Sometimes in life you have an appointment with destiny and sometimes you just have to get destiny to squeeze you in.
Usually the woman has an appointment with destiny and the man just happens to be there.
The hardest thing to accept as a parent is that you cannot apply the bandage before the bruise.
An art critic is someone who appreciates art except for any particular piece of art.
One learns to ignore criticism by first learning to ignore applause.
An aphorism is a single sentence that totally exhausts its subject.
The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say "in other words....
Some say that true love is a mirage; seek it anyway for all else is surely desert.
One is more apt to become wise by doing fool things than by reading wise sayings.
Few can accept happiness if it means change. We want the life we have now only happier.
We are each of us born into the arms of mortality the Lord recognizing our need to be held.
Ever wonder what crime you committed that you are confined to a small enclosure above your sinuses under permanent skull arrest?
To accept reality is only to encourage it.
Life becomes easier when learn to accept the apology you never got.
To accept on faith is the basic requirement for getting on with life.
Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules; it is a compact between people who wish to understand each other.
Sometimes the shortest distance between two points is a winding path walked arm in arm.
Perchance God will pity a race that sought the better angels of its nature and found only its lesser demons.
Yes I believe in guardian angels because otherwise I must believe that life is a string of death-defying miracles - and I don't believe in miracles.
I guess I have never really doubted that we are all born to our guardian angel.
It comes down to whether you believe in seven miraculous escapes a week or one guardian angel.
It is a perversely human perception that animals in their native habitat are running wild.
Leash: n a means by which animals formerly running wild are prevented from running tame also.
What if man were required to educate his children without the help of talking animals.
Man in his sensitivity does not give names to animals he intends to eat but goes on giving names to children he intends to send to war.
If animals could talk the world would lose its best listeners.
Be it human or animal touch is a life-giving thing. Has anyone ever had a stroke or a heart attack while cozied up with a pet? I doubt it.
I believe in animal rights and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand.
Sometimes two people need to step apart and make a space between that each might see the other anew in a glance across a room or silhouetted against the moon.
Since the majority is always wrong might we try one election day where all the losers take office?
At the end of the day Mother Nature has only one question for us: 'What life did you nurture today?
No matter how you hurry you will notice at the end of the day that you traveled at the speed of time.
What is the fire in our belly but the eternal flame of a thousand ancestors.
Anything we tell our kids about life is a placemarker until they figure it out for themselves.
Nothing in life means anything unless someone cares and the whole trick is to keep being that someone.
Occasionally ask "What is the connection between what I want most in life and anything I plan to do today?
Once an absurdity is accepted as truth it will seem truer the more absurd it is shown to be.
The trouble with not being into social networking is that people think you're anti-social when you're only anti-networking.
In the end the reason for anything is inseparable from the reason for everything.
It helps if you don't see it as traffic but rather as thousands of individuals resolved to press on another day.
I nod to a passing stranger and the stranger nods back and two human beings go off feeling a little less anonymous.
There is a purpose to our lives that each day tugs at our sleeve as an annoying distraction.
It's annoying to be disapproved of by people who know only half the story especially when you're not sure which half they know.
If I choose abstraction over reality it is because I consider it the lesser chaos.
If I had it to do again I'd ask more questions and interrupt fewer answers.
God answers first the prayers we should have prayed.
Never act until you have clearly answered the question: "What happens if I do nothing?
If you keep rephrasing the question it gradually becomes the answer.
Abstract art is a fundamental distrust of the theory of reality concocted by the eyes.
From an aunt long ago: "Death has come for me many times but finds me always in my lovely garden and leaves me there I think as an excuse to return.
Mom - the person most likely to write an autobiography and never mention herself.
Art is an attempt to understand yielding pleasure in the attempt whether or not we understand.
Blogs seem to have two magnetic poles one attracting friends the other repulsing relatives.
If you've never experienced the joy of accomplishing more than you can imagine plant a garden.
More good has been accomplished by simple people seeking their own honest ends than by all the philanthropists in history.
There is nothing in this world you cannot accomplish if you are willing to forfeit your deposit.
There is no tomorrow. There is only a planet turning on its axis and a creature given to optimistic fancies.
You live long enough in a world spinning on its axis you learn to spin in the same direction.
Love is a condition where the world seems to be standing still and it's you who are spinning on your axis.
The artist's talent sits uneasy as an object of public acclaim having been so long an object of private despair.
According to science the universe began as a swirl of gas that as it cooled spun off the Ten Commandments.
You don't realize how little accuracy there is in network TV reporting until they cover a story in your hometown.
To the artist the Book of Genesis is an account of six days in which God suggested some really good ideas.
It is the abiding faith of mortals that mortality is a temporary condition.
Hamlet at 70: "To sleep perchance to dream. To awaken perchance to go to the bathroom.
You can awaken each day to obligations you never chose "? or you can decide now to choose them.
My eyesight's gone my reflexes are shot and I can't stay awake but thank God I can still drive.
Those who avoid the tough choices of life live a life they never chose.
What we have earned by the sweat of our brow we defend with pride. What we have gained by the accident of birth we guard with prejudice.
If there be no God then what is truth but the average of all lies.
A blogger is an average person who happens to have a need to count his friends every half hour.
The average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.
Sometimes I sit up late with my thoughts reluctant to fall asleep and leave my thoughts alone by themselves.
Whatever you put aside to seek happiness remember where you put it.
As I may or may not say to the Lord on Judgment Day "You ask a lot of questions for someone who has so much explaining to do
Every day ask yourself "What would I do today if I were a better person?
What good is love if you never ask anything of it?
Making a different mistake every day is not only acceptable it is the definition of progress.
There is in art the notion of less is more which is to say you don't torture a painting that has already confessed.
You start making progress in life when you realize that you don't always have to resume where you left off.
An art critic is someone who hopes to see his ideas translated to canvas without having to learn how to paint.
Every great artist raises art to a science and every great scientist raises science to an art hence we have Michelangelo's David and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
The first assumption of an art critic is that the artist meant to paint something else.
Love is the greatest touch-up artist of all.
Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone's feelings and man will have invented artificial intelligence.
You can accept reality or you can persist in your purpose until reality accepts you.
What you must accept as a parent is that you cannot always be there for your child without sometimes ruining everything.
I would love to go back and travel the road not taken if I knew at the end of it I'd find the same set of grandkids.
There is an ongoing battle between conscience and self-interest in which at some point we have to take sides.
The difference between education and know-how is that one you pay for the other you charge for.
Massage is the only form of physical pleasure to which nature forgot to attach consequences.
Never ask "What reason do I have to be happy?" Instead ask "To what purpose can I attach my happiness?
Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.
Always keep your home presentable assuming you keep a home for purposes of presentation.
Often it's just a short swim from the shipwreck of your life to the island paradise of your dreams assuming you don't drown in the metaphor.
Just once it might be instructive to pretend you're accepting an award for failure just to see who you would thank.
So often the end of a love affair is death by a thousand cuts so often its survival is life by a thousand stitches.
Each day learn something new and just as important relearn something old.
The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions.
The advantage of growing up with siblings is that you become very good at fractions.
We gain no easier advantage than by relentlessly pursuing our goal while others pursue an advantage.
Count no day lost in which you waited your turn took only your share and sought advantage over no one.
I find in old age that it's possible to revisit the past the one requirement being that you come as you are.
Never use the passing years as an excuse for old age.
The experience I gained at age 21 would be useful if I were ever 21 again. But I'm 71 and new at it and keep making age 71 mistakes.
U.S. Internal Revenue Service: an agency modeled after the revenue raising concepts of the 19th century economist Jesse James.
Love is not about grand intentions. It is about small attentions.
A vacation trip is one-third pleasure fondly remembered and two-thirds aggravation entirely forgotten.
Never mind the odds against you. If you doubled your effort what would the odds against you do "? send for reinforcements?
A good marriage is each for the other and two against the world.
People are resilient. After all every person born has recovered from nine months on life support.
After a lifetime of deep thought I've decided that life is a distraction but probably not from anything important.
Nothing reduces the odds against you like ignoring them.
In this the late afternoon of my life I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me?
Say what you want about aging it's still the only way to have old friends.
While I find that I can keep my nose out of other people's business I do have a curiosity as to their non-business activities.
There comes a time when a man and woman realize that their separate schemes can be better achieved as a conspiracy.
It's not that perfection cannot be achieved. It's that it's so hard to stop there.
How do you achieve success? Well for one thing you don't define it before you achieve it.
The great enemy of achievement is a schedule already full.
Know thyself or at least keep renewing the acquaintance.
No matter what it is if you aren't happy striving for it you won't be happy achieving it.
Wealth and wisdom are seldom combined for the person who achieves one no longer desires the other.
Do what you must And your friends will adjust.
There was never a wise saying that couldn't be made wiser by adding the words "and vice-versa.
