Words

Words Pilate might have said to Christ, "You are charged with unlawful doing unto others as you would have them do unto you." 

Words you don't wish to have said at your memorial service:  "He was a person who, if he chased a butterfly, it would take him to the office."

Words picked up from outer space:  "Twinkle, twinkle, little star..."

Words from a graveside ceremony:  "Before I begin, please silence your cellphones."  Voice from inside the casket:  "Sorry."

Words overheard on Judgment Day:  "To begin with, I want to thank you all for your service."

Words overheard at my house:  "I don't crave recognition.  I like recognition.  I crave chocolate."

The Beauty of Forgiveness

"The beauty of forgiveness is that it requires only a forgiving party.  It does not require a party worthy of forgiveness." 

"To forgive the forgivable is merely justice, an accommodation of a reasonable mind.  To forgive the unforgivable is true forgiveness, an accommodation of a merciful heart.

Sparsely Sage...Rosemary...and Rhyme

 

"You only get one life, but you can't get through it as only one person."

"Of Time and Space I don't know much, 

But this I'm pretty sure of --

That both are things it doesn't hurt

To give someone a bit more of.

The Voice of Experience

You come to realize this about the satisfaction of growing old together -- that it is entirely a triumph of "together" over "growing old." 

Some New, Some Old

 There are few opportunities in life more exciting than meeting a beautiful person who has not yet been sufficiently informed of the fact.

What person of faith does not pray for certainty, as if the world needs fewer people of faith and more people of certainty.


A key element in the art of communication is the perfectly-worded glance.

You can look at it as traffic, or you can look at it as a convocation of people who, with varying degrees of resolution and determination, got themselves up, dressed and out the door this morning.

"Morning Commute" - vikingprogress.com

I have always enjoyed expressing myself through music.  My instrument?  My two hands applauding the band.


I have this dream.  It's Judgment Day and the Lord says to the assembled hopefuls, "I see what you have done to planet Earth.  Why exactly again would I want that done to Heaven?"


One thing I've observed, both in myself and others, is that you can be as good a person as a child mistakenly thinks you are.


The trouble with self-love is that it doesn't last, and rarely do you remain friends after the break-up.

Kind Words About Politics

"Political party -- where people of shared values form an allegiance and then proceed to sacrifice their values to the allegiance."

"A political party is like any other conspiracy  -- the people it conspires against think they are part of it."

"One reason for hope, I suppose, is that of the Seven Deadly Sins, only two -- Envy and Greed -- have organized politically."

A Speculation

 "What is the Book of Genesis, after all, but the story of how God created artificial intelligence, an intelligence that falls as far short of being divine as our robots fall short of being human."

Ah, Romance!

"We crave romance, but if life were truly romantic, we would all be ships passing in the night.  Fortunately, life is real, so we meet in an elevator." 

Ol' Blue Eyes

 With apologies to Paul Anka and the co-composers of "My Way", here are some alternative  lyrics I think Frank might not have objected to. 

   Regrets,

I've had a few,

A fling or two

                       I paid the price for,                       

The odd romance,

The crazy chance

I spun the wheel,

I rolled the dice for.

   What is a man?

 What's he to be? 

Is he some pawn

Of Destiny?

Or does he get

To choose his song,

To get it right

Or get it wrong.

In Case You Were Wondering...

 

60 Plus Workout Motivation: What Makes Robert Brault So Great? youtu.be

I'm sharing with you today a new YouTube video by my internet friend Rick Lewis, a man of many talents -- photographer, artist, business and technical advisor and fitness coach, to name a few.  He is now producing a series of youTube fitness workouts, one of which features some quotes of mine that Rick has found personally motivating. 

While the title is certainly extravagant, and I would not have chosen it myself, Rick is a big, strong fellow and not a person to argue with.  I will manage somehow to live with it while retaining my humility.  (smile).

I will be adding this link to my sidebar.  Please do take a look when you have a moment.

~~rb

   

To Care Or Not To Care

"Sometimes love needs a rest from caring and so endures for an intolerable few hours the guilt of not caring."

"If only you could stop caring, or if only you could go back in time and not start , which might be easier." 

"You can be a caring person and experience life as a series of joys and sorrows, or you can be an uncaring person and experience life as a string of annoyances."

Pot Shots At An Easy Target

"Say what you want about marriage, it's still the best known cure for unnecessary conversation."

Marriage:  a state of bliss in which if one partner dies unexpectedly, the other is the prime suspect.

Marriage: a relationship so intimate that your spouse can finish your sentences, although not usually the way you would.

Midweek Musing

 "Where shall I find my happiness today -- in my memories, in my dreams, in my appreciation of the moment?  That last one would be a novel idea."

Know Thyself

 "I've learned this about myself -- that beneath my carefree, superficial exterior lies a thoughtful inner spirit that just wants to party." 

Thoughts From Our Resident Know-It-All

 "To know what makes another person tick is to have information they would give a lot to know."

"What those born to wealth invariably have more of than those who have earned their wealth is pride in the achievement."

"There is almost no advantage in life that people are not willing to risk totally rather than give up partially."

"It is always those who have already won the game who believe that it should now have rules."

One Morning...

"One morning in a spring that seemed

forever dark and drear,

The sun was on the meadow

and a fragrance filled the air,

And those who had succumbed to thoughts

of sadness and despair

Were caught again, as usual,

completely unaware!"

"The lesson of Holy Saturday is to never give up hope -- or at least give it another day."

The Daily Grind

 "There is no actual law that says you can't get locked into a daily routine that makes you happy."

"Whatever you're trying to prove, it's good occasionally to spend a day not trying to prove it."

"Nothing is so underrated as the courage and perseverance it takes to be a normal, everyday person."

