Quotation Saturday: An Attitude of Gratitude

Posted on by November 26, 2017
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Let’s all cultivate an attitude of gratitude and use it all the days of our lives.

Thanksgiving isn’t really just one day, you know.  It’s just the one day wherein we are all reminded that EVERY day is a day of thanksgiving in one way or another.

Some people consider this official Thanksgiving Day to be politically incorrect, but I think it’s all in one’s perspective.  Don’t think of this day in terms of clueless pilgrims  in buckled shoes and dull clothing – which is not correct, by the way; pilgrims were quite colorful in more ways than one – who didn’t know how to plant gardens and were starving to death out of sheer ignorance, and stereotypical Native Americans in loincloths who sighed, put down their scalping tomahawks, and taught the newcomers how to plant corn so they wouldn’t drop dead of starvation.  Think of this day as the symbolic Day of Gratitude.

Think back on your life; there was always something to be grateful for, even in the midst of horror, and there still is.  There always will be. Thanksgiving Day is a good time to be retrospective.

I hope we have all taught and encouraged our children to be grateful; few things are uglier than a person of any age who takes for granted all the blessings – small, medium, large, and XXlarge – that make up the pattern of our days.

A simple “thank you” can make or break us, sometimes.

Now, get out there and cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude.  It’s contagious, you know.

1. God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say “thank you?” –William A. Ward

2. Silent gratitude isn’t much use to anyone. –G.B. Stern

3. If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. –Meister Eckhart

4. There is no such thing as gratitude unexpressed. If it is unexpressed, it is plain, old-fashioned ingratitude. –Robert Braul

5. Gratitude is the memory of the heart. –Jean Baptiste Massieu

6. When we were children we were grateful to those who filled our stockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God for filling our stockings with legs? –G.K. Chesterton

7. The only people with whom you should try to get even are those who have helped you. –John E. Southard

8. If you have lived, take thankfully the past. –John Dryden

9. As each day comes to us refreshed and anew, so does my gratitude renew itself daily. The breaking of the sun over the horizon is my grateful heart dawning upon a blessed world. –Adabella Radici

10. I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. –G.K. Chesterton

11. You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. –G.K. Chesterton

12. If a fellow isn’t thankful for what he’s got, he isn’t likely to be thankful for what he’s going to get. –Frank A. Clark

13. The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings! –Henry Ward Beecher

14. Grace isn’t a little prayer you chant before receiving a meal. It’s a way to live. –Attributed to Jacqueline Winspear

15. Praise the bridge that carried you over. –George Colman

16. If you count all your assets, you always show a profit. –Robert Quillen

17. He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. –Epictetus

18. What a miserable thing life is: you’re living in clover, only the clover isn’t good enough. –Bertolt Brecht

19. Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.–Oprah Winfrey

20. Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou are not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.–William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

21. Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.–Brian Tracy

22. Eaten bread is forgotten.–Thomas Fuller

23. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.–William Arthur Ward

24. For today and its blessings, I owe the world an attitude of gratitude.–Clarence E. Hodges

25. For what I have received may the Lord make me truly thankful. And more truly for what I have not received.–Storm Jameson

26. Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.–Cicero

27. Gratitude is the memory of the heart.–Massieu

28. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.–Melody Beattie

29. Gratitude takes three forms: a feeling in the heart, an expression in words, and a giving in return.–John Wanamaker

30. Hem your blessings with thankfulness so they don’t unravel.–Anonymous

31. If one could only learn to appreciate the little things…
A song that takes you away, for there are those who cannot hear.
The beauty of a sunset, for there are those who cannot see.
The warmth and safety of your home, for there are those who are homeless.
Time spent with good friends for there are those who are lonely.
A walk along the beach for there are those who cannot walk.
The little things are what life is all about.
Search your soul and learn to appreciate.–Shadi Souferian

32. If you never learned the lesson of thankfulness, begin now. Sum up your mercies; see what provision God has made for your happiness, what opportunities for your usefulness, and what advantages for your success.–Ida S. Taylor

33. In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.–Albert Schweitzer

34. Keep a grateful journal. Every night, list five things that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is change our perspective of your day and your life.–Oprah Winfrey