Learning is a lifetime process but there comes a time when we must stop adding and start updating.
Why try to be someone you're not? Life is hard enough without adding impersonation to the skills required.
Be thoughtful of others and you will not be shy for they are incompatible addictions.
There is no actual law that says that a person of inner beauty cannot also maintain an appearance.
The trouble with always leaving yourself a way out is that you always take it.
See yourself always as cause and perhaps a better world will be found among your effects.
Present yourself always As who you would be And that is the person The world will see.
Death is just another stage of life although the one you kind of hope comes last.
Always telling the truth is no doubt better than always lying although equally pathological.
Road rage is the expression of the amateur sociopath in all of us cured by running into a professional.
It pleases me to take amateur photographs of my garden and it pleases my garden to make my photographs look professional.
Am I keeping my promises?
Always when judging Who people are Remember to footnote The words "So far.
All any child needs is the protection of loving parents and an alternative source of information.
I like friends who when you tell them you need a moment alone know enough not to stray too far.
You spend the first two-thirds of your life asking to be left alone and the last third not having to ask.
If God had intended us to be alone there would be more pleasure in massaging our own shoulders.
Be happy and a reason will come along.
I regret less the road not taken than my all-fired hurry along the road I took.
The painter puts brush to canvas and the poet puts pen to paper. The poet has the easier task for his pen does not alter his rhyme.
Life is too short to hold a grudge also too long.
Wherever a mom goes a prayer has been already there.
Seize every opportunity along the way for how sad it would be if the road you chose became the road not taken.
Our destiny hides among our free choices disguised as the free-est of all.
Among life's regrets is all the time wasted being early for everything.
A true sportsman is a hunter lost in the woods and out of ammo.
There are many things I do for amusement but for happiness I like to gather up my memories and go for a walk in the rain.
A man sometimes wins an argument but a woman always wins a silence.
Learn to listen. It's amazing the ideas that pop into your head while people are saying them into your ear.
Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love.
Sometimes perhaps we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of.
Alas by the time Fate caught up with my life Chance had it all planned.
You can spend too much time wondering which of identical twins is the more alike.
The trick to getting ahead is to give it the same effort you give to getting even.
Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp said Browning and so it has - extended by the length of an artist's brush.
Ah the things we would do if we could "? especially in the secure knowledge that we can't.
Ah yes my social life "? a series of encounters where we briefly debate who is in the greater rush.
As important as shared memories is the silent agreement that certain things never happened.
Most often walking alone with my shadow is how I find my answer the result of gathering together all agreeable parties.
Lovers needn't always agree anymore than poetry need always rhyme.
It's a nasty divorce when they can't agree on how to divvy up the His and Hers towels.
I guess when you get down to it a loving touch compensates for an unskilled hand about everywhere except in an airplane cockpit.
We all know them "? the unstructured person whose every action seems aimless and the totally organized person whose every action defeats some purpose.
If you allow people to treat you like a doormat they will expect you to say WELCOME.
To truly forgive is to allow the other person to forget.
If you ruled out partial successes there would be no progress at all.
Being loved by all is little fun Unless you're also loved by one.
Now and then it's good to list all the things you regularly do for which there was once a good reason.
God is not only all-knowing but all-not-telling.
Man is rated the highest animal at least among all animals who returned the questionnaire.
There is in all animals a sense of duty that man condescends to call instinct.
Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it.
The road to success is not a path you find but a trail you blaze.
Try to discover The road to success And you'll seek but never find But blaze your own path And the road to success Will trail right behind.
At some point you must decide if you want to succeed or just be someone who was never to blame for anything going wrong.
Eventually the person who tries to fix the problem will be blamed for causing it.
We lack resolve and blame fate mistaking the drift for the tides.
The most valuable lesson man has learned from his dog is to kick a few blades of grass over it and move on.
Through the blackest night morning gently tiptoes feeling its way to dawn.
Overheard in a Washington D.C. church confessional: "Bless me Father for sins have been committed.
Love may be blind but if you've ever known a blind person they still know where everything is.
Every day I go forth to seek my identity feeling greatly blessed by the things I don't find it in.
In childhood we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age we yearn to be kids. It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn't have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order.
At my age you not only have bittersweet memories you make bittersweet plans.
Perhaps God gives us a physical body so that every time we change our mind we won't be someone else.
I've lived enough of my life story to know this- Fate writes the book but you make the movie.
Science can reconstruct Tyrannosaurus Rex from a fossilized bone and a fancied footprint but it can't reconstruct God from the whole of creation.
The Seven Deadly Sins are a litany of victimless crimes compiled to distract attention from the bloody felonies of the righteous.
A blog is a message in a bottle both in purpose and likely readership.
Sometimes in life we blow things out of proportion because proportion is so dull.
The perfect family board game is one that can be played each time with fewer pieces.
An optimist is someone who figures that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's the bluebird of happiness.
As you wait for better days don't forget to enjoy today in case they've already started.
You can accept a falling out that changes your plans but it's hard to accept a betrayal that changes your memories.
It's a safe bet that someone who tells you you need to calm down has never actually seen you when you needed to calm down.
There is no effect more disproportionate to its cause than the happiness bestowed by a small compliment.
First God created time; then God created man that man might in the course of time perfect himself; then God decided that He'd better create eternity.
If there's anything better than a God-given talent it's a God-given day job.
Either way things are a lot better - either a lot better than they were or a lot better than they're going to be.
What are memories but dreams of a better past.
Most marriages can survive 'better or worse'. The tester is all the years of 'exactly the same'.
If God had intended me to make excuses for who I am He would have given me better excuses.
Yes I worry about the craziest things but better me than someone less qualified.
Better to start up a thousand wrong roads than to spend your life going nowhere because you know the way.
Sometimes the best way to forgive is to let the other person forget.
The best way to dispel negative thoughts is to require that they have a purpose.
The best things in life are not only free but the line is shorter.
In the best of relationships you have two people who cannot think of anything that was not part of the deal.
History is man's best guess as to what the past would look like if everything had happened in chronological order.
A painting is what you make of it besides which 'Moon Weeping' has a better ring to it than 'Paintbrush Dripping.
A toast once heard: "To my big sister who never found her second Easter egg until I'd found my first.
Toss your dashed hopes not into a trash bin but into a drawer where you are likely to rummage some bright morning.
The human species is made up of seven billion subspecies each consisting of one specimen.
Stubbornly persist and you will find that the limits of your stubbornness go well beyond the stubbornness of your limits
Beyond our most stubborn misperception lies often our fondest dream.
To a small child the perfect granddad is unafraid of big dogs and fierce storms but absolutely terrified of the word "boo.
Even if you think the Big Bang created the stars don't you wonder who sent the flowers?
The secret to happiness is to put the burden of proof on unhappiness.
I refuse to be burdened by vague worries. If something wants to worry me it will have to make itself clear.
A family is a bunch of people who keep confusing you with someone you were as a kid.
We envy others for we see their lives in broad outline while forced to live ours in every detail.
You can think of a painter as a trio - the artist his talent and his muse the last two always on the lookout for a new brush man.
As important as it is to keep picking yourself up and brushing yourself off it's also important to stop tripping over your own two feet.
O how much simpler things would be If eyes could paint or brush could see.
When you have brought up kids there are memories you store directly in your tear ducts.
If you can wear the hard times of your life as furrows on your brow you can wear the good times as a twinkle in your eye.
Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.
Where the loser saw barriers the winner saw hurdles.
Though the barriers of life seem formidable we find when we challenge them that they have no will.
After years of buying clothes I intend to diet into I'll say this: the skeleton in my closet has some really nice outfits.
No man is so idle that he cannot rouse himself just enough to get in the way of a busy person.
I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose.
There is a strong chance that siblings who turn out well were hassled by the same parents.
There are memories I choose not to live with but we hang out at the same bar.
I have never considered it my business to disabuse someone of a belief that makes life tolerable for them.
Just as important as having a list of priorities is every once in a while starting from the bottom.
A bottle of wine Still to be drunk A bundle of thoughts Still to be thunk.
Is it my imagination or does shipping and handling settle a box of crackers more than it used to?
A nod a bow and a tip of the lid to the person who coulda and shoulda and did.
We find things where we look for them which is why I never look for a golf ball out of bounds.
My quest for cosmic understanding is a book I have picked up and put down many times always forgetting to insert a bookmark.
A mom reads you like a book and wherever she goes people read you like a glowing book review.
Sometimes an answer not yet blowin' in the wind is stirring in the breeze.
Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.
There are days when you need someone who just wants to be your sunshine and not the air you breathe.
Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life- and it was you. It is not too late to find that person again.
There is a child in every one of us who is still a trick-or-treater looking for a brightly-lit front porch.
Ever get the feeling that sometime early in your life there must have been a briefing that you missed?
The imagination is a palette of bright colors. You can use it to touch up memories "? or you can use it to paint dreams.
