Archives - January 2020

Approach the New Year with resolve to find the opportunities hidden in each new day.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

The problem with having a sense of humor is often that people you use it on aren't in a very good mood.

You have to do something in your life that is honorable and not cowardly if you are to live in peace with yourself, and for the firefighter it is fire.

The most enduring battle is between head and heart; what would be efficient and logical is nearly always trumped by what is messy and illogical.

Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something. 

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

If you step on people in this life, you're going to come back as a cockroach.

Civilization is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor.

When the wisdom speaks, be silent. Do not waste your candle when the sun is there.

The only way you may correct the bad things in your past is to add better things to your future.

My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.

There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those who are forced to deal with it.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

I have a two-story house and a bad memory, so I'm up and down those stairs all the time. That's my exercise.

It is the false shame of fools to try to conceal wounds that have not healed.

The race advances only by the extra achievements of the individual. You are the individual.

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.

Precaution is better than cure.

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.

Two things I dislike about my granddaughter --- when she won’t take her afternoon nap, and when she won’t let me take mine.

Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.

Education is the transmission of civilization.

Procrastination is one of the most common and deadliest of diseases and its toll on success and happiness is heavy.

I'm reflective only in the sense that I learn to move forward. I reflect with a purpose.

At 30 you finally start to catch up on those dreams you’ve been chasing for the last 10 plus years.

You are never alone or helpless. The force that guides the stars guides you too.

How glorious it is --- and also how painful --- to be an exception.

My reading life is like an airport where a bunch of planes circle in a holding pattern, then --- boom, boom, boom --- several come in for a landing.