35. No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.–Saint Ambrose

36. No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has emerged from the kingdom of night.–Elie Wiesel

37. None is more impoverished than the one who has no gratitude. Gratitude is a currency that we can mint for ourselves, and spend without fear of bankruptcy.–Fred De Witt Van Amburgh

38. Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving.–W. T. Purkiser

39. Of all the “attitudes” we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life-changing.–Zig Ziglar

40. One can never pay in gratitude; one can pay “in kind” somewhere else in life.–Anne Morrow Lindbergh

41. One of life’s gifts is that each of us, no matter how tired and downtrodden, finds reasons for thankfulness.–J. Robert Maskin

42. Part of growing up spiritually is learning to be grateful for all things, even our difficulties, disappointments, failures and humiliations.–Mike Aquilina

43. Pride slays thanksgiving, but an humble mind is the soil out of which thanks naturally grow. A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.–Henry Ward Beecher

44. Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has plenty; not on your past misfortunes of which all men have some.–Charles Dickens

45. Seeds of discouragement will not grow in the thankful heart.–Anonymous

46. A sensible thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in the Spirit of God. It prevails with Him unspeakably.–John Bunyan

47. Silent gratitude isn’t very much to anyone.–Gertrude B. Stein

48. So often we dwell on the things that seem impossible rather than on the things that are possible. So often we are depressed by what remains to be done and forget to be thankful for all that has been done.–Marian Wright Edelman

49. Somebody saw something in you once – and that is partly why you’re where you are today. Find a way to thank them.–Don Ward

50. Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,
The bee’s collected treasures sweet,
Sweet music’s melting full, but sweeter yet
The still small voice of gratitude.–Thomas Gray

51. There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way.–Jim Rohn

52. We give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.–Sacred ritual chant

53. When eating fruit, think of the person who planted the tree.–Vietnamese proverb

54. When we are grateful for the good we already have, we attract more good into our life. On the other hand, when we are ungrateful, we tend to shut ourselves off from the good we might otherwise experience.–Margaret Stortz

55. . . . .when we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present–love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature, and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure–the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience heaven on earth. –Sarah Ban Brethnach

56. Who does not thank for little will not thank for much.–Estonian Proverb

57. Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving. –W.T. Purkiser

58. We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. –Thornton Wilder

59. Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity: it must be produced and discharged and used up in order to exist at all. –William Faulkner

60. If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily. –Gerald Good

61. Gratitude is the least of the virtues, but ingratitude is the worst of vices. –Thomas Fuller

62. There is not a more pleasing exercise of the mind than gratitude. It is accompanied with such an inward satisfaction that the duty is sufficiently rewarded by the performance. –Joseph Addison

63. I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. –Benjamin Disraeli

64. There is no greater difference between men than between grateful and ungrateful people. –R.H. Blyth

65. Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart. –Henry Clay

66. A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all the other virtues. — Marcus Tullius Cicero quotes

67. Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed. — Mark Twain

68. The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Abraham Lincoln

69. Each day offers us the gift of being a special occasion if we can simply learn that as well as giving, it is blessed to receive with grace and a grateful heart. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

70. Thank you, God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. — Garrison Keillor

71. But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. Thomas Jefferson quotes

72. Who does not thank for little will not thank for much. –Estonian Proverb

73. Thou hast given so much to me,
Give one thing more, – a grateful heart;
Not thankful when it pleaseth me,
As if Thy blessings had spare days,
But such a heart whose pulse may be Thy praise.
— George Herbert

74. The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings. — Eric Hoffer

75. Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul. — Henry Ward Beecher

76. When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? –George Canning

77. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. –John Fitzgerald Kennedy

78. We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude. –Cynthia Ozick

79. Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things. –Horace

80. The grateful person, being still the most severe exacter of himself, not only confesses, but proclaims, his debts. — Robert South

