poems for friends

Better bread with water than cake with trouble. ~Russian Proverb



Whose indomitable spirit changed the face of the earth for us. ~Edmund Arthur Helps



TV will never be a serious competitor for radio because people must sit and keep their eyes glued on a screen; the average American family hasn't time for it. ~Author Unknown, from New York Times, 1939



The marriage state, with or without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life. ~Richard Steele, The Spectator



Classical quotation is a parole of literary men all over the world. ~Samuel Johnson



Gold that buys health can never be ill spent. ~Thomas Dekker, Westward Ho, 1604



In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority. ~Liz Armbruster, on www.robertbrault.com



No town can fail of beauty, though its walks were gutters and its houses hovels, if venerable trees make magnificent colonnades along its streets. ~Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs, 1887



If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. ~Isaac Newton, letter to Robert Hooke, 5 February 1675



The best contraceptive is a glass of cold water: not before or after, but instead. ~Author Unknown



Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. ~Swedish Proverb



Who covereth thyself with light as a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain: Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind: Who maketh his angels spirits: his ministers a flaming fire: Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. ~Psalms 104:2-5



Resting is the sort of thing you've got to work up to gradually. It's very dangerous to rest all of a sudden. ~From the movie Topper, 1937



We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office. ~Aesop



All the mind's activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality. ~Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: Cities of the Plain



I... recommend to every one of my Readers, the keeping a Journal of their Lives for one Week, and setting down punctually their whole Series of Employments during that Space of Time. This kind of Self-Examination would give them a true State of themselves, and incline them to consider seriously what they are about. One Day would rectifie the Omissions of another, and make a Man weigh all those indifferent Actions, which, though they are easily forgotten, must certainly be accounted for. ~Joseph Addison, 1712



Freedom means choosing your burden. ~Hephzibah Menuhin



We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872



If sisters were free to express how they really feel, parents would hear this: "Give me all the attention and all the toys and send Rebecca to live with Grandma." ~Linda Sunshine



The one charm of the past is that it is the past. ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray