Skip to main content

Archives - December 2003

December 1, 2003

Honest criticism is hard to take --- especially when it comes from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

– Franklin P. Jones

December 2, 2003

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

– George Dennison Prentice

December 3, 2003

Never explain --- your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

– Elbert Hubbard

December 4, 2003

Treasure the love you receive above all. It will survive long after your good health has vanished.

– Og Mandino

December 5, 2003

Let the fear of danger be a spur to prevent it; he that fears not, gives advantage to the danger.

– Francis Quarles

December 6, 2003

There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

– Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

December 7, 2003

To endure is greater than to dare; to tire out hostile fortune; to be daunted by no difficulty; to keep heart when all have lost it --- who can say this is not greatness?

– William Makepeace Thackeray

December 8, 2003

Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

– Susan Ertz, ANGER IN THE SKY

December 9, 2003

My riches consist not in the extent of my possessions, but in the fewness of my wants.

– J. Brotherton

December 10, 2003

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

– William Feather

December 11, 2003

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

– Igor Stravinsky

December 12, 2003

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

– Martin Luther King Jr.

December 13, 2003

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

– Don Marquis, THE ALMOST PERFECT STATE

December 14, 2003

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown.

– H. Ross Perot

December 15, 2003

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.

– Buddha

December 16, 2003

Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.

– Christopher Morley, INWARD HO

December 17, 2003

Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed.

– Michael Pritchard

December 18, 2003

Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.

– David Borenstein

December 19, 2003

Humor is not a postscript or an incidental afterthought; it is a serious and weighty part of the world's economy. One feels increasingly the height of the faculty in which it arises, the nobility of things associated with it, and the greatness of services it renders.

– Oscar W. Firkins, OSCAR FIRKINS: MEMOIRS AND LETTERS

December 20, 2003

The great art of giving consists in this: the gift should cost very little and yet be greatly coveted, so that it may be the more highly appreciated.

– Baltasar Gracian

December 21, 2003

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.

– Ruth Stout

December 22, 2003

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

– Albert Einstein

December 23, 2003

Success will not lower its standard to us. We must raise our standard to success.

– Rev. Randall R. McBride, Jr.

December 24, 2003

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.

– Agnes M. Pharo

December 25, 2003

Christmas --- that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance --- a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved.

– Augusta E. Rundel

December 26, 2003

The most wasted day of all is that during which we have not laughed.

– Sebastian R. N. Chamfort

December 27, 2003

Most of the things we decide are not what we know to be the best. We say yes, merely because we are driven into a corner and must say something.

– Frank Crane, ESSAYS

December 28, 2003

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

– Sir Winston Churchill

December 29, 2003

The observation of others is coloured by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything until we can be impartial about our own organism.

– A. R. Orage, ESSAYS AND APHORISMS

December 30, 2003

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.

– Margaret Mead

December 31, 2003

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to.

– Bill Vaughn