Quotation Saturday
Mamacita says: The latest Carnival of Education is up; please click over to Edwonkette’s blog and see what parents and teachers have to say about the state of education. Remember, if you don’t keep up, you forfeit all whining rights. Ditto for the election.
1. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay. –Alfred North Whitehead
2. Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, science and skill depend upon it. Newton traced his great discoveries to it. It builds bridges, opens new world, heals diseases, carries on the business of the world. Without it, taste is useless, and the beauties of literature unobserved. –Robert Willmote
3. A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged. –Tom Wolfe
4. The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted. –Georg Christopher Lichtenberg
5. No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant. –Nietzsche
6. Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means. –Paul DeMan
7. Language most shews a man. Speak, that I may see thee. –Ben Jonson
8. It’s best to love wisely, no doutt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all. –W.M. Thackeray
9. People need joy. Quite as much as clothing. Some of them need it far more. –Margaret Collier Graham
10. I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day. –Albert Camus
11. Willingness to be taught what we do not know, is the sure pledge of growth both in knowledge and wisdom. –Hugh Blair
12. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay. –Eric Hoffer
13. Kindness is in our power, but fondness is not. –Samuel Johnson
14. Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. –Andy Rooney
15. Life is the sum of all your choices. -Albert Camus
16. We are here and it is now; further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. –H.L. Mencken
17. In cities, no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely. –Geoffrey Francis Fisher
18. The study of Literature nourishes youth, entertains old age, adorns prosperity, solaces adversity, and is delightful at home. –Cicero
19. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. –T. Roosevelt
20. We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, life. –Sir William Osler
21. A great library contains the diary of the human race. The great consulting room of a wise man is a library. –George Dawson
22. Life is seldom as unendurable as, to judge by the facts, it logically ought to be. –Brooks Atkinson
23. Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real. –Iris Murdoch
24. Life is tough, but I’m tougher. –Andy Rooney
25. Love teaches even asses to dance. –French proverb
26. The first great rule of life is to put up with things. –Baltasar Gracias
27. Learning too soon our limitations, we never learn our powers. –Mignon McLaughlin
28. Learning begins with listening. –Noah Ben Shea
29. It is not love that produces jealousy — it is selfishness. –M. Justice Wellington
30. The man who is too old to learn was probably always too old to learn. –Henry S. Haskins
31. Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. –Frank Leahy
32. It is through the cracks in our brains that ecstasy creeps in. –Logan Pearsall Smith
33. Some fellows get credit for being conservative when they are only stupid. –Kin Hubbard
34. Clothes don’t make the man, but good clothes have got many a man a good job. –Herbert Harold Vreeland
35. Those who enter Heaven may find the outer walls plastered with creeds, but they won’t find any on the inside. –Josh Billings
36. To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice. –Confucius
37. Conscience warns us as a friend before it punishes us as a judge. –Stanislaw J. Lec
38. The integrity of men is to be measured by their conduct. –Junius
39. Conceit may puff a man up, but can never prop him up. –John Ruskin
40. Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little. –Augustus and Julius Hare
41. Take care of those who take care of you. –Tony Niccoli
42. Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity. –George Eliot
43. A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn’t any Santa Claus, and he’s still upset. –James Gould Cozzens
44. To be occupied in what does not concern you is worse than doing nothing. –Baltasar Gracian
45. It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are. –ee cummings
46. On the human chessboard, all moves are possible. –Isaac Bashevis Singer
47. If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag. –Anonymous
48. Things do not change; we change. –H.D. Thoreau
49. Courage without conscience is a wild beast. –Robert Ingersoll
50. He who purposely cheats his friend, would cheat his God. –Johann Kaspar Lavater
. . . and I still think Rod Stewart sounds exactly like Winnie the Pooh.
That last one up there isn’t a quote; it’s just an opinion. But I said it, so it’s sort of like a quote. It’s not up there with “We have met the enemy and he is us,” but it’s a start.
Oh No She Dinnit!
Mamacita says: Last night in class we were discussing the original (excellent) Sesame Street and the present (sissy) Sesame Street, and the old seasons won, hands-down.
General consensus among twenty students, ages 18-56, was that Cookie Monster is SUPPOSED to be greedy and eat improperly, Oscar is SUPPOSED to be grouchy, the Count is a scary VAMPIRE, Bert and Ernie are little boys, Grover is cute and shares his voice with Yoda, and that Mr. Snuffelupagus is SUPPOSED to have a very, very deep, sonorous, sad, kind of creepy voice. He’s also supposed to be invisible to everyone except Big Bird. The new Sesame Street is toned-down, stuffed so full of euphemisms and political correctness, and so afraid of offending someone that it’s become bland and silly instead of vibrant and contemporary. Condescending to children is NEVER wise. Children always knew that some of the characters behaved in ways that nice people weren’t supposed to behave; it was a learning device. Too bad so many adults don’t have the same contextual skills.
My contribution? Elmo needs to grow a pair.
The summary? Bring back The Electric Company. And don’t anyone DARE dumb it down. Sesame Street has been spoiled, but it’s not too late for some of the others. And you know the others will be dumbed down too if the Political Correctness Monster (currently in charge of all the other SS monsters well as our government) is given his/her way.
Ah, dumbing things down. It’s the American Way. And it’s so much easier than requiring everybody to read and comprehend well!
Dear Political Correctness Monster: you need to grow a pair, too.
Ten Things Tuesday
Mamacita says: Tuesday already? Impossible! I wasn’t finished with Monday yet!
Calendars and clocks don’t lie, though, at least not as badly as bathroom scales do. It’s Tuesday, and time for Ten Things Tuesday.
1. My purse always weighs a TON, but when I take everything out, there’s really nothing in there that’s heavy, and even the entire pile doesn’t weigh very much. I don’t get it.
2. When my doctor eventually tells me to stay away from Steak & Shake, I greatly fear that I will disobey him.
3. I just graded a hundred grammar quizzes, and I don’t think my eyes are working properly now.
4. I hate ironing, so I never do it. I found a miniature ironing board for $1.99 in the leftover college-kid bin at CVS, which will cover any actual emergencies for visitors, and I’m donating my big ironing board to the women’s shelter. . . um, if I can remember where it is. It’s thirty years old and like new.
5. I worry sometimes that the contents of my purse are not normal. Doesn’t every woman carry around six flash drives, a camera, a cell phone, a video camera, a wallet, an Mp3 player, and enough keys to sink a ship? Oh, and it’s not as though I carry my laptop, re-charger, and retractable mouse in there ALL the time.
6. I might need to go back and modify #1 now.
7. Eric Mabius is smokin’ hot.
8. Yes, indeed he is.
9. I bought a wireless mouse at Big Lots, for my rapidly-failing desktop computer, and it’s fantastic. One less annoying wire!
10. I’m over half done with my Christmas shopping.
I’m not really all that happy about #10, because making a list, checking it twice, finding what I want to get someone, GETTING it, looking at it while it’s collecting dust in the guest room from April to December, thinking about how I’m going to wrap it, and hoping the person will like it, are among my very favorite things to do in all the world.
We all have our favorite things, and we all wonder why ours aren’t everybody’s favorite things. It’s a good thing we’re all different, isn’t it. Otherwise, you’d all be on my stuff, and you know how I feel about THAT.