Life is a brief opportunity to do something prehumously.
The brain forgets much but the lower back remembers everything.
One key to success is to have lunch at the time of day most people have breakfast.
Life is a series of family photos in which you keep moving to the rear until finally you're a portrait in the background.
It is not that love is blind. It is that love sees with a painter's eye finding the essence that renders all else background.
We are many of us a planet orbiting somebody's sun unconscious of a lonely moon orbiting our planet.
In the end who among us does not choose to be a little less right to be a little less lonely.
The most fundamental winning formula is to bet on human decency and be patient.
It's not that I'm a Type-B personality. It's that I'm driven by a passionate all-consuming desire to take it easy.
In sinners and repenters you have the original division of labor.
Ever wonder where you'd end up if you took your dog for a walk and never once pulled back on the leash?
Dare to be imperfect and one day there will tug at your sleeve a soulmate.
Few are humble for it takes a self-esteem few possess.
Life is short God's way of encouraging a bit of focus.
A successful artist is inspired by his muse and his muse is inspired by the payment of a commission.
Today I bent the truth to be kind and I have no regret for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
The choice so often these days is to believe something that seems insane or go insane.
Sometimes love needs a rest from caring and so bears for an intolerable few hours the guilt of not caring.
What a unique treasure are the things we have learned to live without for no thief can take them from us.
For every person you can trust there was first a child who was trusted.
Optimist: Someone who figures that taking a step backwards after taking a step forwards is not a disaster. It's a cha-cha.
It is the first purpose of hope to make hopelessness bearable.
You can bear your troubles or shrug them off. They're your shoulders.
While I occasionally enjoy a bout of nostalgia I would generally rather dream forward than backward.
It is easy to mistake being ready for a wedding with being ready for marriage.
Do not call any work menial until you have watched a proud person do it.
It is usually the case that people who know you better than you know yourself think you're a pretty good person.
Perhaps we are given a mom that we might take into death the memory of a lullaby.
A mom forgives us all our faults not to mention one or two we don't even have.
What is a mom but the sunshine of our days and the north star of our nights.
Each day is an opportunity to travel back into tomorrow's past and change it.
Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
If you could travel back in time to the present moment what would you do differently?
Parenthood is the passing of a baton followed by a lifelong disagreement as to who dropped it.
As a general guideline never marry anyone that you can't picture helping you go to the bathroom.
We labor to make a house a home then every time we're expecting visitors we rush to turn it back into a house.
You know you have found love when you can't find your way back.
Basically we are all looking for someone who knows who we are and will break it to us gently.
If you understand compound interest you basically understand the universe.
If God had wanted to be a big secret He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines.
Life is not fair nor has it ever been but the morning seems determined to dawn until it is.
Life is a process by which a few desperate longings morph into a thousand meaningless wants.
Seems like nothing ever brings you back to reality that makes you want to stay there.
In the great artist you see daring bound by discipline and discipline stretched by daring.
Who does not wish to be beautiful and clever and rich and to have back in old age the time spent trying to be any of them.
A good speech has a beginning a middle and an end the best example being 'I love you.'
Love may be blind but this I'll state - it's eagle-eyed compared to hate.
It finally happened. I got the GPS lady so confused she said "In one-quarter mile make a legal stop and ask directions.
I respect more the person who struggles with his faith than the person who is confident in his skepticism.
Be careful of selfish motives. You can mistake them for principles and end up dying for them.
Looking back on a happy life one realizes that one was not happy all the time.
I look back on the time I've wasted and I'm just glad I wasted it while I still had the chance.
A cat after being scolded goes about its business. A dog slinks off into a corner and pretends to be doing a serious self-reappraisal.
The ultimate folly is to think that something crucial to your welfare is being taken care of for you.
It is the fancy of every mortal that being cradled in the arms of mortality is a safe place for the time being.
A lover's quarrel is always about every quarrel you ever had.
For lack of an occasional expression of love a relationship strong at the seams can wear thin in the middle.
Words from the past: "It's a clever idea Mr. Bell but don't wire us we'll wire you.
Love thy neighbor and if it requires that you bend your understanding of the truth the Truth will understand.
A rule that cannot be bent will certainly be broken.
Take no revenge that you have not pondered beneath a starry sky or on a canyon overlook or to the lapping of waves and the mewing of a distant gull.
I believe that there is an explanation for everything so yes I believe in miracles.
I don't believe you really know God if you do not recognize His sense of humor.
