Coming home was both a downer and a relief. Does traveling affect anybody else like that? As I was changing the sheets and then mowing the lawn today, I was thinking things like “I love to make my home lovely and good-smelling, inside and out,” whilst simultaneously thinking things like “If I lived in that hotel, I’d NEVER have to mow the lawn, someone else would change AND wash the sheets, and I’d get to sleep with Monty every night!” Because, of course, in my fantasy world, BlogHer is still going on and will never stop.
As are many other things in my many fantasy worlds. . . .
But now it’s Quotation Saturday, and I do love me some wise and pithy quotations:
1. “It is not the shilling I give you that counts, but the warmth that it carries with it from my hand.” –Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo
2. “We have no more right to put our discordant states of mind into the lives of those around us and rob them of their sunshine and brightness than we have to enter their houses and steal their silverware.” –Julia Moss Seton
3. “Statistics are no substitute for judgment.” –Henry Clay
4. “The slander of some people is as great a recommendation as the praise of others.” –Henry Fielding
5. “A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.” –Colin Powell
6. “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” –M.L. King
7. “Soft soap is always a sign that there’s dirty water about.” –John Dickson Carr
8. “Obstinacy and heat of opinion are the surest proof of stupidity. Is there anything so assured, resolved, disdainful, contemplative, solemn, and serious as the ass?” –Montaigne
9. “The man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.” –Henri Fredric Amiel
10. “A day is a span of time no one is wealthy enough to waste.” –Anon.
11. “Without deviation, progress is not possible.” –Frank Zappa
12. “Dollars cannot buy yesterday.” –Admiral Harold R. Stark
13. “Never let go of the fiery sadness called desire.” –Patti Smith
14. “If people are made to do what they dislike, you must allow for a little ill-humour.” –Lord Melbourne
15. “I don’t want people who want to dance. I want people who HAVE to dance.” –George Balanchine
16. “Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.” –F.S. Fitzgerald
17. “A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” –Demosthenes
18. “Being a politician is like being a football coach: you have to be small enough to understand the game, but dumb enough to think it’s important.” –Eugene McCarthy
19. “Truthfulness is a cornerstone in character, and if it be not firmly laid in youth, there will ever after be a weak spot in the foundation.” –Jefferson Davis
20. “Character is built out of circumstances. From exactly the same materials, one man builds palaces, while another builds hovels.” –George Henry Lewes
21. “There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.” –Elbert Green Hubbard
22. “Faith in the ability of a leader is of slight service unless it be united with faith in his justice.” –George Washington Goethels
23. “Administration not only has to be good but has also to be felt to be good by the people affected.” –Nehru
24. “Art is running away without ever leaving home.” –Twyla Tharp
25. “I’m tough, ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” –Madonna
26. “Some men are like a clock on the roof; they are useful only to the neighbors.” –Austin O’Malley
27. “People are so brainwashed by the rules that they don’t know what really matters.” –Mick Jagger
28. “The brain that doesn’t feed itself, eats itself.” –Gore Vidal
29. “On ships they call them barnacles; in business they attach themselves to desks and are called vice presidents.” –Fred Allen
30. “Few people do business well who do nothing else.” –Lord Chesterfield
31. “The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.” –George C. Scott
32. “No shirt is too young to be stuffed.” –Larry Zolf
33. “If ‘A’ is a success in life, then ‘A’ equals ‘X’ plus ‘Y’ plus ‘Z.’ Work is ‘X,’ ‘Y’ is play, and ‘Z’ is keeping your mouth shut.” –Einstein
34. “The less one thinks, the more one talks.” –Old French Proverb
35. “Let him that would move the world, first move himself.” –Socrates
36. “It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physicial; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.” –Plato
37. “The canary bird in the coal mine theory of the arts: artists should be treasured as alarm systems.” –Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
38. “The artist brings something into the world that didn’t exist before, and. . . he does it without destroying something else.” –John Updike
39. “First to know, then to act, then to really know.” –Bishop Hafifi
40. “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.” –Seneca
41. “When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.” –Lord Falkland
42. “The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.” –John Burroughs
43. “To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.” –Erich Fromm
44. “If we only knew the real value of a day.” –Joseph Farrell
45. “If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yap-town-on-the-Hudson, called a bureaucracy.” –O. Henry
46. “The aging process has got you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.” –Doug Larsen
47. “As a preventative to mental old age, a daily mile trot with your imagination cannot be equaled.” –Roy Giles
48. “The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee. And I pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.” –J.D. Rockefeller
49. “Mum reckoned that getting lost and finding your way were just different sides of the same coin. You couldn’t have one without the other.” Fynn, from Mister God, This Is Anna
50. “There are thoughts which are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the posture of the body, the soul is on its knees.” –Victor Hugo
We’re having a huge bonfire here tonight, and finally getting rid of the absolutely humongous pile of limbs and brush that’s been accumulating for YEARS. Come on over.
Seriously, stop by. We’re setting off Mentos Geysers, and it’s going to be, if you can stand one more quote. . . .
51. “Fierce!” — Christian Siriano
There will be food. And blueberry cobbler.
And probably rain. But we’ve had mighty and majestic bonfires in the rain before.
Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly