. (A. S. Byatt)

I respect faith but doubt is what gets you an education. (Wilson Mizner)

The motto of all the mongoose family is, 'Run and find out.' (Rudyard Kipling)

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. (Mark Haddon)

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. (René Descartes)

Essay by a New Teacher: 

Let me see if I've got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids, and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning. Not only that, I'm to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, behaviorally modify disruptive behavior, and observe them for signs of abuse, weapons, or drugs. I am to fight the war on drugs and sexually-transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for guns and raise their self-esteem. I am to check their heads occasionally for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of potential antisocial behavior, offer advice, write letters of recommendation for employment and scholarships, encourage respect for diversity, and oh yeah, teach!

I am to teach them patriotism, citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, how, where and why to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook and how to apply for a job. I am to decide who might be dangerous and/or liable to commit crimes in school or who is possibly being abused, and I can be sent to jail for not mentioning these suspicions to those in authority. I am to incorporate technology into the learning, but monitor all Web sites for appropriateness while providing a personal one-on-one relationship with each student. I am to make sure ALL students pass the state and federally mandated testing and all classes, whether or not they attend school on a regular basis or complete any of the work assigned. I am to communicate frequently with each student's parent by letter and phone.

I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk, a few books, a bulletin board and a big smile? And you want me to do ALL OF THIS and expect me to do it WITHOUT PRAYING?