You do not wake up one morning a bad person. It happens by a thousand tiny surrenders of self-respect to self-interest.
Perception is a clash of mind and eye the eye believing what it sees the mind seeing what it believes.
In every gardener there is a child who believes in The Seed Fairy.
We are Godseekers all though some be churchgoing believers and others pilgrims to an unknown shrine.
It's hard to make up your bed while you're still sleeping in it. Hard to make up your mind for the same reason.
Some have been to the mountain. I have been to my knees by the side of my bed.
It is a rare woman who can overcome her desire to remain pretty and allow herself to become beautiful.
Today's Multiple Choice Thought There is no place where a loving touch so completely compensates for an unskilled hand as in: a. the bedroom b. the nursery c. the garden
Does a rose exist that I might behold it? Or do I exist that a rose might be beheld?
Yes to be a good parent you have to sacrifice but this is not a requirement of parenting it is a requirement of being good at something.
Today befriend a stranger or if you feel up to more of a challenge befriend a loved one.
One thing you learn in a long marriage is how many sneezes to wait before saying "Bless you.
Marriage is nature's way of ensuring that a woman picks up some mothering experience before she has her first child.
Before you pledge your undying love to someone make them promise they won't die.
Be the master of your fate be the captain of your soul but do not hesitate should the chance befall you to be the slave of your heart.
In a houseful of toddlers and pets you can start out having a bad day but you keep getting detoured.
Eventually you realize that your whole life up to now has been preparation and you begin to suspect that the rest might be preparation too.
I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.
There's a lot of not caring that goes under the name of minding your own business.
For the most part we carnivores do not eat other carnivores. We prefer to eat our vegetarian friends.
Sometimes fate brings two people together by causing one to misinterpret a smile.
There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate.
The shy and the extroverted have this in common "? that they both fancy they are the center of attention.
Time is a figure eight at its center the city of Deja Vu.
For centuries man believed that the sun revolves around the earth. Centuries later he still thinks that time moves clockwise.
Name the season's first hurricane Zelda and fool Mother Nature into calling it a year.
There have been days when I sought respite from my life only to find myself calling every hour to check on it.
Of course I doubt. I do not practice a certainty. I practice a faith.
What is certainty but the refuge of those whose faith is not strong enough to entertain doubt.
Opportunity is a parade. Even as one chance passes the next is a fife and drum echoing in the distance.
One of life's regrets is that you didn't always tell the truth and now it's too late because the truth has changed.
Charisma is a fancy name given to the knack of giving people your full attention.
Charisma is not so much getting people to like you as getting people to like themselves when you're around.
Charisma is not just saying hello. It's dropping what you're doing to say hello.
The willingness to share does not make one charitable; it makes one free.
To help someone in need is not charity it is proper etiquette.
Act always from a sense of common humanity and let God judge if it be charity.
When there is hell to pay it is usually cheaper to pay it than to finance an endless purgatory.
I don't lie and cheat but I don't always avoid actions that would be lying and cheating if someone else did them.
If you feel you are down on your luck check the level of your effort.
Eventually if you're lucky in life you find someone with the same chemical imbalance you have.
Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie.
A watched child never learns.
If indeed the death of a child is part of a larger plan you wonder if God ever considered a smaller plan.
In the happiest of our childhood memories our parents were happy too.
In childhood we press our nose to the pane looking out. In memories of childhood we press our nose to the pane looking in.
To trade a childhood wonder for a plausible explanation - is there a worst trade one makes in life?
Happiness is life served up with a scoop of acceptance a topping of tolerance and sprinkles of hope although chocolate sprinkles also work.
There is no daily chore so trivial that it cannot be made important by skipping it two days running.
I've been looking over the list of spring chores I made up last fall and darned if they aren't fall chores after all.
To be happy you must fancy that everything you have is a gift and you the chosen though you worked your tail off for every bit of it.
Man will have replicated his own intelligence not when he teaches a computer to reason but when he teaches a computer to have a nagging feeling in its circuits.
The clash between child and adult is never as stubborn as when the child within us confronts the adult in our child.
The realist sees reality as concrete. The optimist sees reality as clay.
One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot.
All my life I've wanted just once to say something clever without losing my train of thought
Often what seems an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in.
Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend.
I'm discovering that everybody is a closet quotesmith. Just give them a chance.
How we long to remove the clutter from our lives not realizing that the clutter is our lives.
I am never five minutes into stripping the clutter from my life before I start running into the clutter that is my life.
Sometimes in a moral struggle we discover the right thing to do - just as on some cold day long ago we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve.
