Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Nanny is a mad megalomaniac

Nanny does not know best when she is The State. Recent folly includes her desire to ban any display of tobacco in shops as if it will discourage teenage smoking. Next, the health watchdog NICE told pregnant women not to drink, while admitting no clinical evidence exists to support their kill joy attitude. Now Camden Council's green Labourites want to reduce the serving of meat and dairy products for the sake of the environment. Why do we tolerate this nonsense?

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Parents - christiansquoting.org.uk

If your children look up to you, you've made a success of life's biggest job.

The only true child experts are those that do not yet have any of their own.

During my piano recital, I was on a stage and scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore, - Cindy - age 8

If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.- Katherine Aird

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears: they cannot utter the one, nor will they utter the other.
Francis Bacon

The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them. Frank A. Clark

Parents are often so busy with the physical rearing of children that they miss the glory of parenthood, just as the grandeur of the trees is lost when raking leaves. -- Marcelene Cox

What a mercy was it to us to have parents that prayed for us before they had us, as well as in our infancy when we could not pray for ourselves!
John Flavel

Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands. - Anne Frank (1929-1945) "The Diary of a Young Girl," 1952.

Parents are by no means exempt from the intoxication of dominion. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #148

Happy is the child whose father acquits himself with credit in the presence of its friends ~ Robert Lynd, The Blue Lion

Before you were born your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning your room, and listening to you tell how idealistic you are. So before you save the rain forest from the bloodsucking parasites of your parents' generation, try delousing the closet in your own room. Charles Sykes DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS.

Schoolmasters and parents exist to be grown out of. London Sunday Times

[Being a parent] is tough. If you just want a wonderful little creature to love, you can get a puppy.Barbara Walters (1931-____)

There are no illegitimate children--only illegitimate parents. -- Leon R. Yankwich

Aid to Afghanistan

Alastair Leithead , BBC News, Kabul says "Some $10bn (£5bn) in aid promised to Afghanistan has still to be delivered, aid organisation Oxfam has said. It also finds that two-thirds of aid is not spent through the government and 40% goes back to donor countries in consultant fees and expatriate pay. Oxfam says the prospects for peace in Afghanistan are being undermined because what has been donated is not being used effectively. Oxfam carried out the report on behalf of 94 aid agencies in Afghanistan. '

I am surprised that an aid agency considers paying its expats to be repatriating its money. Should they work for nothing or only employ locals? I am also surprised an aid agency thinks that it is a good idea to give aid direct to a government which IMO is the surest way for it to reach only the rich. Finally there is no mention of the government scam whereby expats in the country have to daily pay for their stay via visa fees and that includes their children. So aid agencies are paying a tax in order to help the country.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Paradox - christiansquoting.org.uk

I think. . .I think it's in my basement. . .Let me go upstairs and check. --M.C. Echer

Paradox with him was only truth standing on its head to attract attention.-- Richard Le Gallienne writng of Wilde

Less is more.- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) : New York Herald Tribune, 1959.

If the brain were so simple we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't. -- Lyall Watson

Pantheism - christiansquoting.org.uk

The absorption of the individual in the universal is only another term for its destruction.... C. Harold Dodd (1884-1973)

Pain - christiansquoting.org.uk

In time of sickness the soul collects itself anew. -- Latin Proverb

We cannot learn without pain. -- Aristotle

Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you. Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional. Physical pain is a fact that comes with living, just as illness or financial woes or broken relationships are facts. But misery is a state of mind, a reaction to the facts, that can be controlled or altered by an act of will.-- Barbara, crippled by arthritis.

Pain is a kindly, hopeful thing, a certain proof of life, a clear assurance that all is not yet over, that there is still a chance. But if your heart has no pain -- well, that may betoken health, as you suppose: but are you certain that it does not mean that your soul is dead?... A. J. Gossip (1873-1954)

Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life.Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain.-- Emma Lazarus

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
C S Lewis - The Problem of Pain

In a sense, it (Christianity) creates rather than solves the problem of pain, for pain would be no problem unless side by side with our daily experience of this painful world, we had received what we think a good assurance that ultimate reality is righteous and loving. C. S. LEWIS, The Problem of Pain

No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. C. S. LEWIS

[Pain] removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. -- C.S. Lewis --The Problem of Pain

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret and disappointment. --Karl Marx

No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.-- William Penn

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.-- Proust

In the country of pain we are each alone.--May Sarton

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Dutch Islam film website 'shut'

BBC reports the latest craven dhimmitude in the West. "A website that a Dutch right-wing politician was planning to use to release a film expected to be fiercely critical of Islam has been suspended.
The US hosting service, Network Solutions, said it was investigating complaints that it may have breached guidelines on hate language.Dutch politician Geert Wilders says the 15-minute film describes Islam as "the enemy of freedom".The planned release has sparked angry protests in many Muslim countries.The Dutch government has disassociated itself from Mr Wilders' views, but there are fears the film will spark protests similar to those that followed the publication in Denmark two years ago of cartoons seen as offensive to Muslims.The film has already been condemned by several Muslim countries, including Iran and Pakistan. Mr Wilders' film is entitled Fitna, an Arabic word used to describe strife or discord, usually religious.Mr Wilders wrote a commentary in a Dutch newspaper on Saturday
"The film is not so much about Muslims as about the Koran and Islam. The Islamic ideology has as its utmost goal the destruction of what is most dear to us, our freedom," he wrote in De Volkskrant.Geert Wilders has ignored pleas to shelve his project "Fitna is the last warning for the West. The fight for freedom has only just begun," he said. He had been using Network Solutions to promote the film. But on Sunday, Network Solutions said it had received a number of complaints that were under investigation. It said the site was suspended until it was established whether the content of the site violated Network Solutions' terms of acceptable use. They include "material that is obscene, defamatory, libellous, unlawful, harassing, abusive... hate propaganda" and "profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature".Mr Wilders has had police protection since Dutch director Theo van Gogh was killed by a radical Islamist in 2004."

So what has happened to freedom of speech? Eurabia is upon us.

Pacificsm - christiansquoting.org.uk

[A pacifist is] the last and least excusable on the list of the enemies of society.--G. K. Chesterton

I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. --Mohandas Gandhi

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me' - George Orwell, writing of Britain's pacifists in 1942

The Bible is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help. -- Francis Schaeffer, 1984

The pacifist thinks that the alternative to war is peace; it is not. Sometimes the alternative is oppression. Sometimes certain God-given rights and liberties can be preserved only by resistance to that which would destroy them. And to defend certain basic God-given rights and liberties is not immoral but righteous. --Fulton John Sheen (1895-1979) _A Declaration Of Dependance_ [1941]

Orthodoxy- christiansquoting.org.uk

People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad . . . The orthodox Church never took the tame course or accepted the conventions; the orthodox Church was never respectable . . . It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob . . . It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to avoid them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. -- G K Chesterton {Orthodoxy, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1908, pp. 100-101}

Not only does "orthodox" no longer mean being right, it practically means being wrong. --G. K. Chesterton, 1905

We cannot be passive and silent towards those who reject God's Word and our holy faith.-- Abraham Kuyper, Confidentie, p72.

Do not bury our glorious orthodoxy in the treacherous pit of a spurious conservatism.
Abraham Kuyper, Sermon, Conservatism and Orthodoxy, Utrecht, 31 July 1870, in Abraham Kuyper a Biography, Fank Vanden Berg, Paideia Press, 1978.p 49.

After listening to modern tirades against the great creeds of the Church, one receives a shock when one turns to the Westminster Confession... and discovers that in doing so one has turned from shallow modern phrases to a "dead orthodoxy" that is pulsating with life in every word. In such orthodoxy there is life enough to set the whole world aglow with Christian love. --J. Gresham Machen, 1923.

[Leaders of the anarchist movement in Amsterdam] call their public demonstrations "Happenings". These paintings, these poems, and these demonstrations... are the expression of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness. Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in their art? Christians should stop laughing and take such men seriously. Then we shall have the right to speak again to our generation. These men are dying while they live, yet where is our compassion for them? There is nothing more ugly than an orthodoxy without understanding or without compassion. ... Francis A. Schaeffer, The God who is There [1968]

Othodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy. William Warburton (1698 - 1779)

Original sin- christiansquoting.org.uk

Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect all men. All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired. And this doctrine does away altogether with Carlyle's pathetic belief (or any one else's pathetic belief) in 'the wise few.'"- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Original sin is the only rational solution of the undeniable fact of the deep, universal and early manifested sinfulness of men in all ages, of every class, and in every part of the world. --CHARLES HODGE

Original sin is in us, like the beard. We are shaved today and look clean, and have a smooth chin; tomorrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth. --MARTIN LUTHER

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
John Milton. 1608-1674. Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 1.
Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.-Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) Obituary in "Newsweek," 14 Jun 1972.

Deep thinkers who look everywhere for the mysterious causes of poverty, ignorance, crime and war need look no further than their own mirrors. We are all born into this world poor and ignorant, and with thoroughly selfish and barbaric impulses. Those of us who turn out any other way do so largely through the efforts of others, who civilized us before we got big enough to do too much damage to the world or ourselves. -- Thomas Sowell

Optimism- christiansquoting.org.uk

When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up.

There's no danger of developing eyestrain from looking on the bright side.

Another day over.
Objectives fulfilled.
Deadlines met.
Pigs fed and ready for take off.

All work completed;
All customers satisfied;
All staff happy;
All pigs fed and ready to fly.

All deadlines met;
All bosses pleased;
All important decisions made;
Temperature set at 0 deg C in hell.

When pessimists think they're taking a chance, optimists feel they're grasping a great opportunity.

The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy.-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. James B. Cabell

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.-- Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

If I didn't have spiritual faith, I would be a pessimist. But I'm an optimist. I've read the last page in the Bible. It's all going to turn out all right.--Billy Graham

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulus--the digitalis of failure. -- Elbert Hubbard

Opposition- christiansquoting.org.uk

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

Opportunity - christiansquoting.org.uk

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.... Alexander Graham Bell, (1847-1922),

The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are.
John Burroughs (1837-1921) "Webster's Electronic Quotebase," ed. Keith Mohler, 1994.

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as unsolvable problems.John W. Gardner(1912-____)

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities. ~Walt Kelly (in Pogo)

Each day brings its own gift. Untie the ribbon. - Ann Ruth Schabacker

Every exit is an entry somewhere.... Tom Stoppard, Body, Mind and Spirit

Occult- christiansquoting.org.uk

Help Wanted: Telepath. You know where to apply.

Do witches run spell checkers?

I believe there is such a thing as witchcraft. Believing that there are spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that there are probably evil spirits; believing that there are evil spirits, I am bound in mere reason to suppose that some men grow evil by dealing with them. ... Yet I should certainly resist any effort to search for witches, for a perfectly simple reason, which is the key of the whole of this controversy. The reason is that it is one thing to believe in witches and quite another to believe in witch-smellers. ... Witches were not the feeble-minded, but the strong-minded - the evil mesmerists, the rulers of the elements. Many a raid on a witch, right or wrong, seemed to the villagers who did it a righteous popular rising against a vast spiritual [sic] tyranny, a papacy of sin. Yet we know that the thing degenerated into a rabid and despicable persecution of the feeble or the old. It ended by being a war upon the weak.
G. K. Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils(1922) in The Collected works of G. K. Chesterton, IV (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 336-7

It is the most ungodly and dangerous business to abandon the certain and revealed will of God in order to search in to the hidden mysteries of God. Martin Luther

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch
Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.
Shakespeare ,Macbeth , Act 4, Scene 1

BBC's Passion

I watched about half an hour of the first episode. That was all I could take of such a wimpish Jesus. I remain convinced that the second commandment prohibits such images. The Gospel is to be preached, not acted. No-one can portray the God Man faithfully except by preaching Him. But there is a deafening silence from Christians and an even louder one from Muslims who are supposed to object to artistic representations of their prophets.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Obstinacy- christiansquoting.org.uk

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool. Katharine Whitehorn

Obscenity- christiansquoting.org.uk

Obscenity is the sign of a weak mind trying to express itself.

Objectivity- christiansquoting.org.uk

Show me a man who claims he is objective and I'll show you a man with illusions.- Henry R. Luce (1898 &endash; 1967)

Obesity- christiansquoting.org.uk

Tubby or not tubby, fat is the question! &emdash;Sign in a slimming clinic

I have flabby thighs, but fortunately my stomach covers them.

The reason fat men are good-natured is they can neither fight or run.- Theodore Roosevelt

The waist is a terrible thing to mind. Ziggy (Tom Wilson)

Obedience- christiansquoting.org.uk

Wicked men obey from fear, good men, from love.-- Aristotle

In sacrifices a man offers only the strange flesh of irrational animals, whereas in obedience he offers his own will, which is our rational or spiritual worship. - The Berleburg Bible 1726-29 cited in Keil, Biblical Commentary, 156.

But when once Christ had called him, Peter had no alternative he must leave the ship and come to Him. In the end, the first step of obedience proves to be an act of faith in the word of Christ. But we should completely misunderstand the nature of grace if we were to suppose that there was no need to take the first-step, because faith was already there. Against that, we must boldly assert that the step of obedience must be taken before faith can be possible. Unless he obeys, a man cannot believe.-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1905-1945), The Cost of Discipleship

One act of obedience is better than one hundred sermons.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) In "Draper's Book of Quotations for the Christian World," by Edythe Draper, 1992.

Jeremiah refutes the popular, modern notion that the end of religion is an integrated personality, freed of its fears, its doubts, and its frustrations. Certainly Jeremiah was no integrated personality. It is doubtful if... he ever knew the meaning of the word "peace". We have no evidence that his internal struggle was ever ended, although the passing years no doubt brought an increasing acceptance of destiny. Jeremiah, if his "confessions" are any index, needed a course in pastoral psychiatry in the very worst way... The feeling cannot be escaped that if Jeremiah had been integrated, it would have been at the cost of ceasing to be Jeremiah! A man at peace simply could not be a Jeremiah. Spiritual health is good; mental assurance is good; but the summons of faith is neither to an integrated personality nor to the laying-by of all questions, but to the dedication of personality -- with all its fears and questions -- to its duty and destiny under God.
John Bright, The Kingdom of God [1955]

He who lives up to a little light shall have more light; he who lives up to a little knowledge shall have more knowledge; he who lives up to a little faith shall have more faith, and he who lives up to a little love shall have more love. Verily the main reason why men are such babes and shrubs in grace is because they do not live up their attainments. - THOMAS BROOKS

Let us therefore learn (as I have said before) so to behave ourselves in obedience to God that men also on their parts be friendly towards us. For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God.
John Calvin, Sermon 161, Thursday, March 26, 1556

In that obedience which we have shown to be due the authority of rulers, we are always to make this exception, indeed, to observe it as primary, that such obedience is never to lead us away from obedience to him, to whose decrees all their commands ought to yield, to whose majesty their scepters ought to be submitted. And how absurd would it be that in satisfying men you should incur the displeasure of him for whose sake you obey men themselves! The Lord, therefore, is the King of Kings, who, when he has opened his sacred mouth, must alone be heard, before all and above all men; next to him we are subject to those men who are in authority over us, but only in him. If they command anything against him, let it go unesteemed.
John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion [1559]

Christ came not to possess our brains with some cold opinions, that send down a freezing and benumbing influence into our hearts. Christ was a master of the life, not of the school; and he is the best Christian whose heart beats with the purest pulse towards heaven, not he whose head spins the finest cobweb.
Ralph Cudworth

Rest in this-it is His business to lead, command, impel, send, call, or whatever you want to call it. It is your business to obey, follow, move, respond, or what have you... The sound of 'gentle stillness' after all the thunder and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God.- Jim Elliot

When someone demands blind obedience, you'd be a fool not to peek. Jim Fiebig

Obedience is the only virtue that plants the other virtues in the heart and preserves them after they have been planted. -- Gregory the Great (540-604)

Those who would complain about the Word of God being forced down their throats are those with no intention of heeding it.- Dean C. Haskins

But the Christian sees things as they really are, and his will is brought into unison with God's will, so that he loves to do what he ought to do. He finds that in obedience to God, and there only, all the powers of his nature find full, free play, and all his capacities of happiness full gratification.
Robert Johnstone, Lectures on the Epistle of James

The gospel shows us that our spiritual problem lies not only in failing to obey God, but also in relying on our obedience to make us fully acceptable to God, ourselves and others. Every kind of character flaw comes from this natural impulse to be our own saviour through our own performance and achievement. On the one hand, proud and disdainful personalities come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are succeeding. But on the other hand, discouraged and self loathing personalities also come from basing your identity on your performance and thinking you are failing. - Tim Keller, 2002.

I was not born to be free. I was born to adore and to obey. C. S. Lewis

I find that doing the will of God leaves me with no time for disputing about His plans. George Macdonald (1824-1905)

To do the will of God from the heart in times of prosperity is the only way to bear this will from the heart in times of suffering. Andrew Murray

Make me what Thou wouldst have me. I bargain for nothing. I make no terms. I seek for no previous information whither Thou art taking me. I will be what Thou wilt make me, and all that Thou wilt make me. I say not, I will follow Thee whithersoever Thou goest, for I am weak, but I give myself to Thee, to lead me anywhither. ... John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

If two angels were to receive at the same moment a commission from God, one to go down and rule earth's grandest empire, the other to go and sweep the streets of its meanest village, it would be a matter of entire indifference to each which service fell to his lot, the post of ruler or the post of scavenger; for the joy of the angels lies only in obedience to God's will, and with equal joy they would lift a Lazarus in his rags to Abraham's bosom, or be a chariot of fire to carry an Elijah home. John Newton

Then are we servants of God, then are we the disciples of Christ, when we do what is commanded us and because it is commanded us. John Owen (1616-1683)

Nothing shall be lost that is done for God or in obedience to Him.... John Owen (1616-1683)

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist upon trying to modify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.
A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

If you will have the teachings of Christ, walk according to the knowledge you have already. Use your little knowledge well, and Christ will teach you more. 'If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.' John 7:17 -THOMAS WATSON

Numeracy - christiansquoting.org.uk

Lots of people can't count to 10. They are usually the ones in front of you of you in the supermarket express lane. --Sam Ewing , The Saturday Evening Post , 11/29/96

Nudity - christiansquoting.org.uk

nudity
A flying saucer results when a nudist spills his coffee.

This was not the crux of the problem presented by Mrs. Crundale.The crux was simply that she had designed costumes for Ariel, all the goddesses and the Nymphs which required that their bosomsbe bare, not partly or fleetingly bare, but completely and indeed aggressively....
Mrs Crundale's position was clear, and had been clear for years. She was an Artist, and to her the human body was simply a Mass, with a variety of Planes.... Nobody connected with the Little Theatre quite liked to explain to Mrs Crundale that the breasts of several well-known young ladies of Salterton, though undoubtedly Planes, had other connotations, and could not fittingly be unveiled at a public performance. But Valentine did so.
"These dresses will look charming then they are standing still, Mrs. Crundale," said she, "but when the girls dance your line will be completely spoiled. I suggest that you revise these slightly. giving some concealment for a strapless brassiere underneath."
And Mrs Crundale, who had really only wanted to make the point that the human body was nothing to her but an arrangement of planes, agreed without a murmur.
Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_

The Princess Borghese, Bonaparte's sister, who was no saint, sat to [the artist Antonio]Canova as a reclining Venus, and being asked if she did not feel a little uncomfortable, replied, "No. There was a fire in the room." - William Hazlitt, 1778 - 1830

Nudity is like grapefruit. There is more to it than meets the eye.- GJW

Nostalgia - christiansquoting.org.uk

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Why should I waste my time reliving the past when I can spend it worrying about the future?

