Quotation Saturday
It’s time once again for Quotation Saturday. The weeks are flying by. I still have two more weeks of vacation, but my husband goes back to his school on Monday. I’ll try to get up before he comes home in the afternoon. 🙂
Here we go:
1. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character. –Albert Einstein
2. Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best. –St. Jerome
3. For true success ask yourself these four questions: Why? Why not? Why not me? Why not now? –James Allen
4. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. –Albert Einstein
5. Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. –Faith Baldwin
6. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. –Aldous Huxley
7. As novices, we think we’re entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people. –Rose Wilder Lane
8. It’s not so much how busy you are, but why you are busy. The bee is praised. The mosquito is swatted. –Mary O’Connor
9. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. –Albert Einstein
10. The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy. –Helen Hayes
11. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. –Antoine de Sant-Exupery
12. Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness. –Seneca
13. The word “bipartisan” usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out. –George Carlin
14. Generally, a man has two reasons for doing something. One that sounds good, and a real one. –Anon.
15. What it lies in our power to do, it lies in our power not to do. –Aristotle
16. Do it now. You become successful the moment you start moving toward a worthwhile goal. -Samuel Insull
17. We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors. –Lyndon B. Johnson
18. If you start thinking you’re a person of influence, try ordering somebody else’s dog around. –Anon.
19. Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential. –Liane Cardes
20. In not making the decision, you’ve made one. Not doing something is the same as doing it. –Ivan Bloch
21. Be an individual; don’t make it easy to be dismissed in a sentence. –Anon.
22. The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings. –Henri Frederic Amiel
23. I’m not happy. I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them. –Beverly Sills
24. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. –Henry Ford
25. When you blame others you give up your power to change. –Anon.
26. Time isn’t a commodity, something you pass around like cake. Time is the substance of life. When anyone asks you to give your time, they’re really asking for a chunk of your life. –Antoinette Bosco
27. What is now proved was once imagined. –William Blake
28. As you go the way of life you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think. –Native American Proverb
29. I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work. –Benjamin Franklin
30. There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children. –Nelson Mandela
31. The greatest good we can do for others is not to share our riches with them, but to reveal their own. –Anon
32. To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist. –Gail Sheehy
33. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. –Douglas MacArthur
34. The child must know that he is a miracle, that since the beginning of the world there hasn’t been, and until the end of the world there will not be, another child like him. –Pablo Casals
35. Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation. –Aristotle
36. Words are an attempt to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is an ungrippable as a shadow. –Samuel Butler
37. Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their marriage were not perceived to have any relation. –Mark Twain
38. A happy life is one spent in earning, learning, and yearning. –Lillian Gish
39. By an inferior man I mean one who knows nothing that is not known to every adult, who can do nothing that could not be learned by anyone in a few weeks, and who meanly admires mean things. –H.L. Mencken
40. There is always one more imbecile than you counted on. –Anon.
41. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is truer. –Frederic Raphael
42. The theatre should be necessary – like a bank or a grocer’s shop. It should provide something that people can’t get anywhere else. –Peter Brook
43. The closed door and sealed lips are prerequisites to tyranny. –Frank Stanton
44. You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough. –Frank Crane
45. Persons thankful for little things are certain to be the ones with much to be thankful for. –Frank Clark
46. We must accept the truth even if it changes our point of view. –Anon.
47. Tradition does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. –Gilbert Keith Chesterton
48. To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved. –James Ramsay McDonald
49. If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see. Let them see. –Thoreau
50. It has been said that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe. And it is true that you may see simple laboring men as thorough gentlemen as any duke, simply because they have learned to fear God and, fearing Him, to restrain themselves, which is the very root and essence of all good breeding. –Charles Kingsley
And them’s the quotes, until next Saturday.
Other people always say it so much better than I can. . . . .
I Have A Since of Hummer
I’ve been cleaning out the guest room and just finished going through a pile of old school papers, throwing most of them away but keeping a few for sentimental purposes.
Several years ago, at the end of each semester, I asked my students to think hard and write down ten things they learned in my class, which was their first college class. It’s a beginning writing class, and really focuses more on basic grammar than on anything else; that’s why this woman’s responses surprised me.
I wish I could recreate the erratic margins but I think you’ll still get the general idea.
==
The 10 thing I have learnt in this class
First of all let me start out by saying I have enjoyed this class so much . I have even look forward to
coming to school and for that for me is something I have never enjoyed school a day in my life!!
You made learning fun for me . And that is something most teacher can’t do they have no since of
hummer but you have plenty.
1. The very first think I have learnt is that I am for sure a hill billy (hee hee) I thought I
always talked right and everyone else had just a accent. I learnt when and where to put a comma and
always just threw it in when it look right.
2. Believe it or not I learnt when to capitalize when know it is a easy thing I didn’t do it right.
3. And also learnt what a accutal twit was and everyone gets a kick out of that.
4. The hardest thing that has been for me to learn in your class is when to use the words are
and is. But I think I got it now, if I don’t I’m in trouble this summer in writing 2.
5. Another really gross thing I have learnt is that there is something that lives on my meat I like to eat oh gross.
6. I have also learnt that a number in grammar dosen’t mean like number 2 but I means singular or plural, I thought that was kinda neat it was different.
7. One thing that is neat to me is the way you explained time past, present, future, the way
you have in your hand it’s the present then you let it go and that make it the past . I thought that was
neat never thought of it that way.
8. I also didn’t know cows could walk down the stairs and I didn’t know they couldn’t walk up the stairs but why is it? Why can’t they?
9. And pound for pound hamburgers cost more than a new car . just think we all eat
enough
to buy a new car every 6 months or so.
