Everything we possess that is not necessary for life or happiness becomes a burden, and scarcely a day passes that we do not add to it.

To be happy, you must fancy that everything you have is a gift, and you the chosen, though you worked your tail off for every bit of it.

A cat, after being scolded, goes about its business. A dog slinks off into a corner and pretends to be doing a serious self-reappraisal.

You spend 90% of your adult life hoping for a long rest and the last 10% trying to convince the Lord that you're actually not that tired.

Man, in his sensitivity, does not give names to animals he intends to eat but goes on giving names to children he intends to send to war.

It's curious the way we get nostalgic for some hoped-for thing that never happened, as if something that never happened were in the past.

As important as it is to keep picking yourself up and brushing yourself off, it's also important to stop tripping over your own two feet.

There are many experts on how things have been done up to now. If you think something could use a little improvement, you are the expert.

What we have earned by the sweat of our brow, we defend with pride. What we have gained by the accident of birth, we guard with prejudice.

Be the master of your fate, be the captain of your soul, but do not hesitate, should the chance befall you, to be the slave of your heart.

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit.

There is a lesson we learn early and harmlessly, or late and traumatically - that there are things we can break that our parents can't fix.

Be it human or animal, touch is a life-giving thing. Has anyone ever had a stroke or a heart attack while cozied up with a pet? I doubt it.

Yes, to be a good parent, you have to sacrifice, but this is not a requirement of parenting, it is a requirement of being good at something.

One day, in your search for happiness, you discover a partner by your side, and you realize that your happiness has come to help you search.

There comes a morning in life when you wake up a new person; that is to say, you wake up the same person but you realize it's your own fault.

Often it's just a short swim from the shipwreck of your life to the island paradise of your dreams, assuming you don't drown in the metaphor.

Happiness is life served up with a scoop of acceptance, a topping of tolerance and sprinkles of hope, although chocolate sprinkles also work.

Eventually you realize that your whole life up to now has been preparation, and you begin to suspect that the rest might be preparation, too.

Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane.

Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it.

Try to discover, The road to success, And you'll seek, But never find, But blaze your own path, And the road to success, Will trail right behind.

Science can reconstruct Tyrannosaurus Rex from a fossilized bone and a fancied footprint, but it can't reconstruct God from the whole of creation.

Sometimes I think my life would make a great TV movie. It even has the part where they say, "Stand by. We are experiencing temporary difficulties.

Looking back you realize that a very special person passed briefly through your life- and it was you. It is not too late to find that person again.

When I am gone, my love, do not look for me in the places we used to go to together. Look for me in the places we always planned to go to together.

We all know them — the unstructured person whose every action seems aimless and the totally organized person whose every action defeats some purpose.

Take no revenge that you have not pondered beneath a starry sky, or on a canyon overlook, or to the lapping of waves and the mewing of a distant gull.

Yes, I believe in guardian angels, because otherwise I must believe that life is a string of death-defying miracles - and I don't believe in miracles.

From an aunt, long ago: "Death has come for me many times but finds me always in my lovely garden and leaves me there, I think, as an excuse to return.

First God created time; then God created man that man might, in the course of time, perfect himself; then God decided that He'd better create eternity.

So I said to myself, "There but for the grace of God go I," only to realize I was looking in a mirror and had seriously overestimated the grace of God.

Does it seem sometimes that you are always the one to break an embarrassing silence — and always by saying something more embarrassing than the silence?

I say to my child, I will explain to you as much of life as I can, but you must remember that there is a part of life for which you are the explanation.

Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do - just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve.

It's like this. Father Time keeps pitching the years at us. We swing and miss at a few. We hit a few out of the park. We try not to take any called strikes.

No matter what you do in life, a part of you still sits at a curbside, still hearing the drumbeat of a distant parade, still waiting for it to turn the corner.

Sometimes two people need to step apart and make a space between that each might see the other anew, in a glance across a room or silhouetted against the moon.

Man will have replicated his own intelligence not when he teaches a computer to reason but when he teaches a computer to have a nagging feeling in its circuits.

Once you become the mommy or daddy in your child's world, it is the only world in which you exist, no matter how much you fancy there is a separate world of your own.

Every great artist raises art to a science, and every great scientist raises science to an art, hence we have Michelangelo's David and Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

What you don't realize as a kid is that if your parents are always going to be there for you, they aren't going to be somewhere else doing exciting and glamorous things.

Today's Multiple Choice Thought There is no place where a loving touch so completely compensates for an unskilled hand as in: a. the bedroom b. the nursery c. the garden

If a rabbit defined intelligence the way man does, then the most intelligent animal would be a rabbit, followed by the animal most willing to obey the commands of a rabbit.

No matter how reclusive we tend to be, we picture the after-life as a community of souls. It is one thing to seek privacy in this life; it is another to face eternity alone.

Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love.

Fate, Chance, God’s Will — we all try to account for our lives somehow. What are the chances that two raindrops, flung from the heavens, will merge on a windowpane? Gotta be Fate.

In a dark moment I ask, "How can anyone bring a child into this world?" And the answer rings clear, "Because there is no other world, and because the child has no other way into it."

In childhood, we yearn to be grown-ups. In old age, we yearn to be kids. It just seems that all would be wonderful if we didn't have to celebrate our birthdays in chronological order.

Do not be someone looking for [insert]. Be [insert] looking for someone. Suggestions for [insert]: —love —friendship —understanding —appreciation —tolerance —a helping hand —a leg up —an answer

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