The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.

Nostalgia is like a grammar lesson: you find the present tense and the past perfect.

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. --Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)

In every age the 'good old days' are a myth. No one ever thinks they were good at the time. For every age consists of crises that seem intolerable to those who live through them. Brooks Atkinson (1894- )_Once Around the Sun_ [1951], "February 8"

Nostalgia is a seductive liar. -George W. Ball

The past should be a springboard not a hammock. Irving Ball

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time. -- Art Buchwald

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet. ~ Cyril Connolly, in David Pryce-Jones, Journals and Memoirs (1983)

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past. -Robertson Davies

When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood. Sam Ewing

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. --Jan Glidewell

The illusion that times that were are better than those that are, has probably pervaded all ages. Horace Greeley

When I grow up I want to be a little boy.- Joseph Heller (1923-1999) "Something Happened."

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation. He recounts the decency and regularity of former times, and celebrates the discipline and sobriety of the age in which his youth was passed; a happy age which is now no more to be expected, since confusion has broken in upon the world, and thrown down all the boundaries of civility and reverence.
Samuel Johnson: Rambler #50

Ah tell me not that memory
Sheds gladness o'er the past;
What is recalled by faded flowers
Save that they did not last?
Letitia Landon (1802-1838) Despondency.

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday.
Paul McCartney -"Yesterday"

In general, life is better than it ever has been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word: 'dentistry. - P.J. O'Rourke--All the Trouble in the World, p.2

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.-- Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18)

People get nostalgic about a lot of things I don't think they were that crazy about the first time around. Beryl Pfizer

These are the good old days.
Just you wait and see.
Steve Turner
Perhaps one day this too will be pleasant to remember. Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit. Vergil, Aeneid, Book 1, line 203:

There has never been an age that did not applaud the past and lament the present. --Lillian Eichler Watson _Light From Many Lamps_

Nostalgia is like an anesthetic; you experience no pain, only a beautiful haze. When you grow older, what matters is not the way it was, but the way you remember it. --Roger and Natalie Whittaker _So Far, So Good_

I seem to have heard that observation before. . . . It has all the vitality of error and all the tediousness of an old friend." -- Oscar Wilde

Canada more sensible than UK?

Vancouver's hookah-parlour owners are celebrating after winning an exemptionThursday from a proposed new bylaw that will ban smoking on most sidewalks in commercial districts, in bus shelters and even in taxis passing through Vancouver.

In giving the bylaw unanimous approval-in-principle, Vancouver city council members bowed to arguments that hookah lounges provide an important cultural space for the city's Muslims and granted them a temporary exemption.
~ Frances Bula, "Hookah lounges exempt from bylaw" _Vancouver Sun_,
Friday, September 21, 2007

Friday, March 21, 2008

Normality- christiansquoting.org.uk

NORMAL IS NOTHING MORE THAN A CYCLE ON A WASHING MACHINE Whoopi Goldberg

Noise- christiansquoting.org.uk

Of all the varieties of modern pollution, noise is the most insidious.
R Lacey and D Danziger, The Year 1000, Little, Brown and Co,GB, 1999, p40.

Nigeria- christiansquoting.org.uk

Nigeria is not a great nation," he wrote. "It is one of the most disorderly nations in the world. It is one of the most corrupt, insensitive, inefficient places under the sun. It is one of the most expensive countries and one of those that give [the] least value for money. It is dirty, callous, noisy, ostentatious, dishonest and vulgar. In short, it is among the most unpleasant places on earth! Chinua Achebe quoted in Editorial in The New Republic Mar 22, 1999

West and East Nigeria are as different as Ireland from Germany. The North is as different from either as China.
Obafemi Awolowo, quoted in John Gunther, _Inside Africa_, 1955

Nigerians as a group, frankly,are marvellous scammers. I mean, it is in their natural culture. General Collin Powell

Nigeria, land of the greasy palm. -- Week Ending, BBC Radio 4

For some reasons perhaps deeply rooted in patriotism (however misplaced), hope or faith in the black man's ability to rule himself, youthful exuberance and a great deal of ignorance, Macaulay, Zik, Imoudu, Awolowo, Sardauna, Enahoro etc., went to town demanding that the British must go. They did. Nigerians sang for joy. We should have wept in self-pity.
Dele Sobowale February 19, 1995, Sunday Vanguard.

News- christiansquoting.org.uk

The news media is in a feeding frenzy. George Bush, 1988

In the case of news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation-(Voltaire, letter, 28 Aug. 1760)

New age - christiansquoting.org.uk

A new age of magic interpretation of the world is coming, of interpretation in terms of the will and not of the intelligence. There is no such thing as truth either in the moral or the scientific sense. Adolf Hitler

One reason why people find [Life-Force religion] so attractive is itgives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life- Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? ~C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity".

Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, "If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God." The Christian replies, "Don't talk damned nonsense." --C. S. Lewis, _The Case for Christianity_, 1943

There is the fact of the nearness of God, what the books call his "immanence". Push it too far and you have "pantheism"--a God lost in the world to which he is near.--Cleland B. McAfee, _Near to the Heart of God_, 1954

The religion of beauty, imagination, and philosophy, without constraint moral or intellectual, a religion speculative and self-indulgent. Pantheism, indeed, is the great deceit which awaits the Age to come. --John Henry Newman, _Difficulties of Anglicans_, 1850

The chief objection I have to pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word world.--Arthur Schopenhauer, _A Few Words On Pantheism_, 1851

Neutrality- christiansquoting.org.uk

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking.
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) "Patterns of Culture," ch. 1, 1934.

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance. - G.K. Chesterton The Speaker, 12/15/00

He who allows oppression shares the crime. --Erasmus Darwin

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favour of the status quo.-- Max Eastman (1883-1969)

I can promise to be sincere, but not to be impartial. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counter-claimed by Satan. -- CS Lewis.

Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft from here. -- Groucho Marx

For observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th'observer's sake.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Moral Essays.
To discuss evil in a manner implying neutrality, is to sanction it. -- Ayn Rand

Neighbour- christiansquoting.org.uk

668: The Neighbour of the Beast Anonymous

Need- christiansquoting.org.uk

The greatest hunger a person has is to be needed. Help create that feeling in others. - Sadhu Sundar Singh

Necessity - christiansquoting.org.uk

Farber's Fourth Law: Necessity is the mother of strange bedfellows.

Nature - christiansquoting.org.uk

Nature is a hanging judge.

Even the nature-worship which Pagans have felt, even the nature-love which Pantheists have felt, ultimately depends as much on some implied purpose and positive good in things, as does the direct thanksgiving which Christians have felt. Indeed Nature is at best merely a female name we give to Providence when we are not treating it very seriously; a piece of feminist mythology. There is a sort of fireside fairy tale, more fitted for the hearth than for the altar; and in that what is called Nature can be a sort of fairy godmother. But there can only be fairy godmothers because there are godmothers; and there can only be godmothers because there is God. G K Chesterton {Autobiography, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1936, p. 348}

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.'" The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are *not* part of "Nature" - but beavers and their dams *are*. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the "Naturist" reveals his hatred for his own race - i.e., his own self-hatred. -- Robert A. Heinlein, _Time Enough For Love_

If we can find God only as he is revealed in nature we have no moral God. --Reinhold Niebuhr, _Christian Century_, April 22, 1926

I do account it, not the meanest, but an impiety montrous' to confound God and nature, be it but in terms. --Walter Raleigh, _History of the World_, 1614

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law&endash;
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed&endash;
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) In Memoriam A. H. H.: 55.

Nationalism - christiansquoting.org.uk

A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours. W. R. Inge

Mysticism - christiansquoting.org.uk

The significant thing is that rationalistic, humanistic man began by saying that Christianity was not rational enough. Now he has come around in a wide circle and ended as a mystic -- though a mystic of a special kind. He is a mystic with nobody there. The old mystics always said that there was somebody there, but the new mystic says that does not matter, because faith is the important thing. It is faith in faith, whether expressed in secular or religious terms. The leap is the thing and not the terms in which the leap is expressed. The verbalization -- i.e., the symbol systems -- can change; whether the systems are religious or nonreligious and whether more radical or more conservative religious terms are used, whether they use one word or another is incidental. Modern man is committed to finding his answer upstairs, by a leap away from rationality and away from reason. -- Francis Schaeffer "Upper Story Experiences," Chapter 3, _Escape From Reason_.

Music - christiansquoting.org.uk

music
Reporter: What do you think of Stainer's Crucifixion?
Music critic: Good idea

How do you know when it's time to tune your bagpipes?

Musicians duet better.

Who is he bearing the sense of a man which is not ashamed toende the day without the singing of Psalms, seeing even the littlebirds with solemne devotion of sweet notes do both begin and end thedaie.-- Ambrose, Praise of Musicke

Twentieth century music is like paedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.-- Kingsley Amis

The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. If heed is not paid to this, it is not true music but a diabolical bawling and twanging. J. S. Bach

There is nothing to it,. You only have to hit the right notes at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
J S Bach Of the Organ, in K Geiringer, The Bach Family, 1954

An agreeable harmony for the honour of God and the permissible delights of the soul.
J S Bach's definition of music, in Derek Watson, Music Quotations, 1911

Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it.
Sir Thomas Beecham to a lady cellist during a rehearsal

When we sing, 'All we like sheep have gone astray', might we, please, have a little more regret and a little less satisfaction? -
Sir Thomas Beecham while rehearsing for a performance of Messiah; Beecham stopped the proceedings and addressed the choir.

