A little wisdom from Dr. Mardy
Do you like quotations? I love and collect them. I can sit quite happily for hours reading any decent dictionary of them. Good ones are distilled wisdom.
Of course, being pathetically vain and insecure I am always thrilled when someone quotes me (and livid when they don't credit me).
Dr. Grote Mardy must love quotations even more than I do. He sends a selection out every week - find him at www.drmardy.com. So I was vastly flattered when a couple of years ago a friend sent one of my lines to Dr. Mardy and he used it.
I think it was "Nothing fails like success". Or it could have been "The road to failure is paved with success".
See? I have very few ideas and am so thrilled when I have one that I keep playing with it.
That preamble reminds me of three favourites. Einstein was asked why he wrote so few books. He replied, "I have very few ideas."
De la Rochefoucauld said much the same thing twice: "We can always bear the mnisfortunes of our friends with equanimity" and "There is something not entirely displeasing in the misfortunes of our friends."
Here are some quotes sent by Dr. Mardy yesterday.
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Maya Angelou
"I have begun in old age to understand...that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others." Saul Bellow
"When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones." Peter De Vries
"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted." Benjamin Disraeli
"Our friends are generally ready to everything for us, except the very thing we wish them to do." William Hazlitt
" Don't flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. The nearer you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better." Edgar Watson Howe
"The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated." William James
"A study came out this week that said one out of four American workers is angry at work. And the other three save it for the loved ones at home." Bill Maher
" You Always Hurt the One You Love." Title of song by Allan Roberts and Doris Fisher, first recorded by The Mills Brothers in 1944 (Opening Lyric: "You always hurt the one you love, The one you shouldn't hurt at all. You always take the sweetest rose, And crush it till the petals fall").
Does anyone today write lyrics one tenth as good as that? Of course not. And why? Poor education - the greatest scourge of our times.
Incidentally, does anyone know why the editing function on this wretched system has gone mad? All of a sudden, no matter what I do the preview shows everything as one unbroken block of text.
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