Favorite Quote

[Charlie]

"When you are walking on thin ice you might as well dance."

"Don't play leap frog with a unicorn."

"If you have to eat sh@% take big bites."

but my favorite is

"If you can write a check to reolve it -- it is not a real problem." Note this quote does not apply to governments.

[GordMay]

“...There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence...”

At a reading given at the Library of Congress in 1962 Frost told this anecdote:
“In England, two or three years ago, Graham Greene said to me, "The most difficult thing I find in recent literature is your having said that good fences make good neighbors."
And I said, "I wish you knew more about it, without my helping you."
We laughed, and I left it that way.”

"Mending Wall" is less a poem about what to think, than it is poem about what thinking is, and where it might lead.

[D.D.]

Chickens don't have Ducks!

[Maddog]

The ocean floor is paved with the bones of optomistic sailors

[SV Someday Came]

Religion is a defense against the experience of God.
Carl Jung


I stumbled when I saw: Full oft tis seen that our means secure us and our mere defects prove our commodities.
Shakespeare > King Lear > Gloucester


The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.
Milton > Paradise Lost > Satan

[trebeyar]

..In the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Don't know the true sources, but somewhere from an American political debate in the mid 1800's:

First pol about second pol: "You will doubtless die either from a loathsome disease or the hangman's noose!"

Second pol in response: "That, Sir, depends upon whether I embrace your mistress or your principles!"

Gawd, I wish I'd said that!!

Cheers,

Jim and Ann s/v Insatiabel II

William Gladstone, a Liberal party Prime Minister (many times) is your "first pol." Benjamin Disraeli, leader of the Conservatives in the House of Commons and Gladstone's intense rival, is your "second pol."

So, neither are American, alas, but very British statesmen of the mid-Victorian era. The correct exchange went like this, as quoted at BBC - h2g2 - Witty Quotes

"Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli: 'I predict, sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease.'

"Disraeli replied: 'That all depends, sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.' "

TaoJones

PS: If you scroll to the bottom of the linked quotations page, you will note a virtually identical citation, but there the parties are given as Lord Sandwich and John Wilkes.

[Greenman]

Two of my favorites that come to mind, although I do not recall the origin...

"Never argue with an idiot, they will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience"

and

"If you lend someone $20.00 and never hear from that person again, it is $20.00 well spent"

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by Greenman

"If you lend someone $20.00 and never hear from that person again, it is $20.00 well spent"

In the 2006 film The Peaceful Warrior, the protagonist is sent away to meditate and instructed to return to his mentor with any insights he might come up with. On one occasion he returns and says, "If you lend someone $20, and he doesn't pay you back, it was probably worth it."

I would imagine that some version of the saying has been around for some time, with the original author lost in the mists of time.

TaoJones

[geekclothing]

It's better to have and not want, then to want and not have...

[amytom]

"So this is how liberty dies; with cheers and applause" Star Wars 2 Funny how many parallells can be drawn between art and reality.

[quidam]

"Company. Like fish, start to stink after a few days.
--My Nano (a.k.a. Michele's grandmother)

"When the water reaches the upper levels, follow the rats."
--F.D.R.'s Navy Secretary Claude Swanson (one of Bruce's favorite's)

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by quidam

"Company. Like fish, start to stink after a few days.
--My Nano (a.k.a. Michele's grandmother)

Your grandmother said that often, I'm sure, as did mine, but they didn't say it first.

The correct quote is:

"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days." Benjamin Franklin

TaoJones

[mikethecapt]

The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat - on a wall at boot camp

[beetlejuice30]

"paranoid people survive"