'Have you heard any Stockhausen?' Sir Thomas Beecham was asked. 'No,' he replied, 'but I believe I have trodden in some.'

Handel is the greatest composer who ever lived. I would bare my head and kneel at his grave. - Ludwig van Beethoven, 1770 - 1827

If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going! - William F. Buckley

When music fails to agree to the ear, to soothe the ear and the heart and the senses, then it has missed its point.... Maria Callas

In truth we know by experience that song has great force and vigour to move and inflame the hearts of men to invoke and praise God with a more vehement and ardent zeal.- John Calvin (1509-64)

Musicke doth withdraw our mindes from earthly cogitations, lifteth up our spirits into heaven, maketh them light and celestial. --. John Chrysostom

Music hath charm to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.
William Congreve(1670 &endash; 1729)

If one were asked to name one musician who came closest to composing without human flaw, I suppose general consensus would choose Johann Sebastian Bach. - Aaron Copland, 1900 - 1990

As from the pow'r of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky.
JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700) A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY, 1687

Mozart's music is so pure and beautiful that I see it as a reflection of the inner beauty of the universe.--Albert Einstein (1879-1955) (In Armin Hermann's _Albert Einstein_ [1994])

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence. - Robert Fripp (1946 &endash; )

Bach almost persuades me to be a Christian. -- Roger Fry

Bach is a colossus of Rhodes, beneath whom all musicians pass and will continue to pass. Mozart is the most beautiful, Rossini the most brilliant, but Bach is the most comprehensive: he has said all there is to say. If all the music written since Bach's time should be lost, it could be reconstructed on the foundation which Bach laid.- Charles Gounod

I did think I did see all Heaven before me and the great God himself. - Handel about the composition of the Messiah

I occasionally play works by contemporary composers and for two reasons. First, to discourage the composer from writing any more, and secondly, to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. -- Jascha Heifetz

He did not see any reason why the devil should have all the good tunes.- E. W. Broome quoting Rowland Hill (1744-1833)

Her singing was mutiny on the high Cs. -- Hedda Hopper ((1890-1966)

Far too noisy, my dear Mozart. Far too many notes.-Emperor Joseph II on the première of 'The Marriage of Figaro', 1 May 1786.

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us. --Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Music makes people kinder, gentler, more staid and reasonable. The devil flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the word of God.
Martin Luther

Nothing on earth is so well-suited to make the sad merry, the merry sad, to give courage to the despairing, to make the proud humble, to lessen envy and hate, as music. Martin Luther

Next to the Word of God, the noble art of music is the greatest treasure in the world. MARTIN LUTHER

Of all the noises known to man, opera is the most expensive. - Jean-Baptiste Moliere (1622 &endash;1673)

Ahh, the soothing o' the Pipes... Whenever I find myself missing its melodious sounds, I just toss the cat in the dryer on low heat... Jordan Montgomery

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. Elvis Presley (1935-1977)

When Handel's servant used to bring him his chocolate in the morning, "he often stood silent with astonishment to see his master's tears mixing with he ink as he penned his divine compositions." And Burgh relates that "A friend, calling upon the great musician when in the act of setting those pathetic words, 'He was despised and rejected of men,' found him absolutely sobbing.---William Rockstro, _The Life of George Frederick Handel_, 1883

Is it not strange that sheep's guts should hale souls out of men's bodies? ~W.S., Much Ado About Nothing II,iii (1598)

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky. - Solomon Short

Glorious the song, when God's the theme. - Cristopher Smart (1722-71)

If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. Sydney Smith 1771-1845

The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music is as well, or better, able to praise Him than the building of a church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.... Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

The joy of the heart begets song.--The Talmud

Murphy - christiansquoting.org.uk

If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.-Edward A. Murphy, Jr.

Nothing is as easy as it looks.

Everything takes longer than you think.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.

If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way, unprepared for, will promptly

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

Mother nature is a bitch.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

Whenever you set out to do something, something else must be done first.

Every solution breeds new problems.

Bare feet magnetise sharp metal objects so they point upward from the floor -- especially in the dark.

Shake and shake
The catsup bottle,
None will come,
And then a lot'll.
There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects.

If I travelled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
Shin: A device for finding furniture in the dark.

There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.

In 1949, George Nichols, project manager with the Californian aviation firm, Northrop, heard his colleague, Captain E. Murphy, of Wright Field Aviation Laboratory, claim: If anything can go wrong, it will...

The other line moves faster.-- Ettore's Observation

Anything dropped in the bathroom falls in the toilet. -- Flucard's Corollary

Enough research will tend to support your theory. - Murphy's Law of Research

Anything that can go wrong, will -Larry Niven ,Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives,

Nothing is impossible for those who don't have to do it. -From Murphy's Laws of Combat

Multiculturalism- christiansquoting.org.uk

Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own....
W. S. Gilbert, _The Mikado; or, The Town of Titipu"

Not one of the multicultural classicists really wishes to live under indigenous pre-Colombian ideas of government, Arabic protocols for female behavior, Chinese canons of medical ethics, Islamic traditions of church and state, African approaches to science, Japanese ideas of race, Indian social castes, or Native American notions of private property.-- Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, _Who Killed Homer? : TheDemise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom_

I'm an unrestrained enthusiast for restraint. I would hope we could act in a more cautious, moderate way. But I think in our culture there is the assumption of universalism, the assumption that everyone else in the world is basically like us in terms of culture and values. If they are not like us, they want to become like us. And if they don't want to become like us, then there is something wrong with them. They don't understand their true interests, and we have to persuade them to want to become like us. That's a most unfortunate set of assumptions on our part, and it underlies a lot of what we do. We're going to have to get used to living in a world where there are different cultures, different civilizations, different values and priorities. There may be some sort of convergence, but only over a very long period of time. -- Samuel Huntington

Barbarian invasions would be superfluous: We are our own Huns. -- Bertrand de Jouvenal

In place of the old beliefs of a civilization based on godliness, judgment and historical loyalty, young people are given the new beliefs of a society based on equality and inclusion, and are told that the judgment of other lifestyles is a crime. ... The "non-judgmental" attitude towards other cultures goes hand-in-hand with a fierce denunciation of the culture that might have been one's own -...Roger Scruton, The West and the Rest, ISI Books, 2002 p81

What "multiculturalism" boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture -- and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture.~ Thomas Sowell

Mountains- christiansquoting.org.uk

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.
William Blake, "Gnomic Verses"

Motto- christiansquoting.org.uk

Look out for #1. Don't step in #2 either.

The Lawyer's Motto: "Insofar as manifestations of functional deficiencies are agreed by any and all concerned parties to be imperceivable, and are so stipulated, it is incumbent upon said heretofore mentioned parties to exercise the deferment of otherwise pertinent maintenance procedures." In other words: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Motivation- christiansquoting.org.uk

There was once a dog who boasted to his canine friends that he could run faster than anyone. One day he chased a rabbit and failed to catch it. His friends ridiculed him.
"All right," said the dog, "I did not make good on my boast. But remember, the rabbit was running for his life and I was only running for my dinner."
Incentive is all-important in motivation. -- Cited in The Best of BITS & PIECES

Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fireunder you, chances are it will burn very briefly.-Stephen R. Covey (1932 - ____) US consultant, author

Great minds have purposes, others have wishes.--Washington Irving

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.- Samuel Johnson: Lives of the Poets (Cowley)

Inquiries into the heart are not for man. - Samuel Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)

No, Sir; to act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite beings. Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.
Samuel Johnson (Boswell: Life of Johnson

We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure. -- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #60

Mother - christiansquoting.org.uk

There is no way to be a perfect mother, and a million ways to be a good one. Jill Churchill, Grime & Punishment (Bantam)

Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease (Lisa Alther)

Early Easter

This year is about as early as we get. Wikipedia says,

Easter is the first Sunday after the first fourteenth day of the moon (the Paschal Full Moon) that is on or after March 21 (the ecclesiastical vernal equinox).

Easter has not fallen on the earliest of the 35 possible dates, March 22, since 1818, and will not do so again until 2285. It will, however, fall on March 23 in 2008, but will not do so again until 2160. Easter last fell on the latest possible date, April 25, in 1943 and will next fall on that date in 2038. However, it will fall on April 24, just one day before this latest possible date, in 2011.

Morality - christiansquoting.org.uk

He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard for his country. There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country, who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections. Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, Nov. 4, 1775

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader...if virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.--Samuel Adams

Of course my standards are out of date! That's why they're called standards. - Alan Bennett

The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.-- Jeremy Bentham

Morals today are corrupted by our worship of riches. - Cicero

Morality and immorality are not defined by man's changing attitudes and social customs. They are determined by the God of the universe, whose timeless standards cannot be ignored with impunity. Dr. James Dobson

Values imparted by the reigning culture have now received the sanction of the state. This is reflected in the distribution of condoms in schools, in the prohibition of school prayer, in the official rhetoric--"nonmarital childbearing" or "alternative lifestyle"--and in other ways.
It takes a great effort for the individual to decide that something is immoral and to act on that belief when the law declares it legal and the culture deems it acceptable. --Gertrude Himmelfarb _The De-Moralization of Society_

The foundation of all morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge-- Thomas Henry Huxley

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason. David Hume in F A Hayek, The Fatal Conceit.

Morality cannot be legislated but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.-Martin Luther King, Jr.

No man in the world acts up to his own standard of right. --T. B. Macaulay, _Hallam_, 1828 (Edinburgh Review, Sept.)

