Most Popular of 2016

Here, in order of popularity, are my 75 most popular tweets of 2016, based on number of times liked or retweeted on Twitter.


"I don't think you can feel entitled and still be happy,  Happiness always comes from feeling that you've been blessed."


"I am not against any life style, unless you insist I adopt it.  I am not against any religion, unless you insist I practice it."


"It's said that you only get one life.  Truth is, you only get one birth and one death.  How many lives you squeeze in is up to you."


"The first thing to remember about the art of conversation is that you are not the other person's favorite subject."


"A good part of tolerance is just letting others live by the same deceptions we allow ourselves."


"You can look ahead to happiness, or you can look back on it, but it's so hard to notice it to your left or right."


A question to occasionally ask yourself is this:  "What did I approve today by remaining silent?"


"All it takes is one person who cares, and it is no longer a vast, uncaring universe."


"I try to remember, when I hear a boastful person, that it's hard to be humble when no one is proud of you."


"Nobody's perfect, in case you thought you were perfect, or in case you thought you were nobody."


"Only a man is allowed to give up.  There is always someone a woman must carry on for."


"Always keep in your pocket a spare moment, should someone ask if you have one."


"Wisdom is not what you know but how quickly you adjust when the opposite proves true."


"Love can be a conversation about nothing -- or it can be a quiet comfort in each other's presence that is about everything."


"Sometimes the wisest thing to do is to just sit back and let people come to their senses."


Personal ad:  "Bundle of good intentions seeks mind-reader."


"We find in ourselves the strength to overcome every obstacle, which is a good thing, because we also find in ourselves every obstacle."


"Sometimes there are words you'd be ready to believe again -- if someone would only say them again."


"Why do we need forgiveness and mercy?  Because not all sins are forgivable and not all sinners deserve mercy."


"You have a choice.  You can be the person it takes to get what you want, or you can be the person you want and take what you get."


"Never be discouraged by the opinion of people who don't know what you're about to accomplish."


"The trouble with taking offense is not that it makes trivial things important but that it makes trivial people important."


"Time is the only one of life's resources that when it's all finally spent, you wish you had spent more of it foolishly."


"Life is a grand party where you never meet the host and have to leave when others are just arriving."


"The advantage of silence over expressing an opinion is that there's a wider range of things you can claim you didn't mean by it."


"The danger in life is that we will choose to go nowhere because we know the way, choose to do nothing because we know how."


"Yes, I accept reality, but that does not imply endorsement."


"To be happy is to make a little more meaningful the life of every person who ever prayed you would be."


"It is still possible to be a blind optimist.  Helps also if you're deaf."


"The reason it's so hard to discover who we are is that we tend to be looking for a more talented version."


What no one thought possible, one individual accomplishes, and then everyone has an idea how it can be done better."


"Oh, the things that go through my mind that I never say.  Oh, the things I say that never go through my mind."


"As important as keeping a grasp on reality is keeping a grasp on possibility."


"I look at it this way -- if my prayers were always answered, I'd be praying to someone no wiser than I am."


"I have found that when you leave behind your preconceived notions of people, you rarely go back for them."


"If there is anything worse than self-interest pretending to apologize, it is self-interest pretending to forgive."


"One way to meet new people is to listen a little more carefully to the people you see every day."


On the Seventh Day, the Creator sat back, took off his gloves and said, "No fingerprints.  If they want to find me, they'll just have to look in the sunsets."


"You can't return to a time, but you can return to a place where they remember you the way you were."


"So often when you make the effort to understand, you discover that forgiveness is not required."


"In the end there aren't any answers, just questions, and they're all trick questions."


"I have been alone in a crowd and, in fact, have many times sought a crowd for that purpose."


"There is no bridge to excellence.  It is a tightrope you walk over a sheer and sudden drop into the ordinary."


"If people believe, the facts won't stop them, and if people don't believe, the facts won't make them."


"If you wonder why older couples do not more often kiss and hug, you do not appreciate how intimate it is to just grow old together."


"It's impossible" is the perception.  "It's never been done," is the fact.  "It's never been impossible," is the discovery.


"You can let yourself feel offended, belittled, discouraged.  There is always reason for it.  There just isn't time for it."


"What amazes you, looking back, is how satisfying a life can be fashioned from dreams that never came true."


"At some point you just have to let heredity and environment debate themselves, while you off and shape your own life."


"Happiness is an occasional glance into how simple it all can be."


"The trouble with getting up in the morning is that it's hard to rescue a day that begins with such a basic mistake."


"There is a final stage in civilized society where everything is offensive but it doesn't offend anyone."


"I don't defend my honor.  My honor is perfectly able to defend itself.  If I'm defending it, it's my pride."


"An important corollary to the Golden Rule is to leave others be as you would have them leave you be."


"If God had wanted a better you, He would have created a better you.  And that's the challenge -- He did!"


"People who haven't the energy for commitment greatly underestimate commitment as a source of energy."


"Never explain -- until you find that one special person who cares -- then always explain."


"You can trust after doubting, but it is a harder thing to trust after being certain."


"It is hard to remember sometimes that you woke up just a few hours ago with no intention of antagonizing anyone."


"I don't know that any two people are fated to meet, but I think in some cases Fate stand ready to intervene if they don't."


"Perhaps God has spoken to you, perhaps not, but He is more likely to have spoken to you than to some third party about you."


"Never taking a chance is a way of losing without ever having a chance of winning."


"You can write a success story, or a hard-luck story, out of the same set of excuses."


"A watershed moment in life is when you realize that what you can or can't do is a decision, not a recollection."


"The way to argue with an articulate person is to respond with a silence and let them articulate it."


"How do you become a good person?  You practice the mannerisms until they become your own."


"You don't have to be an optimist to know that many a bright day hides in a morning mist."


"Life pretty much begins when you stop making excuses and find yourself a reason."


"Act, though you judge it hopeless, for you have a greater ability to act than to judge hopelessness."


"There is never just one loose end, so if you're feeling like a loose end, someone else is, too."


One of life's simpler rules:  "Never put yourself in the position of being harmed by someone telling the truth."


"It is tolerable -- the lie that gets you through your days, if you can return to a truth that gets you through your nights."


"Life gives us the minutes and the hours.  We create the moments and the occasions."


"If only regret had action's purpose.  If only action had regret's information."


"Learn to hold your tongue, and you will be fluent in every language and on all topics."


"I enjoy an occasional day with my memories -- these paintings hanging on the walls of my mind."


"Only in love can you get blindsided by something you saw coming."


"Sometimes the silences between two people are just conversations committed to memory."


"Just standing there with a blank look on your face is better than uttering words to that effect."


"Nothing in life is so little appreciated as the moral character it takes to be a normal, everyday person."


~~ Robert Brault