A holiday cocktail party is where some stranger will learn more about you in an hour than your spouse has learned in a lifetime.
You must question a code of ethics that never impedes your progress.
If you can't forgive and forget pick one.
Though confined to our destiny we do get to pick the color scheme.
Sometimes it's worth getting lost to see who will come looking for us.
Despite the goings-on in Congress I don't believe the USA is bordering on madness. I believe Mexico and Canada are.
If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit.
There is a what-the-hell moment in life when you feel you have been pre-punished for every sin you'll ever commit.
In a soulmate we find not company but a completed solitude.
The difference between friends and pets is that friends we allow into our company pets we allow into our solitude.
In comparing religious belief to science I try to remember that science is belief also.
If we would see others as they see themselves our shyness would soon become compassion.
I complain that the years fly past but then I look in a mirror and see that very few of them actually got past.
Family life is a bit like a runny peach pie - not perfect but who's complaining?
No one complains of being a prisoner of love who has ever been a prisoner of loneliness.
Every great painting is left incomplete at the point where its completion is obvious.
That portion of reality that can be composed within a frame can be understood.
It's my luck that every time I feel I completely comprehend God's plan I don't have a pencil with me.
I've concluded after many years that my mind works by process of elimination. Problem is it hasn't eliminated anything yet.
What we seek in the end is not unconditional love but a love for which we uniquely in all the world meet all the conditions.
We all have our limitations but when we listen to our critics we also have theirs.
How often in life we complete a task that was beyond the capability of the person we were when we started it.
There are things I have wanted so long that I would only consent to have them if I could keep wanting them.
A commuter tie-up consists of you "? and people who for some reason won't use public transit.
A blogger is constantly looking over his shoulder for fear that he is not being followed.
If a language is corruptible then a constitution written in that language is corruptible.
Often what we take for a kindness is just someone acting in their capacity as a human being.
There are three dimensions of time two of which contain happier days.
The trouble with having a stubbornness contest with your kids is that they have your stubbornness gene.
There is in every truth a wise saying and in every contradiction two wise sayings.
Question reality especially if it contradicts the evidence of your hopes and dreams.
There is never an embarrassing silence that can't be turned into a regrettable conversation.
I enjoy many silent moments with my cat a conversation always resumed exactly where left off.
Sometimes as practice for trying to convince myself that God exists I try to convince my shadow that the sun exists.
You spend 90% of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10% trying to convince the Lord that you're actually not that tired.
As a man I've learned that there is nothing easier in married life than pleasing your wife with your cooking.
The painter needs all the talent of the poet plus hand-eye coordination.
You will not find a soulmate in the quiet of your room. You must go to a noisy place and look in the quiet corners.
Corporations no longer try to fit square pegs into round holes; they just fit them into square cubicles.
It is not happiness until you capture it and store it out of the reach of time.
What a snapshot is to your life your life is to eternity so wouldn't it be nice if eternity captured you smiling?
There is a time early in life when there seem to be countless reasons for happiness and then you discover your mom is making them up.
Know thyself especially thyself after a couple of drinks.
There are couples a matchmaker would match every time - and couples who for no rhyme or reason rhyme.
One can only imagine how effective justice might be if admissible in a court of law.
My health plan doesn't cover dental so I enrolled my teeth as 32 dependents each needing a complete physical once a year.
Where you find quality you will find a craftsman not a quality-control expert.
If Creation were a crime would not God be the prime suspect?
God left so many fingerprints at the scene of Creation that you wonder "? does He want to be found or does He want to be stopped?
The only creature on earth whose natural habitat is a zoo is the zookeeper.
Here is the basic question: Are we marionettes or are we creatures of free will who just happen to have a lot of jerky reflexes?
There is a public me and a private me who if they were separate people probably wouldn't exchange Christmas cards.
There are secrets I will take to the grave and others I'd feel safer having cremated.
If an artist has talent he needs no other critic.
I have fancied myself a rebel but at every critical moment of my life I have been exactly the child my parents raised.
It is a shame to see in the work of an artist the limitations of his critics.
It is sad when two people turn from the paths they're traveling and their paths go on to cross without them.
Do I rue a life wasted doing crosswords? Yes but I do know the three-letter-word for regret.
If you haven't time to respond to a tug at your pants leg your schedule is too crowded.
I cultivate my garden and my garden cultivates me.
It finally happened - a lawsuit for wrongful doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you not forgetting to leave others be as you would have them leave you be.