'... belief in survival after death - the individual survival of John Smith, still conscious of himself as John Smith - is enormously less widesread than it was. Even among professing Christians it is probably decaying: other people, as a rule, don't even entertain the possibility that it might be true. ... There is little doubt that the modern cult of power worship is bound up with the modern man's feeling that life here and now is the only life there is. ... I would say that the decay of belief in personal immortality has been as important as the rise of machine civilization. ... I do not want the belief in life after death to return.... What I do point out is that its disappearance has left a big hole, and that we ought to take notice of that fact. ... [Mankind] is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.-George Orwell, 'As I Please' 3 March 1944

The weakling and the coward cannot be saved by honesty alone; but without honesty, the brave and able man is merely a civic wild beast who should be hunted down by every lover of righteousness. No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community. Theodore Roosevelt, "The Eighth and Ninth Commandments in Politics" _Outlook_ (May 12, 1900)

My show is not about mental health, It's about moral health. I don't give advice. I give my never-to-be-humble opinion -- Laura Schlessinger

Modesty is the proof morality is sexy. -- Wendy Shallit

The nations morals are like its teeth, the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them. George Bernard Shaw

If your morals make you dreary, depend upon it, they are wrong. I do not say give them up, for they may be all you have, but conceal them like a vice lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people. --Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)_Across the Plains_ [1892], "Lay Morals"

A person educated in mind and not in morals is a menace to society. --Juanita Kidd Stout (1919- )

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), What Is Man?(1906)

Our society is afflicted with the scourge of AIDS and other diseases that owe their origin to promiscuity. Yet the cry is not, "How can we stop promiscuity?" but rather, "How can we cure AIDS?" --Terry Virgo _Men Of Destiny_ [1987], "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn"

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. Washington

This country has spent about 30 years trying very hard to prove that no one, not even children, should be fettered by anyone else's idea of proper behavior. Now we have no norms. Or at least none that we hold in common. Are we happy yet? The Wall Street Journal, editorial, 1999

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike. Alfred North Whitehead

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Money - christiansquoting.org.uk

money

Budget: A method for going broke methodically.

It's not hard to meet expenses, they're everywhere.

Money is an article which may be used as a universal passport to everywhere except heaven and as a universal provider of everything except happiness.

If money could talk, it would say goodbye.

All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.

I am having an out of money experience.

I have taken a vow of poverty. To annoy me send money.

If money is the root of all evil, why do churches want it so bad?

Don't lend people money, it gives them amnesia.

When money talks, nobody notices what grammar it uses.

If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master. The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth, as that may be said to possess him.--- Francis Bacon

I don't care too much for money
Money can't buy me love
The Beatles

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed.-- Erasmus

The rich who are unhappy are worse off than the poor who are unhappy; for the poor, at least, cling to the hopeful delusion that more money would solve their problems -- but the rich know better. -- Sydney J. Harris

Put not your trust in money; but, rather, put your money in trust. Oliver Wendell Holmes

The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket. Frank McKinney Hubbard

A man may be a tough, concentrated, successful money-maker and never contribute to his country anything more than a horrible example. - Sir Robert Menzies (1894 &endash; 1978)

Antichrist is Mammon's son. - JOHN MILTON

There are many things that money can't buy, but it's very funny -- Have you ever tried to buy them _without_ money? -- Ogden Nash

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. Dorothy Parker

Cheque enclosed are the two most beautiful words in the English language --Dorothy Parker

The buck stopped before it got here. Bob Phillips

The lust of lucre has so thoroughly seized upon mankind that their wealth seems rather to possess them, than they to possess their wealth. --Pliny, "Letters"

I believe the power to make money is a gift of God...to be developed and used to the best of our abiblity for the good of mankind. Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money, and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience. --John D. Rockefeller, Sr, in Matthew Josephson, _The Robber Barons_

Misers are no fun to live with but they make great ancestors.--Tom Snyder

His money is twice tainted: 'taint yours and 'taint mine. Mark Twain

O cursed lust for gold,
To what dost thou not drive the heart of man?
Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70-19BC).

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Monasticism - christiansquoting.org.uk

I do not wonder that, where the monastic life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves. Samuel Johnson

Moderation - christiansquoting.org.uk

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains. Democritus

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in
principle is always a vice. Thomas Paine The Rights of Man (1792)

Monday, March 17, 2008

Millennium - christiansquoting.org.uk

We therefore condemn all who deny a real resurrection of the flesh . . . or who do not have a correct view of the glorification of bodies. We also condemn those who thought that the devil and all the ungodly would at some time be saved, and that there would be and end to punishments . . . .. We further condemn Jewish dreams that there will be a golden age on earth before the Day of Judgement, and that the pious, having subdued all their godless enemies, will possess all the kingdoms of the earth . . . The Second Helvetic Confession, XI

I realize that for postmillenialists, the good old days are in the future. -- G E Veith

Middlesex - christiansquoting.org.uk

It is a pleasure to me to know that I was even born in so sweet a village as Southgate ... Middlesex in general ... is a scene of trees and meadows, of 'greenery' and nestling cottages; and Southgate is a prime specimen of Middlesex. It is a place lying out of the way of innovation, therefore it has the pure, sweet air of antiquity about it... Leigh Hunt, 1850

An acre in Middlesex is better than a principality in Utopia. T. B. Macaulay, 1837

Methodism - christiansquoting.org.uk

John Wesley's conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour. This is very disagreeable to a man who loves to fold his legs and talk. --Samuel Johnson, quoted Boswell, _Life of Johnson_. 31 March

How many taps are there on a Methodist bath?
Three: The hot, the cold and the strangely warm Phil Nevard

Metaphor - christiansquoting.org.uk

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. s--Aristotle, _Poetics_, 22, 1459a 5-7

Mercy - christiansquoting.org.uk

He that hath deserved hanging may be glad to escape with a whipping.-Thomas Brooks

They who truly come to God for mercy, come as beggars, and not as creditors: they come for mere mercy, for sovereign grace, and not for anything that is due. JONATHAN EDWARDS

To argue from mercy to sin is the devil's logic.JAMES JANEWAY
The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown;
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway,
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's,
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy.
William Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice. Act iv. Sc. 1.

A God all mercy is a God unjust. Edward Young. 1684-1765. Night iv Line 233.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Men - christiansquoting.org.uk

My wife complains I never listen to her...or something like that.

Duke University Medical Center is reporting an unusual occurrence in the Obstetrics department: a child was born with both male and female organs. A penis and a brain. Laffaday, 19 May 1999

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard

All along one of my complaints was his absence from home, and even worse, his absence when he *was* home--Sonia Johnson, From Housewife to Heretic.

The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Rudyard Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills

Complete masculinity and stupidity are often indistinguishable. -- H.L. Mencken

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight. H. L. Mencken, _My Life as Author and Editor_, ed. Jonathan Yardley, 1993

A bachelor, in my opinion, is only half alive. -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Men are nicotine-soaked, beer-besmirched, whisky-greased, red-eyed devils. - Carry Nation (1846 &endash; 1911)

Some women want the strong silent type, so they can tell him to shut up and rearrange the furniture. -- P.J. O'Rourke

There are three types of men in the world. One type learns from books. One type learns from observations. And one type just has to urinate on the electric fence himself. -Will Rogers

The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do. B.F. Skinner, Contingencies of Reinforcement

Men and girls, men and girls:
Artificial swine and pearls. Gertrude Stein

Male silence is not the same as listening ~Gloria Steinem

Talking with a man is like trying to saddle a cow. You work like hell, but what's the point? -- Gladys Upham

Memory - christiansquoting.org.uk

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

So live that your memories will be part of your happiness.

There are three kinds of memory - good, bad and convenient.

Memory can glean, but never renew. It brings us joys faint as is the perfume of flowers, faded and dried, of the summer that is gone. -- Henry Ward Beecher

Pleasure is the flower that passes; remembrance, the lasting perfume.-Jean de Boufflers, 1738-1815

Of joys departed, not to return, how painful the remembrance. -- Robert Blair

Memory seldom fails when its office is to show us the tombs of our buried hopes.Lady Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849)

Joy's recollection is no longer joy, while sorrow's memory is sorrow still. -- Byron

She glances at the photo, and the pilot light of memory flickers in her eyes. -Frank Deford

Just as loss of memory in an individual is a psychiatric defect calling for a medical treatment, so too any community which has no social memory is suffering from an illness.-- Eerdmans Handbook to the History of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977), p. 2.

If the days grow dark, if care and pain
Press close and sharp on heart and brain;
Then lovely pictures still shall bloom,
Upon the walls of memory's room
--Charles Monroe Dickinson (1842-1924)_My Burdens_

Memory is a child walking along a seashore. You never know what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.--Pierce Harris

There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry. -- Washington Irving

If you don't go far enough back in memory or far enough ahead in hope, your future will be impoverished.
Art Linkletter (1912-____) From an internet collection of quotations

When Time who steals our years away
Shall steal our pleasures too,
The mem'ry of the past will stay,
And half our joys renew.
Thomas Moore 1779-1852 , Song. From Juvenile Poems.

Cherish all your happy moments - they make a fine cushion for old age. -- Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)

ROLL OF HONOUR
When, of a Sunda, Ah sits i mi pew,
Ah sees a list o lads at yance Ah knew,
An then it ardlins seems a day sin last
Ah spooak tiv em, though monny yeears es passed.

There's Dick at war a champion wi t'ploo,
Ti set a rig an furrow straight an true,
An Ben at snickled monny a fine fat hare,
E'll nivver trouble t'keepers onny mair!