81. Grow flowers of gratitude in the soil of prayer. –Verbena Woods

82. Gratitude is merely the secret hope of further favors. — François Duc de La Rochefoucauld

83. Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. — Aldous Huxley

84. When eating bamboo sprouts, remember the man who planted them. –Chinese Proverb

85. Thanks are justly due for boons unbought. –Ovid

86. In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. — H.L. Mencken

87. Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. — William Arthur Ward

88. Keep your eyes open to your mercies. The man who forgets to be thankful has fallen asleep in life. –Robert Louis Stevenson

89. To educate yourself for the feeling of gratitude means to take nothing for granted, but to always seek out and value the kind that will stand behind the action. Nothing that is done for you is a matter of course. Everything originates in a will for the good, which is directed at you. Train yourself never to put off the word or action for the expression of gratitude. — Albert Schweitzer

90. Gratitude is riches. Complaint is poverty. — Doris Day

91. Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines. — Leroy (Satchel) Paige

92. Appreciation can make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. — Margaret Cousins

93. Kindness trumps greed: it asks for sharing. Kindness trumps fear: it calls forth gratefulness and love. Kindness trumps even stupidity, for with sharing and love, one learns. — Marc Estrin

94. There is as much greatness of mind in acknowledging a good turn, as in doing it. — Seneca

95. What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving? –Erma Bombeck

96. Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action. –W.J. Cameron

97. Thanksgiving was never meant to be shut up in a single day. — Robert Caspar Lintner

98. Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds. –Theodore Roosevelt

99. It is literally true, as the thankless say, that they have nothing to be thankful for. He who sits by the fire, thankless for the fire, is just as if he had no fire. Nothing is possessed save in appreciation, of which thankfulness is the indispensable ingredient. But a thankful heart hath a continual feast. — W.J. Cameron

100. In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. — Albert Schweitzer

You’re welcome.

Quotation Saturday: Cats

Posted on by October 22, 2017
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quotation saturday, mamacita's blog, jane goodwin

Every Saturday: Quotations to feed your soul. This week: cats.

Mamacita says: I love cats. They are essential to my happiness. Such small, soft, dainty, playful little creatures, and yet they control the workings of the universe and rule over all they encounter, often when we don’t even realize what’s happening. Besides, could there be anything more relaxing and pleasant than having a trusting, loudly purring little cat on your chest or beside you, at the end of a long, difficult day?  Or at the beginning of the day?  Or in the middle of the day?  People with no sense of humor will not understand a cat, of course; humor requires intellect, and cats require humor.  They also require a soul, and if there is no sense of humor, there is no soul.  Argue with me.  I dare you.  Bring it on.  Double dare.

1. I love my cats because I enjoy my home, and little by little, they become its catsvisible soul. –Jean Cocteau

2. The smallest feline is a masterpiece. –Leonardo da Vinci

3. Cats don’t like change without their consent. –Roger A. Caras

4. Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds. –Jean Burden

5. Cats are rather delicate creatures, and they are subject to a good many different ailments, but I never heard of one who suffered from insomnia. –Joseph Wood Krutch

6. If you want to know the character of a man, find out what his cat thinks of him. –Anonymous

7. If I called her she would pretend not to hear, but would come a few minutes later when it could appear that she had thought of doing so first. –Arthur Weigall

8. Even the stupidest cat seems to know more than any dog. –Eleanor Clark

Computer cat is smart!

9. My cats are compromised. I do not entirely trust them – they may be spies, like dolphins, reporting to some unknown authority. –Jan Morris

10. They say the test of literary power is whether a man can write an inscription. I say, “Can he name a kitten?” –Samuel Butler

11. The little furry buggers are just deep, deep wells you throw all your emotions into. -Bruce Schimmel

12. The cat has too much spirit to have no heart. –Ernest Menault

13. It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can’t see. –Eleanor Farjeon

14. If we treated every9one we meet with the same affection we bestow upon our favorite cat, they, too, would purr. –Martin Buxbaum

15. I wonder what goes through his mind when he sees us peeing in his water bowl. –Penny Ward Moser

Cats and their food & water bowls.

