Mark Twain is a great source for quotations. One of my favorites attributed to him goes something like, “I’ve had a lot of troubles in my life, most of which never happened.” An apparently authenticated source of a similar thought is an earlier letter (1816) by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams containing the line: “How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”
From a grad school friend: “Time wounds all heels,” and “A lot of bridges have gone under water since then.”
From a friend of my mother’s, “All these kids are driving me crazy!” The woman had two children, and none of the children’s friends were visiting at the time.
Along serious lines, a dear friend’s mother used to ask her elementary school students, “Is that for the best?” with regard to an action or comment. This one is a keeper.
My dad has a bunch of them that he brings out for different occasions.
Eat to live not live to eat.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
The early bird gets the worm. (I got this all the time as a kid, the advice not the worm)
Time and tide wait for no man.
Perfect tea-making instructions according to dad; One teaspoon per person and one for the pot.
Luck is the residue of skill
Happy Wife, Happy Life
An adage from a friend’s father: Those who rise early are conceited in the morning and stupid in the afternoon.
Better to incur a mild rebuke than to perform an onerous task.
There are none so blind as those who cannot see.
The entire world is a very large carrot, but the farmer is not afraid at all.
@QuantMech , I must be dense, but I don’t understand what that saying means.
I interpret @QuantMech 's post to mean “Get enough sleep!”
My mother used to be fond of saying, “A sweater is something to wear when your mother is cold.” I used that many times with my kids.
She also liked, “If my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a streetcar” (i.e., don’t make arguments based on unrealistic premises).
A former partner of mine had a different version of the same trope: “If I had some ham, I’d have ham and eggs, if I had eggs.”
I tend to use punch lines from poems. Two of my favorites:
“Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” (from Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn). Supremely Delphic and double-edged.
“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (the last line of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind)
And from Kahlil Gibran, On Children:
“[T]heir souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.”
@jhs, I love that Kahlil quote. Coincidentally I was driving the other day thinking of my son who just moved 1,000 miles away with his GF, his new job and life. I was becoming a little sad and wistful and this quote popped into my head, but I could not remember the exact words. I was thinking how he has his whole life in front of him, hopefully 60 years or more…and I’ll be lucky to have 25 left. And how all those years I’m gone, he will still be living and loving…and I’ll never know.
Anyway, thanks for writing that.
The friend’s dad’s “adage” was just a counter to “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” although even that one involves getting enough sleep, since it is advocating for going to bed early. The friend’s dad’s adage is best said with a pause in the middle, "Those who rise early . . . pause . . . " because then one anticipates praise for those who rise early, and the actual version is sort of a joke.
One of my friends has mentioned jockeying for position in her Department by being among the first to arrive. In my Department, the first person to arrive usually gets here at 5 am and there is no way I am doing that–hence my enjoyment of the “adage.”
Re JHS’s post #68, I used to get through the long bus ride from Cambridge to Oxford by thinking, “If Aylesbury comes, can Tring be far behind?” (both intermediate stops en route)
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. - Abraham Lincoln
If you want to hear God laugh, tell him what your plans are.
Ben Franklin:
“Wine is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.”
I am also somewhat fond of, “I see what you are saying, and I hear where you are coming from.”
I’ve always heard it as “Man plans and God laughs.” In Yiddish, it’s “Mann Tracht, Un Gott Lacht.”
“This too will pass”. (And a longer/parenting version - “When you kid is in a tough stage, it won’t last very long. Alas, same is often true of the good stages”)
- "Not my circus, not my monkies".
@JHS @QuantMech
Maybe I am not sleeping enough, the Gibran quote on “children” brings tears.
And I am stealing the sweater saying.
“They’d rather strip naked and climb a barbed wire tree to tell a lie, than stand on the ground and tell the truth.”