'Arry, that oor Sarah used ti cooart,
An Bob at war a dab at ivvry spooart,
When Ah war young, Ah palled on wiv em all,
Bud noo they're nobbut neeams upon t'choch wall.
Q Nicholas An East Yorkshire Anthology

Memory is a great betrayer. --Anais Nin (1903-1977)_The Diary of Anais Nin_, Volume V [1974], "Letter to Geismar" 16 Jan

The popularity of video cameras arises from a simple misunderstanding. Somehow people have the idea that they won't mind being old if they can turn on the TV and see what they were like when they were young. This is not true.
The best memories are ones that have been allowed to evolve unhindered by documentary proof. I often cheer myself up by thinking back on my days as a football star.
These recollections would be less thrilling if they were accompanied by a video showing that I weighed 80 pounds and spent most of my time on the bench. Memory is better than a video because it's free and it doesn't work very well. --David Owen

We do not remember days, we remember moments. - Cesane Pareso

Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out. --Johann Richter [Jean Paul] (1763-1825)

We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us. DAVID SEAMANDS

God gave His children memory that in life's garden there might be June roses in December. --Geoffrey Anketell Studdert-Kennedy (1883-1929) _Roses in December_

I remember things that happened sixty years ago, but if you ask me where I left my car keys five minutes ago, that's sometimes a problem. -- Lou Thesz

Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. Mark Twain

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not. -- Mark Twain

In the memory of oppression, oppression peretuates itself. The scar does the work of the wound. That is the real tragedy: that injustice retains the power to distort long after it has ceased to be real. It is a posthumous victory for the oppressors, when pain becomes a tradition. This is the unfairly difficult dilemma of the newly emancipated and the newly enfranchised: an honorable life is not possible if they remember too little, and a normal life is not possible if they remember too much. -- Leon Wieseltier, "Scar Tissue", _The New Republic_, June 5, 1989

"Should old acquaintance be forgot? That depends on how they behave themselves."
Daily British Whig, Kingston, Ontario 23 July 1869

And when the wind and winter harden
All the loveless land,
It will whisper of the garden
You will understand
OW, Poems (1881) - to Constance

Meetings - christiansquoting.org.uk

Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings...they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

Meetings are held because men seek companionship or, at a minimum, wish to escape the tedium of solitary duties. They yearn for the prestige which accrues to the man who presides over meetings, and this leads them to convoke assemblages over which they can preside. Finally, there is the meeting which is called not because there is business to be done, but because it is necessary to create the impression that business is being done. Such meetings are more than a substitute for action. They are widely regarded as action. John Kenneth Galbraith , The Great Crash 1929

Meetings are indispensable when you don't want to do anything.- John Kenneth Galbraith

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting. - Ronald Reagan

Medicine - christiansquoting.org.uk

A night with Venus means a lifetime with Mercury. (Told by a pharmacy lecturer with reference to the first drug used in syphilisis. Later the quip was that the wages of sin is penicillin)

A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.

Prov. 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.

The those two great medicines: Diet and Self-Control.--Max Bircher (As quoted in Gordon Young's _Doctors Without Drugs_ [1962])

A prudent pharmacist often vends something for your complaint. But wine merchant you do this invariably.~ Thomas Campion 1567-1620 , The Epigrams of Thomas Campion.

The cure for anything is salt water -- sweat, tears, or the sea. Isak Dinesen (1885-1962)

All those who drink of this remedy recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who die. Therefore, it is obvious that it fails only in incurable cases. --Galen (circa 100 A.D.)

The Lord created medicines from the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them. ECCLESIASTICUS (38:4)

Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of the window, except that the birds might eat them." -Dr. Martin Henry Fischer

All those who drink of this remedy recover in a short time, except those whom it does not help, who die. Therefore, it is obvious that it fails only in incurable cases.--Galen (circa 100 A.D.)

Find that medicine, if you can,
For your decrepit man;
Who would fain his strength renew
Were it but to pleasure you
Robert Herrick, 'To His Mistress'

Leave your drugs in the chemist's pot if you can heal the patient with food. -Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine

Tranquilizers to overcome angst, pep pills to wake us up, life pills to ensure blissful sterility. I will lift up my ears unto the pills whence cometh my help.~Malcolm Muggeridge, New Statesman (Aug 3, 1962)

I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes. -Richard Nixon, U.S. President

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.-Sir William Osler (1849 - 1919), Aphorisms from his Bedside Teachings (1961) p. 105

The best of healers is good cheer. Pindar, "Nemean Ode"

A healthy population means a dead pharmaceutical industry. -Hans Reesch, Naked Express Second Witch

When religion was strong and science weak,men looked to magic for medicine; Now,when science is strong and religion weak,men look to medicine for magic.--Thomas Szasz ,_The Untamed Tongue: A Dissenting Dictionary_.

Physicians pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into humans of which they know nothing. -Francois Voltaire (1694-1778)

Mediaeval - christiansquoting.org.uk

There is something odd in the fact that when we reproduce the Middle Ages it is always some such rough and half-grotesque part of them that we reproduce . . . Why is it that we mainly remember the Middle Ages by absurd things? . . . Few modern people know what a mass of illuminating philosophy, delicate metaphysics, clear and dignified social morality exists in the serious scholastic writers of mediaeval times. But we seem to have grasped somehow that the ruder and more clownish elements in the Middle Ages have a human and poetical interest. We are delighted to know about the ignorance of mediaevalism; we are contented to be ignorant about its knowledge. When we talk of something mediaeval, we mean something quaint. We remember that alchemy was mediaeval, or that heraldry was mediaeval. We forget that Parliaments are mediaeval, that all our Universities are mediaeval, that city corporations are mediaeval, that gunpowder and printing are mediaeval, that half the things by which we now live, and to which we look for progress, are mediaeval.
G K Chesterton {"The True Middle Ages," The Illustrated London News, 14 July 1906}

Emirates stadium

My friend Trevor was given two tickets as a birthday present and kindly took me to the Emirates Stadium, first visit for both of us. It was a capacity 60,000 crowd in an excellent stadium where everyone has a good view.
It was Arsenal at home to Middlesbrough. The home team attacked continually but lacked penetration.
Another fruitless attack. Then the visitors counter-attacked and scored a good goal.
Arsenal continued to attack. Boro defended well. Arsenal took until four minutes from time to eventually equalise.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

Cambridge drops language demand

BBC says, "A language GCSE stopped being compulsory in 2004
Cambridge University has dropped its requirement for applicants to have a language GCSE because too few pupils now take them.
Independent schools still tend to offer languages, despite them being no longer compulsory beyond the age of 14.
However, only 17% of state schools offer them and less than half of GCSE pupils overall take them."

In my ay you could not get into any university without a foreign language and for Oxbridge you needed Latin too. And they tell us standards have not fallen? What happened to the EUromania?

UK dismisses al-Qaeda talks call

BBC says, "A call by a former senior aide to Tony Blair for the UK to start talks with al-Qaeda has been dismissed as "inconceivable" by the government. Jonathan Powell, an ex Downing Street chief of staff, told the Guardian the Northern Ireland peace deal showed talking to terror groups could work. He also said he would talk to Hamas in Gaza if he still worked at Number 10.The Foreign Office said the government would not talk to any group actively promoting its aims through violence.Mr Powell was one of the key negotiators for the government in reaching a settlement in Northern Ireland during Mr Blair's time at Number 10.BBC political correspondent James Hardy said Mr Powell now believes that deal would not have been possible without secret channels being opened to the IRA three decades earlier.In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Powell said talks with al-Qaeda might seem pointless at present, but ultimately a political solution would need to be developed alongside a security response.It is inconceivable that Her Majesty's government would ever seek to reach a mutually acceptable accommodation with a terrorist organisation like al-Qaeda "

I am astonished. A Labour government brokered a peace in N Ireland by talking to terrorists, giving them get Out of Jail Free cards and making them government ministers. I would have expected them to send McGuinness or Adams off with Tony Blair to talk to Osama. it would be more consistent than this hypocritical response. But perhaps Tony is too busy collecting sinecures to supplement his pension.

Means of grace - christiansquoting.org.uk

Use thy duties, as Noah's dove did her wings, to carry thee to the ark of the Lord Jesus Christ, where only there is rest. ISAAC AMBROSE

Neither be idle in the means, nor make an idol of the means. WILLAIM SECKER

There are no men more careful of the use of means than those that are surest of a good issue and conclusion, for the one stirs up diligence in the other. Assurance of the end stirs up diligence in the means. For the soul of a believing Christian knows that God has decreed both. RICHARD SIBBES

Means must be neither trusted nor neglected. JOHN TRAPP

Maturity - christiansquoting.org.uk

You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. Flanders Dunbar

Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty. John Finley

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension. -Joshua L. Liebman

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development. Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I think age is a very high price to pay for maturity. Tom Stoppard

Materialism - christiansquoting.org.uk

The best things in life aren't things. -Art Buchwald

The sole perfection which modern civilization attains is a mechanical one; machines are splendid and flawless, but the life which serves them or is served by them, is neither superb nor brilliant, nor more perfect nor more graceful; nor is the work of the machines perfect; only they, the machines, are like gods.- Karel Capek, "Letters from England"

Things are in the saddle,
And ride mankind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson. 1803-1882. Ode, inscribed to W. H. Channing.
Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved by the very things they want to acquire.... Anwar El-Sadat

We talk about the American Dream, and want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that Dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think that the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen. --Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953)

It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. --Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. --Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) _Walden_, "Economy" [1854]

Marxism - christiansquoting.org.uk

Let us be perfectly honest. The historical record is indisputable.Marxism means the persecution of Christians, the execution of right wing dissidents, massive slave labor camps, and grinding poverty for countless millions of terrified, muzzled human beings. -- J.R. Nyquist

Marxism has not only failed to promote human freedom, it has failed to produce food.
John Dos Passos, "Occasions & Protests", 1964

Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals. Edmund Wilson

Martyr- christiansquoting.org.uk

Although prepared for martyrdom, I prefer that it be postponed. -- Winston Churchill (1874-1965) P

atriots have toil'd, and in their country's cause
Bled nobly; and their deeds, as they deserve,
Receive proud recompence. We give in charge
Their names to the sweet lyre. The historic muse,
Proud of the treasure, marches with it down
To latest times; and Sculpture, in her turn,
Gives bond in stone and ever-during brass
To guard them, and to immortalize her trust:
But fairer wreaths are due, though never paid,
To those who, posted at the shrine of Truth,
Have fallen in her defence. A patriot's blood,
Well spent in such a strife, may earn indeed,
And for a time ensure to his loved land,
The sweets of liberty and equal laws;
But martyrs struggle for a brighter prize,
And win it with more pain. Their blood is shed
In confirmation of the noblest claim&emdash;
Our claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,
To soar, and to anticipate the skies.
Yet few remember them. They lived unknown
Till persecution dragg'd them into fame,
And chased them up to heaven. Their ashes flew
&emdash;No marble tells us whither. With their names
No bard embalms and sanctifies his song:
And history, so warm on meaner themes,
Is cold on this. She execrates indeed
The tyranny that doom'd them to the fire,
But gives the glorious sufferers little praise.
He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves beside.
Cowper, The Task

'When I am dead and my body is opened,' she said to those around her, 'ye shall find CALAIS written on my heart'. I should have thought, if anything were written on it, they would have found the words JANE GREY, HOOPER, ROGERS, RIDLEY, LATIMER, CRANMER, AND THREE HUNDRED PEOPLE BURNT ALIVE WITHIN FOUR YEARS OF MY WICKED REIGN, INCLUDING SIXTY WOMEN AND FORTY LITTLE CHILDREN. But it is enough that their deaths were written in Heaven. -- Charles Dickens, _A Child's History of England_ on Queen Mary I of England

I would rather have the whole world against me but know that the Almighty God is with me, be called an apostate but know that I have the approval of the God of glory - Mehdi Dibaj, Iran, from his defence at his trial for apostasy, Dec 1993s

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.- Horace Mann (1796-1859) In "Correct Quotes for DOS," WordStar International, 1991.

Marriage- christiansquoting.org.uk

Marriage is the process of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred.

A marriage certificate is just another word for a work permit.

Marriage requires a person to prepare 4 types of "RINGS":
Engagement Ring
Wedding Ring
SuffeRING
EnduRING

Marriages may be made in heaven, but man is responsible for the maintenance work.

Rich is not how much you have or where you are going or even what you are - rich is who you have beside you.

A man may be a fool and not know it -- but not if he is married.

All men should freely use those seven words which have the power to make any marriage run smoothly: You know dear, you may be right.

My wife says I never listen to her. At least, I think that's what she said.

Son: How much does it cost to get married, Dad?
Father: I don't know son, I'm still paying for it.

Son: Is it true? Dad, I heard that in ancient China, a man doesn't know his wife until he marries.
Father: That happens everywhere, son, EVERYWHERE!

Love may be blind, but marriage is a real eye-opener.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There's too much fraternizing with the enemy.

A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman - before marriage and after marriage.

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.

Any married man should forget his mistakes - no use two people remembering the same thing.

Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke.

A woman has the last word in any argument. Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Success in marriage is more than finding the right person. It's becoming the right person

My wife and I were wonderfully happy for 23 years . . . and then we met.

Someone once said that "Marriages are made in heaven"... So is thunder and lightning.

One good turn gets most of the blanket.

Before marriage, a man yearns for the woman he loves. After marriage, the 'Y' becomes silent.

Getting married is very much like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want, then when you see what the other fellow has, you wish you had ordered that.

When I was young, I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman.
Well, I found her-but, alas, she was waiting for the ideal man

Marriage is the process of finding out what kind of man your wife would have preferred.

The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he's a baby.

Marriage is for life; it just seems longer!

Before marriage a woman is pensive, after marriage, expensive.

Behind every successful man there is a proud wife and surprized mother-in-law.

Adam and Eve had an ideal marriage. He didn't have to hear about all the men she could have married, and she didn't have to hear about the way his mother cooked.

I married Miss Right. I just didn't know her first name was Always.

the second secret of a good marriage is saying what's on your mind
the first secret is not saying what's on your mind

This is my rule of married life: it's better to be happy than to be right.

Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; the trouble starts when they try to decide which one.

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

If a man is alone in the forest and speaks...and no woman is around to hear him... Is the man still wrong?

After many years of marriage, my wife and I have achieved total sexual compatibility. We both have headaches at night.

I once didn't speak to my wife for a week ... I didn't want to interrupt her!

Man is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.

When your wife asks, "Do I look fat?" The correct response is, "Do I look stupid?"

I'm the man of the house. I always have the final word... "Yes, Dear."

Namiji barkono ne. sai a tauna shi a san yajinsa. A husband is like a pepper. not until you chew do you know how hot it is.
Hausa proverb, Nigeria.

Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper. -- Scottish Proverb

Marriage is a covered dish. -- Swiss Proverb

A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing. - Joey Adams

Marriage enlarges the scene of our happiness and of our miseries. A marriage of love is pleasant, of interest, easy, and where both meet, happy. A happy marriage has in it all the pleasures of friendship, all the enjoyments of sense and reason, and, indeed, all the sweets of life.--Joseph Addison

In my house I'm the boss, my wife is just the decision maker. - Woody Allen

In his _Utopia_ his lawe is that the young people are to see each other stark-naked before marriage. Sir William Roper, of Eltham, in Kent, came one morning, pretty early, to my Lord, with a proposall to marry one of his daughters. My Lord's daughters were then both together abed in a truckle- bed in their father's chamber asleep. He carries Sir William into the chamber and takes the Sheete by the corner & suddenly whippes it off. They lay on their Backs, & their smocks up as high as their arme-pitts. This awakened them, & immediately they turned on their bellies. Quoth Roper, I have seen both sides, & so gave a patt on the buttock, he made choice of, sayeing, Thou are mine. Here was all the trouble of the wooeing.--John Aubrey, _Brief Lives_, Sir Thomas More

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.
Francis Bacon. 1561-1626. Of Marriage and Single Life.

Wives are young men's mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men's nurses.
Francis Bacon. 1561-1626. Of Marriage and Single Life.

Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up. Joseph Barth

Keep up you conjugal love in constant heat and vigour. Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory 2.43

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. - Prov. 31:10

It is not love that will keep your marriage alive. It is commitment to relationship that will keep your love alive. Ian Bilby

He was happily married - but his wife wasn't. - Victor Borge

He is very fond of me - almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality. I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend if I might choose, but i won't complain of that! I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. - - Anne Bronte ,The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, p164

Marriage is not just spiritual communion and passionate embraces; marriage is also three meals a day, sharing the workload and remembering to carry out the trash - Joyce Brothers

Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender.-- Mary Buckley

The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband being big enough to step back and see where the wife is wrong. Archie Bunker

I was married by a judge...I should have asked for a jury. - George Burns

It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four.- Samuel Butler

'You are old,' said the youth, 'and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -
Pray, how did you manage to do it?'

'In my youth,' said his father, 'I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength that it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life.' - Carroll, Father William

Madam, we took you in order to have children, not to get advice. ~ Charles XI, King of Sweden 1660-1697 - to his wife

The most happy marriage I can picture would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman. Coleridge

In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male,vindictiveness of the female. --Cyril Connolly, _The Unquiet Grave_, 1944

Don't go to bed mad...stay up and fight!-- Phyllis Diller

Don't marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can't live without. -- James C. Dobson

The goal in marriage is not to think alike, but to think together. -Robert C. Dodds

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor,to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting. --George Eliot

Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife. Euripides. 484-406 B. C. Antigone. Frag 164.

The wife should yield in all things to her lord~ Euripedes 484 BC-406 BC, Electra (415 BC)

All things come to him who mates. F. Scott Fitzgerald

Intelligent women always marry fools ~Anatole France

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife? Franklin, Benjamin

Don't you know, that all wives are in the right? It may be you don't, for you are yet a young husband. Benjamin Franklin

I know not which lives more unnatural lives,
Obeying husbands, or commanding wives.
Franklin (1706-1790).

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards. Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard's Almanack 1738.

For a wife take the daughter of a good mother. --Thomas Fuller

The debate over same-sex marriage, then, is not some sideline discussion. It _is_ the marriage debate. Either we win--or we lose the central meaning of marriage. The great threat unisex marriage poses to marriage as a socialinstitution is not some distant or nearby slippery slope, it is an abyss at our feet. If we cannot explain why unisex marriage is, in itself, a disaster, we have already lost the marriage ideal. Same-sex marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of a motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen "good." It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine.
[...]Meanwhile, _cui bono_? To meet the desires of whom would we put our most basic social institution at risk? No good research on the marriage intentions of homosexual people exists. For what it's worth, the Census Bureau reports that 0.5 percent of households now consist of same-sex partners. To get a proxy for how many gay couples would avail themselves of the health insurance benefits marriage can provide, I asked the top 10 companies listed on the Human Rights Campaign's website as providing same-sex insurance benefits how many of their employees use this option. Only one company, General Motors, released its data. Out of 1.3 million employees, 166 claimed benefits for a same-sex partner, _one one-hundredth of one percent_. -- Maggie Gallagher, "What Marriage Is For", _The Weekly Standard_, August 4 / August 11, 2003

A wife is a gift bestowed upon man to reconcile him to the loss of paradise. Johann Goethe

I chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, for qualities that would wear well. --Oliver Goldsmith

Matrimony - the high sea for which no compass has yet been invented. Heine (1797-1856)

I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.- Heinrich Heine

I came, I saw, SHE conquered. (The original Latin seems to have been garbled.) -- Lazarus Long (Robert Heinlein)

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married. Katherine Hepburn

He loves his bonds who, when the first are broke,
Submits his neck into a second yoke.
--Robert Herrick (1591-1674) _Hesperides_ [1648]

Courtship brings out the best. Marriage brings out the rest. - Cullen Hightower

Of all the home remedies, a good wife is the best. -Kin Hubbard

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her way. And second, let her have it.
Lyndon Johnson

Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid. - Samuel Johnson, Rasselas [the princess Nekayah]

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson: Rasselas [from the character Princess Nekayah]