Sometimes to do the right thing we must keep a promise we never made.
What happens if I do nothing?
I tell my child if I seem obsessed to always know where you've been it is because my DNA will be found at the scene.
Perhaps I have lived my life to excess but know what "? if I had it to do over again I would overdo it again.
If I had it to do again I would less often judge myself and more often ask for a jury.
A relationship becomes easier when you realize that you don't have to be the one at fault to be the one who's sorry.
It is seeing ourselves in others that often prompts the remark 'There's something about that person I don't trust.
I identify more with people who ask each day for divine guidance than people equipped with a divine guidance system.
There is a tendency to see divine intervention in things that happen in the normal course of miracles.
Life is not about discovering our talents; it is about pushing our talents to the limit and discovering our genius.
It is possible at any age to discover a lifelong desire you never knew you had.
What you discover about people you try not to offend is that you can offend them without trying.
You don't want to get to the end of life's journey and discover you never left the interstate.
If we would listen to our kids we'd discover that they are largely self-explanatory.
What if instead of a parallel universe there's a perpendicular universe? Discuss.
If minutes were kept of a family gathering they would show that "Members not Present" and "Subjects Discussed" were one and the same.
Having perfected our disguise we spend our lives searching for someone we don't fool.
It is still possible to have friendly discourse in America as long as you don't bring up any subject.
The thing about family disasters is that you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into perspective.
There is in every artist's studio a scrap heap of discarded works in which the artist's discipline prevailed against his imagination.
A parent's love is whole no matter how many times divided.
No matter what you do in life a part of you still sits at a curbside still hearing the drumbeat of a distant parade still waiting for it to turn the corner.
So often the shortest distance to happiness is the length of an about-face.
We realize we can't have everything and so begins the mad dash to have everything else.
Once you become the mommy or daddy in your child's world it is the only world in which you exist no matter how much you fancy there is a separate world of your own.
Sometimes I wonder "? if I were drop-dead handsome and every woman I met actually dropped dead would I ever get tired of it?
For every "Drive Safely" sign shouldn't there be a "Resume Normal Driving" sign?
As to the Seven Deadly Sins I deplore Pride Wrath Lust Envy and Greed. Gluttony and Sloth I pretty much plan my day around.
Family life is a daily struggle to turn love into happiness.
Shall I redirect my life's journey because down some side road might be some trifle I'm entitled to?
God sends the dawn that we might see the might-have-beens that still might be.
I don't hate anyone. The only people I know well enough to hate I love.
Sometimes we don't find the thing that will make us happy because we can't give up the thing that was supposed to.
Even at times when I don't care I know exactly what I would care about if I did.
Politicians don't lie they misspeak. And they don't steal they mispocket.
Get involved. You don't want to look back on your life and realize that you successfully managed to stay out of it.
Things happen in everyday life that make you consider living your life just every other day.
Whoever dreamed up Scrabble had an exaggerated idea of how many 7-letter words have five i's.
Genius is a plodding intellect incapable of dreaming up the obstacles that stop the rest of us.
The mind as you age Is an artist it seems. Monet paints your mem'ries Picasso your dreams.
There are days in retirement that are the waking equivalent of a dreamless sleep if you know what I mean.
We are each a dozen people who were all the same child.
Psychologists now recognize that the need in some people to have a dozen cats is really a sublimated desire to have two dozen cats.
Once you find someone to share your ups and downs downs are almost as good as ups.
Love is at first a set of delusions which as time goes by are discarded like training wheels and you love truly.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single happy delusion that it can be done without a stop-over.
In the realist you have the sorry sight of the five senses deprived of their imagination.
The world knows how to straighten out a spoiled child but never makes it up to a child deprived.
Nowadays you envy a manic-depressive. Half the time he's happy the other half he's right.
Sometimes to pursue a new idea the artist must forfeit his deposit on an old idea.
Dancing is moving to the music without stepping on anyone's toes pretty much the same as life.
Somewhere between the honest truth and the deceptive lie is the deceptive truth and the honest lie.
There is a language of love which is to say a truth that does not tell all and a lie that does not deceive.
Everything happens for the purpose of what you decide to do about it.
The wedding is where two people become one. The marriage is where they decide which one.
If you don't decide what your life is about it defaults to what you spend your days doing.
Most people would rather defend to the death your right to say it than listen to it.
One's dream is defeated not by unsolvable problems but by all the more-or-less satisfactory solutions that kill it forever.
There are people who live their whole lives on the default settings never realizing you can customize.