10. I have learnt the proper way or saying quarry but I kept that to my self you did it I
Didn’t wanting them to know thats the way I always said it (hee hee) .
What I didn’t learn in this class is what the other 2 ways of making ren plural.
==
Now, first of all, I am NOT making fun of this girl. She improved so much in 16 weeks, it’s amazing. I’m proud of her, in fact. She did not pass the class, but she learned enough so that when she took the class again, she was able to pass.
When I found and re-read this list of things she learned in my class that semester, I was amazed at the way she retained the knowledge that was meant only as a tangent: a way of taking something and flying away with it, if you will. I have always tried to pepper my lectures and lessons with interesting tidbits that are supposed to help the student remember the LESSON. This girl, apparently, remembered the tangents over and above the lessons. You know, I think that’s all right, too.
I ain’t no TWIT, you know. I have a since of hummer.
I’m glad I saved this girl’s paper. I read and re-read it and it made me smile. She was a very nice girl who worked hard, and I enjoyed having her in class. I wonder what she’s doing now?
What she didn’t learn? Maybe you know. There are very few English words that still form their plural by adding “-en” as a suffix. One of the words is “children.” What are the others?
Meme: Worst Job EVER
John, over at Learn Me Good, has tagged me for a meme. This makes me happy, actually, because unlike a lot of people, I LIKE memes. Well, most of them! This particular meme: What was your WORST JOB EVER?
I have held a lot of jobs in my life, in, among, and around the teaching. I started babysitting (this was close to being my worst job ever!!) when I was just a kid, but I got my first real job at 16: clerking in a dime store downtown. I have worked ever since.
Before that, however, there was the Gun Club.
My siblings and I pretty much grew up at the Gun Club. Dad spent much of his life there, and we all got to know every nook and cranny of the place at a very young age. The two outdoor toilets especially fascinated me, even while they terrified me. I think those outhouses were the last evidence of the Gun Club, once Public Service took the property, tore the Gun Club CLUBHOUSE down, and turned the whole field into a scene from “War of the Worlds.” Even when we were just little kids, Dad used to take us all out to the Gun Club and make us pick up wads. This wasn’t hard work; it was just really boring. Dad needed the wads because he loaded his own shotgun shells. I still remember the sounds that big reloader made, especially when the shot came pouring down into the shell. There were always tiny bb’s all over the floor by the reloader, it seems.
When my Other Sister and I were pre-teens, Dad put us to work at the Gun Club. Other Sister did great; she was smart and fast and had no trouble at all pushing the button to release the clay pigeon, and recording the results. And where was I?
I tried to do her job, but I just couldn’t do it. I was too clumsy, and I could never hear the men yell “Pull!” After a few disastrous attempts, Dad put me down in the traphouse.
This was the worst job ever.
The traphouse is that little concrete-block hole-in-the-ground at the far end of the shooters’ grid. Inside the traphouse was a machine in which the trapsetter placed the clay pigeon. When Other Sister pushed the button, the machine would hurl that clay pigeon into the air with the force of a bullet from a gun.
I sat, alone, not really very old, down inside the traphouse, on a metal stool, in about six inches of murky water, trying not to notice the frogs, lizards, occasional snake, inserting clay pigeons into the machine the very second it re-set itself after a hurl. The machine was electric. I was on a metal stool in high water. With livestock. One miscalculation and that machine would tear my hand off above the wrist. I was terrified.
However, I could do this, and I did take pride in that fact. I just never dreamed I’d have to do it again and again and again until I had dreams about setting trap. Nowadays, some parents would have a fit over child endangerment, or some such thing, but the fact is, even though I was scared and even though I hated that job, I was very proud that I was trusted to do it and that I was good at it, too.
What I really wanted to do was learn to shoot the clay pigeons. Dad never did let me try, and I still wonder why. One of my dead boyfriends and I used to go out behind his grandmother’s house and shoot targets, and hang out at the IU Gun Club and shoot, and I don’t mind telling you that I was pretty darn good.
Sometimes I dream about sitting down under the ground in the traphouse, setting trap in that scary machine, kicking away frogs, in the water, with electrical wires over my head.
The next-to-the-worst job was in an electronics factory one summer, between college semesters. I stuck it out, because my parents’ kids are not quitters, but the tedium pretty much did me in. When I dream about the factory, I’m always exhausted in the morning, not refreshed. I never feared for my life there, although I did once see a woman faint and land on top of her soldering iron. It had melted through her shoulder clear to the bone before anyone realized what was happening. But I knew I was more careful than that. She was careless, we all knew it, and such things happen to careless people. The sissy.
The factory was also where I learned dirty words. And all about dirty people. Wow. And, wow! I did love the factory hours: I worked from 5 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. It was perfect for me.
But as far as worst jobs go, setting trap in the underground hole was the worst. It wasn’t a regular job, as all my other jobs were, but it still wins the “Worst Job Ever” award.
I’m glad I did it, though. I believe that every job we stick with, in spite of everything, makes us stronger and better people. If we whine and pout and throw up our hands and quit, wahh wahh wahh I hate this! we are denying ourselves the feeling of accomplishment and the seldom-found-anywhere-any more- pride we are allowed to feel only when we look back on a good job well done.   There is no pride in a good job found boring or hard so I quit.
Besides, nothing ever bit me and I never saw sparks. I am many things, but “coward” is not one of them. (I am more than a little bit backward and often shy around people, but that is not the same thing as ‘cowardly.’) My job was to go down into that dank hole and do the job, so I did. Period.
And since I finished the job, I’m allowed to bitch about it.
P.S. My Dad was one of the best trapshooters in the world. I mean to say, he was FABULOUS. A record-breaker.