"There are days when you feel that if you walked down the street in a clown costume, no one would recall seeing anyone in a clown costume."

A Best Friend...

"A best friend is someone who recognizes the tiny shrugs and faint smiles that constitute your cries for help." 

On Miracles

"One of the things we are allowed to decide for ourselves is whether we wish to have miracles in our lives."

"We don't always get the miracle we pray for, but we always get the strength we pray for."

"You can wait for a miracle, but it is usually a better strategy to meet it halfway."

"One of life's sadder realizations, looking back over the years, is that you were the miracle you didn't believe in."

On Hope

 "What does hope get you?  It gets you a hopeful life, and when you think about it, what more can you hope to have?"

3000 Books Sold! Thank you.

 On the one hand, 3000 books sold over ten years is not exactly best-seller territory.  On the other hand, I won't deny the satisfaction I felt upon the sale of my 3000th book yesterday.

My book sales have never been a torrent.  They are more a persistent trickle, one or two at a time, sometimes skipping a few days but seldom more than that.  So while 3000 copies over ten years doesn't blow your socks off, it does amount to 5 or 6 copies a week, every week, for ten years  -- and, that, let me tell you, can be quite an ongoing boost to one's self-esteem.

I am pleased, too, to know that my books have sold without promotion.  I have never made a public appearance on behalf of my books, never a signing or a reading, never a celebrity endorsement, never a cent paid for advertising.  All I've ever done is to offer my books on my blog and via my Twitter account. For the rest, it has been a case of folks noticing my quotes on the internet, Googling my name and finding their way to my Amazon book pages.

And so I thank all you book buyers out there for your support over these ten years.  You are indeed patrons of the arts and, as supporters of the hard-copy printed word, a bit of a dying breed, I'm afraid.  I thank you and cherish you.  You have made very happy a fellow named Bob in Connecticut.

Cancel My Appointments, Please

"You can plan a picnic and hope for a sunny day, but sometimes a sunny day just turns up and demands your immediate attention." 

A Casualty of Prejudice

"You cannot appeal to the self-interest of prejudiced people, for rarely does an awareness of one's true self-interest survive one's prejudice." 

Thoughts of a Godseeker

 "If there's one thing people of tolerance might usefully borrow from people of prejudice, it is their religious zeal."

The test, for me, of any religion is what is left of it when stripped of its theology.  Is there a core of human kindness that can be practiced?

As for my own religion and politics, I continue to look for a religion that will accept me as a heretic and a political party that will accept me as a dissenter.

Nostalgia

"Nostalgia is less a longing for a past we once lived than for a future we once dreamed of."

More Miscellany

 "Far from knowing history, you wonder if politicians today even suspect that anyone is taking notes."

"If the human race is good at anything, it is good at surviving people giving up on it." 

"A wake-up moment in one's intellectual life is realizing that no impartial third party has ever sided with you."

"There is nothing like really getting to know people to reduce your need for their approval."

Saving The World

 "I am not against people wanting to save the world, but I suspect that if the world is to be saved, it will be saved by people with a smaller objective."

"If I could save a life by enduring a pinprick, I would. But if I could save a billion lives by enduring a billion pinpricks, I would not. It is my duty to do what I reasonably can to help another, but it is not my duty to single-handedly save the world, for if it were, what would be your duty?"

Life Is...

 "Life is a collection of moments you might have appreciated more if you had only known they were moments."

"Life is a series of stages, each preparation for the one before."

"Life is a series of things you do for the first time and the last time, the difference being that you know when it's the first time."

What Skeptic Has Not...

 What skeptic has not, in the dark of despair

Or the shadow of anguish and grief,

Sent out from his heart a questing prayer

To the God of his disbelief?

From The Miscellany Drawer

  "The most certain measure of a dumbed-down population is that nobody is asking dumb questions."

"If I were awarding an all-time prize for human ingenuity, it would go to the person who, unable to command anyone's respect or gratitude or love, invented the concept of loyalty." 

Ever wonder what an atheist says the ten or twenty times each day when everyone else says, "Thank God!"

"The central fallacy in parenting is that it's a teaching experience when, in fact, it's a learning experience.  We are asked as parents to absorb each lesson quickly enough to convert it, real-time, into advice and counsel." 

A Trail You Blaze

 "One key to succeeding is to get it out of your head that there's always going to be clear evidence that you are."

On Faith

 "Who is the person of greater faith -- the person of certainty or the person who every day overcomes doubt?"

On Happiness

 "One thing you notice about the happiest people is that they always seem to have the littlest reason."

On Parenting

"There is this curious feeling you have as a parent that nothing you do makes any difference and yet has lifelong consequences."

"All you can do as a parent is to make the recommended mistakes at the recommended age and trust to God."

"What's missing from most How-To books on parenting is how to be on the receiving end of it." 

A Thought By The Fire

 How often do we search to find

  in memories of old

Or in some fancied, wistful dream

 of days to yet unfold

Or in our fond imaginings of places

  far and wide

The happiness that all the while

  is sitting by our side.

Tender Subjects

I asked, "How can anyone who really knows me ever love me?" only to discover that it was the only way anyone ever would.

"It's not easy -- loving someone through the chinks in their armor -- and we seldom appreciate enough the person we ask it of."

"To truly know someone is to know the thing they never speak of -- and to recognize the silences that speak of it."

Just We Three

 "There are memories I choose not to live with, although we occasionally walk the same beach."

New Year's Thoughts

 "If everyone were a perfectionist, there would never have been an opening night on Broadway."

 

"It is a rare person who can distinguish a purpose in life from the side effects of having been born." 

"A Supreme Court justice can only be one of the following: liberal, conservative or just."

"If you have never lied to protect your honor, then you may call yourself honorable."

"Nothing runs out sooner than time to spare."