Friendly Persuasion

 "Nothing makes you a decent person like having someone in your life who stubbornly operates under that assumption."

From The Observation Tower

 

"There are reasons no one could love you -- until they become the reasons someone does."

"Sorrow is different from happiness in that it is recognizable while in progress,"

"Life is a vale of tears in which at times you just can't stop giggling."

"Nobody wants your opinion unless you maintain a suite of offices in order to give it."

"The problem with having just one body is that people keep mistaking you for the previous occupant."

"Another day like all days -- trivial things claiming importance by going wrong, important things seeming trivial by going right."

Memorial Day Thoughts

 You don't have to believe in an after life to believe that there are people gone from this earth you can still make proud of you.

There are memories that will always make me lonesome but will never make me sad.

The thing about people who understand you is that when they are gone, you can still visit them, and they still understand you.

The Process at Work

Overheard at a town meeting: "All I want is what I rightfully deserve and my fair share of the rest."

Sunday Sermonette

 It can be argued that civilized society is founded not on the principle of loving thy neighbor but on the "pretense" of loving thy neighbor, a less demanding practice we call "civility."

  Today, as we witness the decline of civility, and the erosive impact of that decline on society, we come to a realization -- that pretense is difficult to sustain, that truly loving thy neighbor, as the gospels preach, might always have been the easier path.

Getting Serious

 "In a society that so celebrates winners, evil need not appear to be good -- it need only appear to be winning."

"Evil will have won not when we see it all around us but when it is all around us, and we don't see it."

"It there's one thing evil has done more effectively than good, it to demonstrate what one small person can do."

This and That

Woman, about late husband:  "He was a man of few words, and by the time we got married, he had already said them."

Nothing reduces your need for someone's approval like getting to know them better. 

I don't suggest we give up the idea that there's a little good in everyone, but, by gosh, it would certainly explain a lot of things.

I'll just say this -- that nothing makes a good first impression on me like an obvious attempt to do so.

Not only do I believe in dressing for an occasion, I believe it's the way to make it an occasion.

I've come to realize this -- that "smart casual" is not some particular style of dress; it is anything a smart casual person shows up wearing. 

Sometimes it's got to be fate, as when two people meet and discover they not only share the same likes and dislikes but the same don't give a damns.