16. If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence. –Will Cuppy

17. By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog. –Barbara Holland

18. To err is human, to purr is feline. –Robert Byrne

19. The cat lets Man support her. But unlike the dog, she is no handlicker. Furthermore, unlike Man’s other great good friend, the horse, the cat is no sweating serf of Man. The only labor she condescends to perform is to catch mice and rats, and that’s fun. –Vance Packard

20. Cats have intercepted my footsteps at the ankle for so long that my gait, both at home and on tour, has been compared to that of a man wading through low surf. –Roy Blount, Jr.

21. A child is a person who can’t understand why someone would give away a perfectly good kitten. –Doug Larsen

22. Purring would seem to be, in her case, an automatic safety-valve device for dealing with happiness overflow. –Monica Edwards

23. Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. –Jeff Valdez

24. A meow massages the heart. –Stuart McMillan

25. With the qualities of cleanliness, discretion, affection, patience, dignity, and courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of being cats? –Fernant Mery

26. When I play with my cat who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? –Michel de Montaigne

27. Cats can be very funny, and have the oddest ways of showing they’re glad to see you. Rudimace always peed in our shoes. –W.H. Auden

28. There is no more intrepid explorer than a kitten. –Jules Champfleury

29. Cats always know whether people like or dislike them. they do not always care enough to do anything about it. –Winifred Carriere

30. Always the cat remains a little beyond the limits we try to set for him in our blind folly. –Andre Norton

31. No matter how tired or wretched I am, a pussycat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind. –Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

32. Balanchine has trained his cat to perform brilliant jetes and tours en L’air; he says that at last he has a body worth choreographing for. –Bernard Taper

33. Cats, like women, should be respected as individuals rather than admired as decoration, but there’s no harm, given a choice, in taking up with a strikingly attractive specimen of either. –Barbara Holland

34. God made the cat in order that man might have the pleasure of caressing the tiger. –Fernand Mery

35. Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance. –Dan Greenburg

36. If cats could talk, they wouldn’t. –Nan Porter

37. Way down deep, we’re all motivated by the same urges. Cats have the courage to live by them. –Jim Davis

38. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs. –Desmond Morris

39. Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this because of all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren’t like this. a dog’s idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish. –James Gorman

40. When it comes to the advantages of cats versus dogs as pets, there is no competition. Try going away for a weekend, leaving your German Shepherd alone with a bowl of dry food, some water, and a litter box. –Robert Stearns

41. Cat hate reflects an ugly, stupid, loutish, bigoted spirit. –William S. Burroughs

42. I’ve met many thinkers and many cats, but the wisdom of cats is infinitely superior. –Hippolyte Taine

43. A cat is there when you call her – if she doesn’t have something better to do. –Bill Adler

44. An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old. –Carl Van Vechten

45. Everything that moves, serves to interest and amuse a cat. He is convinced that nature is busying herself with his diversion; he can conceive of no other purpose in the universe. –F.A. Paradis de Moncrif

46. No animals should ever jump upon the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in the conversation. –Fran Lebowitz

47. Did St. Francis really preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats. –Rebecca West

48. No amount of time can erase the memory of a good cat, and no amount of cats5masking tape can ever toally remove his fur from your couch. –Leo Dworken

49. The playful kitten, with its pretty little tigerish gambols, is infinitely more amusing than half the people one is obliged to live with in the world. –Lady Sydney Morgan

 

50. Most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked about the house with a saintly expression. –Beverly Nichols

51. My cat does not talk as respectfully to me as I do to her. –Colette

52. Every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. –E.V. Lucas

53. Cleanliness in the cat world is usually a virtue put above godliness. –Carl Van Vechten

54. Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling. –Helen Powers

55. No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. –Abraham Lincoln

56. A home without a cat – and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat – may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove its title? –mark Twain

57. Cats don’t bark and act brave when they see something small in fur or feathers, they kill it. Dogs tend to bravado. They’re braggarts. In the great evolutionary drama the dog is Sergeant Bilko, the cat is Rambo. –James Gorman

58. There is something about the presence of a cat. . . that seems to take the bite out of being alone. –Louis J. Camuti, DVM

59. Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want. –Joseph Wood Krutch

60. At dinner time he would sit in a corner, concentrating, and suddely they would say, “Time to feed the cat,’ as if it were their own idea. –Lilian Jackson Braun