I am not so much inclined to wonder that marriage is sometimes unhappy, as that it appears so little loaded with calamity; and cannot but conclude that society has something in itself eminently agreeable to human nature, when I find its pleasures so great that even the ill choice of a companion can hardly overbalance them. Samuel Johnson (given to a fictional correspondent) in Rambler #45 (August 21, 1750)

I believe marriages would in general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of characters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice in the matter. Boswell: Life of Johnson

He talked of the heinousness of the crime of adultery, by which thepeace of families was destroyed. He said, "Confusion of progeny constitutes the essence of the crime; and therefore a woman who breaks her marriage vows is much more criminal than a man who does it. A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of God; but he does not do his wife a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if for instance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals privately to her chambermaid. Sir, a wife ought not to greatly resent this. I would not receive home a daughter who had run away from her husband on that account. A wife should study to reclaim her husband by more attention to please him. Sir, a man will not, once in a hundred instances, leave his wife and go to a harlot, if his wife has not been negligent of pleasing.-James Boswell: Life of Johnson

Boswell: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand." -- James Boswell: Life of Johnson

Boswell: "Pray, Sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as happy, as with any one woman in particular?" Johnson: "Ay, Sir, fifty thousand." -- James Boswell: Life of Johnson

Whoever thinks marriage is a 50-50 proposition doesn't know the half of it. Franklin P. Jones

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together. Hemant Joshi

Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man.- Joubert

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.-C. G. Jung, (Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933)

Marriage is nature's way of keeping us from fighting with strangers. Alan King

A successful marriage is not a gift; it is an achievement. - Ann Landers, 1918 - 2002

She's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one. Oscar Levant to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancée

Heard an interview with Rev. Robinson this afternoon, and he used a phrase that set my teeth on edge: he referred to partnerships as "life-intentioned." A wonderful weasel word, that: intention. The escape hatch is built right in. It's as if the intention to stay together is equal to the expressed promise to stay together. But it's not. Everyone had a faithless lover who did you wrong, and usually blamed everything but free will. It just happened, you know. Wasn't intending to cheat, but . . . it just happened, okay? Tonight I told my wife that I now regarded our marriage vows not as a solemn promise, but an expression of my intentions. Ever seen those "Bringing Up Father" cartoons where Jiggs flees the house, trailed by a fusillade of rolling pins and frying pans? -- James Lileks, http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/03/0803/080703.html

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage. -- Martin Luther

The state of matrimony is the chief in the world after religion; but people shun it because of its inconveniences, like one who, running out of the rain, falls into the river. Martin Luther, Table Talk

A marriage without children is the world without the sun. Augustine quoted in Martin Luther, Table Talk

It seems to me that the most delightful walk of life is to be found in a household of moderate means, to live there with an obliging spouse and to be satisfied with little. - Martin Luther DECEMBER 16, 1536, "Table Talk"

Some people claim that marriage interferes with romance. There's no doubt about it. Anytime you have a romance, your wife is bound to interfere. -- Groucho Marx

The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his checkbook open. -- Groucho Marx

I never mind my wife having the last word. In fact, I'm delighted when she gets to it. - Walter Matthau (1920 &endash; 2000)

Married happiness is like a tree; it has to grow before you can enjoy its shade. And it doesn't grow if you don't take care of it but run around admiring other plants. It takes many years. If you concentrate your love on a single tree and wait, you can see it grow, and there comes a day when you can lean against it and find coolness in its shade.-Gunnar Mattsson in "The Princess."

My parents died when I was so young, my mother when I was eight, my father when I was ten, that I know little of them but from hearsay. . . He was forty when he married my mother, who was more than twenty years younger. She was a very beautiful woman and he was a very ugly man. . . One of her great friends was Lady Anglesey, an American woman who died at an advanced age not very long ago, and she told me that she had once said to my mother; "You're so beautiful and there are so many people in love with you, why are you faithful to that ugly little man you've married?" And my mother answered: "He never hurts my feelings. --William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) _The Summing Up_ [1938], Chapter VII

There is a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage. - James Holt McGavran

What men, in their egoism, constantly mistake for a deficiency of intelligence in woman is merely an incapacity for mastering that mass of small intellectual tricks...which constitutes the chief mental equipment of the average male. A man thinks that he is more intelligent than his wife because he can add up a column of figures more accurately, and because he understands the imbecile jargon of the stock market, and because he is able to distinguish between the ideas of rival politicians, and because he is privy to the minutiae of some sordid and degrading business or profession, say soap-selling or the law.-- H. L. Mencken

No matter how happily a woman is married, she always hopes that her daughter will grab a better one. H. L. Mencken, _My Life as Author and Editor_, ed. Jonathan Yardley, 1993

Hail wedded love, mysterious law, true source
Of human offspring. John Milton Paradise Lost Line 750

Sleep on,
Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
John Milton, Paradise Lost Book IV, 773 - 75

If the marriage relationship reflects/is a symbol for the relationship between Christ and the church (i.e. individuals) then there are a lot of "wives" out there who are saying... "I'm not really in the mood - I have a headache - Do you really have to do that? - Please don't touch me there - Sure, I love you... do you really want me say it every time? - What again tonight?"
Melody Monte

It has been said that a bride's attitude towards her betrothed can be summed up in three words: Aisle. Altar. Hymn.
Frank Muir, Upon My Word!

To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up.
Ogden Nash

So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat over everything debatable and combatable, Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable. --Ogden Nash

The secrets of success are a good wife and a steady job. My wife told me. Howard Nemerov (1920 &endash; 1991)

When entering into a marriage one ought to ask oneself: do you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation. Friedrich Nietzsche

The difficulties arise when we ask how much this polar complementarity [of the sexes] should be reflected in the structure of social life, both domestic and public. The New Testament (again, and notoriously, in the person of St Paul) assumes that there will be places other than the bedroom in which men and women assume consciously differentiated roles. They will do so in the affairs of the home, in which the wife is to "submit" to her husband (Eph. 5:22ff) as head. They will do so even outside the context of family life, since man is "head" of woman in some sense; in quite another context, when the Church is at worship (I Cor. 11:2ff). In order that St Paul should not be misjudged, we must note--(a) that this relational ordering of male and female presupposes a fundamental generic equality (I Cor. 11:1 ff); and (b) that the "submission" of the wife is a special case of a "submission" of all Christians to one another, and complements a husband's love that is to be expressed in self-sacrifice (Eph. 5:2lff, 25ff). The apostle is not an apologist for male tyranny. ... Oliver O'Donovan (1945- ), "Marriage and the Family," in The Changing World

I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, wealthy, and stupid.- Dorothy Parker

In marriage do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self. William Penn

Men are teflon. Women are velcro.-Mike Peters, Mother Goose & Grimm (6/24/01)

If you want your wife to listen to you, talk to another woman. -Bob Phillips

Sola scriptura, sola fide, solum Christus, and you betcha sola my wife! -- JR

When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. Helen Rowland

Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you. - Helen Rowland, 1876 - 1950

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,
Even such a woman oweth to her husband.
William Shakespeare. The Taming of the Shrew. Act iv. Sc. 2.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. George Bernard Shaw

A person's character is but half formed till after wedlock. --Charles Simmons

All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner. -Red Skelton

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll become a philosopher. Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

I would say that the surest measure of a man's or a woman's maturity is the harmony, style, joy, and dignity he creates in his marriage, and the pleasure and inspiration he provides for his spouse. - Benjamin McLane Spock, 1903 - 1998

A great proportion of the wretchedness which has embittered married life, has originated in a negligence of trifles. Connubial happiness is a thing of too fine a texture to be handled roughly. It is a sensitive plant, which will not bear even the touch of unkindness; a delicate flower, which indifference will chill and suspicion blast. It must be watered by showers of tender affections, expanded by the cheering glow of kindness, and guarded by the impregnable barrier of unshaken confidence. Thus matured, it will bloom with fragrance in every season of life, and sweeten even the loneliness of declining years.
Thomas Sprat (1636-1713)

Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman. Herbert Spencer

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. -- Gloria Steinhem

Some pray to marry the man they love,
My prayer will somewhat vary;
I humbly pray to Heaven above,
That I love the man I marry.-
Rose Pastor Stokes (1879-1933), _My Prayer_

He who is without a wife dwells without blessing, life, joy, help, good, & peace. The Talmud, as quoted by Leo Rosten

Marriage has in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath not more ease, but less danger; it is more merry and more sad; it is fuller of sorrows and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity; and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself. --Jeremy Taylor

Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies insingularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good to whiGod hath designed the present constitution of the world.--Jeremy Taylor

'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel. --William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) _Henry Esmond_ [1852], Book I, Chapter 7

Never criticize your spouse's faults; if it weren't for them, your mate might have found someone better than you.--Jay Trachman, _One to One_

This is what marriage really means: helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible beings who do not run away from life. -- Paul Tournier

After my marriage she edited everything I wrote. And what is more, she not only edited my works, she edited me. ~Mark Twain

Marriage is like a three-speed gearbox: affection, friendship, love. It is not advisable to crash your gears and go right through to love straightaway. You need to ease your way through. The basis of love is respect, and that needs to be learned from affection and friendship. Peter Ustinov

At the end of a happy marriage to Sidney Hook, Beatrice Webb was asked, "Why was your marriage so happy?" She said, "Sidney takes all the long-term decisions, I take all the unimportant decisions, and I determine which are the long-term decisions." - Beatrice Webb

Ever a various, changeful thing is woman. Vergil

Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women have a more subtle instinct: What they like is to be a man's last romance.--Oscar Wilde

Most marriage failures are caused by failures marrying. Henny (Henry) Youngman

Someone stole all my credit cards, but I won't report it. The thief spends less than my wife.- Henty Youngman

I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.- Henty Youngman

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret. -Henny Youngman

We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops.- Henty Youngman