61. The cat does not offer services. The cat offers itself. Of course he wants care and shelter. You don’t buy love for nothing. Like all pure creatures, cats are practical. –William S. Burroughs

62. Meow is like aloha – it can mean anything. –Hank Ketchum

63. No tame animal has lost less of its dignity or maintained more of its ancient reserve. The domestic cat might rebel tomorrow. –William Conway

64. Living with a cat is like being married to a career woman who can take domesticity or let it alone, so you’d better be nice to her. –Margaret Cooper Gay

65. I will always remember the olive-eyed tabby who taught me that not all relationships are meant to last a lifetime. Sometimes just an hour is enough to touch your heart. –Barbara L. Diamond

66. Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. –Garrison Keillor

67. If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but deteriorate the cat. –Mark Twain

68. If a dog jumps up into your lap, it is because he is fond of you, but if a cat does the same thing, it is because your lap is warmer. –Alfred North Whitehead

69. I have found my love of cats most helpful in understanding women. –John Simon

70. Unlike us, cats never outgrow their delight in cat capacities, nor do they settle finally for limitations. Cats, I think, live out their lives fulfilling their expectations. –Irving Townsend

71. Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow. –George F. Will

72. A house without either a cat or a dog is the house of a scoundrel. –Portuguese Proverb

73. Refined and delicate natures understand the cat. Women, poets, and artists hold it in great esteem, for they recognize the exquisite delicacy of its nervous system; indeed, only coarse natures fail to discern the natural distinction of the animal. –Jules Champfleury

74. A man has to work so hard so that something of his personality stays alive. A tomcat has it so easy; he has only to spray and his presence is there for years on rainy days. –Albert Einstein

75. Dogs eat. Cats dine. –Ann Taylor

76. If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats. –Aldous Huxley

77. Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well. –Missy Dizick

78. Cats are living adornments. –Edwin Lent

79. There’s no need for a piece of sculpture in a home that has a cat. –Wesley Bates

80. There are few things in life more heartwarming than to be welcomed by a cat. –Tay Hohoff

81. There are two means of refuge from the misery of life – music and cats. –Albert Schweitzer

82. The cat could very well be man’s best friend but would never stoop to admitting it. –Doug Larson

83. After scolding one’s cat one looks into its face and is seized by the ugly suspicion that it understood every word. And has filed it for reference. –Charlotte Gray

84. A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings. –William Ralph Inge

85. The reason cats climb is so that they can look down on almost every other animal – it’s also the reason they hate birds. –K.C. Buffington

86. A cat is an example of sophistication minus civilization. –Author Unknown

87. I believe cats to be spirits come to earth. A cat, I am sure, could walk on a cloud without coming through. –Jules Verne

88. I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat. –Edgar Allan Poe

89. Are we really sure the purring is coming from the kitty and not from our very own hearts? –Emme Woodhull-Bäche

90. The cat is the only animal which accepts the comforts but rejects the bondage of domesticity. –Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon

91. The cat is domestic only as far as suits its own ends. –Saki

92. You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat. –Albert Einstein

93. When your kitty purrs to you, doesn’t it break your heart that you can’t purr back? –Candea Core-Starke

94. There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. –Dan Greenberg

95. Cats can be cooperative when something feels good, which, to a cat, is the way everything is supposed to feel as much of the time as possible. –Roger Caras

96. People meeting for the first time suddenly relax if they find they both have cats. And plunge into anecdote. –Charlotte Gray

97. Cats never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic. –Lillian Jackson Braun

98. When a cat chooses to be friendly, it’s a big deal, because a cat is picky. –Mike Deupree

99. If purring could be encapsulated, it’d be the most powerful anti-depressant on the pharmaceutical market. –Alexis F. Hope

100. I put down my book, The Meaning of Zen, and see the cat smiling into her fur as she delicately combs it with her rough pink tongue. “Cat, I would lend you this book to study but it appears you have already read it.” She looks up and gives me her full gaze. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she purrs, “I wrote it.” –Dilys Lang

I’ll stop now, not because I can’t think of any more, but because if I don’t stop now, I never will.

Histories: RUN AWAY!

Posted on by October 17, 2017
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Mamacita says:  I tell my students that words have histories, just as people do, and, just like people, some words have more complicated and even interesting and often disturbing histories than others.

We all have a history.

Our histories shape us, but sometimes the shaping is painful and unwelcome. I want my students to understand that they do not have to allow other people to shape them in uncomfortable and unwelcome ways. I want my students to know that nobody has a right to any part of them without explicit permission. Nobody. And I want my students to know that being a “tattletale” is sometimes the best thing to be, even though society tells us otherwise. Oh, and by “students,” what I mean is you. And me. All of us.

Stand tall, hit back, tattle, and name names.Don’t let anybody convince you that you don’t have the right to do so, or that nobody will believe you or listen. Somebody out there will. Keep telling until you find that person. Don’t let anybody talk you out of reporting it. People will try to scare you into silence. Speak out. Those who put that person above you are not people you want or need in your life. Run away from them. “Run away! Run away!”

Run away.

Even if it’s someone in your family.  Even if it’s a teacher, or classmate, or best friend, or sibling.  No matter who it is who’s touching you, run away.

As far away as you can get.

Quotation Saturday: The Arts

Posted on by October 15, 2017
10

The Trump hat: clearly a work of art

Mamacita says:  Ah, the Arts.  Without them, we’d all spend our money on Flintstone mudflaps, gas station black velvet Elvises, Billy Ray Cyrus, Duck Dynasty fashion, Melania Trump anything, Donald Trump baseball hats, and anything with Lindsey Lohan, and think THAT was art.  Sadly, some people think so now.  (Be still, my achy breaky heart. . . .)

1.  Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands – and all you have to do is scratch it.  –Thomas Beecham (to a cellist)

2.  Pavarotti is not vain, but conscious of being unique.  –Peter Ustinov

3.  Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.  –Gioacchino Rossini

4.  Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock.  After it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20.  –David Randolph

5.  All music is folk music.  I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song.  –Louis Armstrong

6.  Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.  –H.L. Mencken

7.  It is a pity that the composer did not leave directions as to how flat he really did want it sung.  –Anon.

8.  Mine was the kind of piece in which nobody knew what was going on, including the composer, the conductor and the critics.  Consequently I got pretty good notices.  -Oscar Levant

9.  Most rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.  –Frank Zappa

10.  “Classic.”  A book which people praise and don’t read.  –Mark Twain

11.  There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.  –G.K. Chesterton

12.  He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.  –Joseph Heller

13.  I don’t care what is written about me as long as it isn’t true.  –Dorothy Parker

14.  Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children.  Life is the other way round.  –David Lodge

15.  I’ve read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.  –John Barrymore

16.  When I want to read a novel, I write one.  –Benjamin Disraeli

17.  Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.  –Raymond Chandler

18.  Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.  –Jeffrey Robinson

19.  Yeats is becoming so aristocratic, he’s evicting imaginary tenants.  –Oliver St. John Gogarty

20.  What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?  –Gore Vidal

21  An incinerator is a writer’s best friend.  –Thornton Wilder

22.  I’ve just read that I am dead.  Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.  –Rudyard Kipling (writing to a magazine that had published his obituary a little too soon)

23.  Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.  –Stephen Hawking

24.  I am the most spontaneous speaker in the world because every word, every gesture, and every retort has been carefully rehearsed.  –George Bernard Shaw

25.  It is all very well to be able to write books, but can you waggle your ears?  –J.M. Barrie (to H.G. Wells)

26.  The covers of this book are too far apart.  –Ambrose Bierce

27.  The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid stable business.  –John Steinbeck

28.  He directed rehearsals with all the airy deftness of a rheumatic deacon producing Macbeth for a church social.  –Noel Coward

29.  From the moment I picked your book up until the moment I put it down I couold not stop loaughing.  Someday I hope to read it.  –Groucho Marx

30.  An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.  -Benjamin Disraeli

31.  I have been commissioned to write an autobiography and I would be grateful to any of your readers who could tel me what I was doing between 1960 and 1974.  –Jeffrey Bernard

32.  I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or to do in half a dozen lifetimes.  –J.B. Priestley

33.  They told me how Mr. Gladstone read Homer for fun, which I thought served him right.  –Winston Churchill

34.  The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog’s tail.  –W. Somerset Maugham

35.  The Compleat Angler is acknowledged to be one of the world’s books.  Only the trouble is that the world doesn’t read its books; it borrows a detective story instead.  –Stephen Leacock

36.  If you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism.  If you steal form many, it’s research.  –Wilson Mizner

37.  Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction.  –Adlai Stevenson

38.  My favorite poem is the one that starts “thirty days hath September” because it actually tells you something.  –Groucho Marx

39.  There are only two styles of portrait painting:  the serious and the smirk.  –Charles Dickens

40.  Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing.  –Ralph Richardson

41.  The play was a great success, but the audience was a total failure.  –Oscar Wilde

42.  She took her curtain calls as though she had just been un-nailed from the cross.  –Noel Coward (of Edith Evans)

43.  We are paid to have dirty minds.  –John Trevelyan  (film censor)

44.  Shoot a few scenes out of focus.  I want to win the foreign film award.  –Billy Wilder

45.  There was laughter in the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there.  –George S. Kaufman

46.  Try the cock, Albert.  It’s a delicacy, and you know where it’s been.  –Helen Mirren, at dinner in The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

47.  I grew up with six brothers.  That’s how I learned to dance – waiting for the bathroom.  –Bob Hope

48.  I didn’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions – the curtain was up.  –Groucho Marx

49.  A wide screen just makes a bad film twice as bad.  –Sam Goldwyn

50.  Days off.  –Spencer Tracy, when asked what he looked for in a film script.

Old-School Blogger Here

Posted on by October 8, 2017
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Mamacita says:  Old school?  Me?  Yes. Thirteen years ago, in April of 2004, a former student told me that I should start a blog.  “You’ve got such a lot to say about the world,” he said.  “Who cares what I think about the world?” I replied. “Lots of people would,” he said.

blogger

I couldn’t imagine that.  I’m nobody.  However, Wes was an exceptionally wise person even back then, so in early May of 2004, Scheiss Weekly was born.   I still wondered if he was right. I was still nobody, and I still wondered if anything I had to say would be considered even remotely interesting to anybody else.

Since then, I’ve been to conferences all over the country, and spoken to crowds of people, both individually and on panels.  People seem to recognize me even before they see my name tag.  People tell me that such-and-such a post helped/spoke to them/influenced them, etc.  It’s really, really humbling.  And exciting.  And humbling. Who would have thought it?  Me, with a large readership and people who seemed to like me and take me seriously?  It’s like a dream.  The good kind, that comes true because you never dreamed it would be possible but it really did and you’re in shock and awe and Oz and Wonderland.  And Narnia and Hogwarts.  And the Tardis. And all the people who live in those places. And hanging out with people who knows what those places are, and who know who lives there.

Businesses found this blog, and liked my style.  Um, my writing style.  (My fashion style is liked by nobody, not even me, but I digress. . . .) (Oh, okay, I have no fashion style.  But I am one hell of a writer, and I know this social media stuff inside and out.  And I am good.)

People hired me, based on this blog, to represent their businesses online.  I love doing this, and I appreciate that trust more than words could ever express.  The clients I have now have become friends, and I would lie down in the road for them.  I use their goods and services and ideas myself, and everything I write about them is true.  But I digress again. . . .

Blogging is not dead.  It’s still alive.  It’s alive, and well, and thriving, and still as cool as it was in May of 2004.  It’s still a wondrous journey, and although I have no idea what the final destination might be, it’s the journey that’s the real experience, whether we’re headed to Disney World or Shoe World or Kroger’s or the moon or parts unknown.

I’ve met so many wonderful people during this journey.  Some of them are still virtual friends, while I’ve met many face-to-face, but I’ve also learned during these thirteen years that online friends can be as real as face-to-face friends.  Sure, there are creeps out there, but no more so than the number of creeps at the mall.

good and bad people online

I’ve learned not to be afraid of the world.  The world is actually pretty awesome, and it’s full of cool things and fantastic people.  Sure, there are fiery volcanic pits and treacherous waterfalls and cockroaches and tidal waves and tornadoes and school superintendents and vicious psychotic murderers and insane reality show morons who somehow become president and distracted underinsured drivers and fake friends who stab you in the back and people who lie, cheat, & steal, but there are also rainbows and sunsets and flowers and purring cats and awesome mothers and lifesaving dogs and Monk and clean sheets and cousins and people who are good, true friends.  The forever kind.  I have also learned, to my intense sorrow, that issues can cause some people to renounce friendship.  I would never do that to a friend, but I know now that there are people who do.

That I would still be here thirteen years after beginning this funky little blog is amazing to me, and yet, it’s also unthinkable to abandon it, as many are abandoning blogging for the shorter Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.  Oh, I’m on those, too, but this blog saved my soul alive thirteen years ago, and it’s done nothing but nourish me ever since. I am so grateful to the internet.  Really, I am.  It’s a world of wonderful people, a world that was always there, but we had no way of accessing it easily.  Now, we can travel anywhere, see anything, contact anyone, and work for a business that’s a thousand miles away, in our pajamas, at midnight.  We participate in the lives of people we could never have known before.  We watch their children grow up.  We know what they like best to eat.  We see pictures of their homes.  And they know us.

Thirteen years I’ve known this.  Before that, I was limited to a very small area, geographically and socially.  Now, there are no limits.

Thank you, dear readers, for making me feel special.  Thirteen years is as an eternity in the internet Hourglassworld, but somehow I don’t feel old when I’m here.  I’m happy when I’m on Scheiss Weekly.  I’m happy reading your comments.  I love visiting YOUR blogs. I love visiting with you on the other social media sites, too, but I don’t think anything could ever completely replace a blog.  In thirteen more years, I guess we’ll find out.

Also, I wonder if you really understand the title of this blog.  Scheiss Weekly.  Who speaks German? C’mon.  I tried to get Scheiss Daily, but somebody already owned it.  When I started writing here, I chose the title because it seemed like a pretty accurate and humorous description of what I did for a living: teaching in a public school.

That was in late April.  In early May, I wasn’t doing that any more.  For no fault of my own, I wasn’t doing that any more.

I was traumatized when I began this blog, and that is not an exaggeration. Thirteen years ago, I was traumatized, and I had been betrayed by people I had trusted, and my heart was broken and I was foundering, and the title reflected that.  I’m fine now, but the title keeps me humble.  And fairly sane, although my children might argue that fact.

Time marches on.  Time flies.  And yet, it really doesn’t.  Time stands still.  We march. With every blink of the eye, yes, and briefer even than that, our lives are moving ever swiftly towards their ends. It’s this middle that we must make the most of.  I am.  I hope you are, too.

Time flies

Here’s to thirteen more years.  At a time, anyway. A day at a time, and they add up to years.

I love you all.  Literally.

Politics and Me: The Opposite of a Love Story

Posted on by October 2, 2017
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Mamacita says:  I would really so much rather be known as a kind person, an educator, a nerdy science-y person, a person who loves people, and I believe that I am, as much as possible. I try, anyway. However, when it comes to politics, which I never used to concern myself about in the least – and that is not something I am proud of – I seem to be overcome by a need to try to get people to see the truth of what the beast in the White House genuinely is, to see what being undereducated and uninformed has done to us as a nation and as a now-ridiculed world power. One outweighs the other and as much as I try to stay out of it, I’m in. I still have many dear friends who are supporters of the current White House, but try as they will, they can’t seem to defend “it” without a comparison/contrast/mention of Clinton. They have no way of defending one except by putting down the other. If a president cannot be extolled or defended on his own prowess, what is he?

It’s more than important that people understand this. Please, my dears, think. Think without using the names of other people.

Think about this only in terms of that one person, the one with a tiny pudgy finger hovering over a red button. Leaving out all mention or consideration of anyone else, think. This is the educator and people-loving part of me beseeching you: think…