This, That and a Grammar Lesson

"We happily accumulate possessions and happily give them away. It is only possessing them that gives no happiness."



"It is not that the honest pursuit of one's selfish interests cannot be a social good. It is that if one is selfish, why would one be honest?"



"According to science, the universe began as a swirl of gas that, as it cooled, spun off the Ten Commandments."



"As an experiment, I have trapped some cooling gas in a bottle, and I'm waiting to see if a universe develops."



"We look at the smiling faces in an old family photo, and we think how happily innocent we were, which is exactly what those smiling faces wanted us to think."



"There is no expert on what happiness is but many on what it might have been."



God sends the dawn
that we might see
the might-have-beens
that still might be.



"If the light goes out when you close a refrigerator door, do the smiles vanish when you close a family photo album?"



"Observing your child at make-believe, you realize that the most underrated of family values is its entertainment value."



"As parents, we guide by our unspoken example. It is only when we're talking to them that our kids aren't listening."



"The clash between child and adult is never so stubborn as when the child within us confronts the adult in our child."



"There is a moment between child and parent when the child first realizes that someday this person is going to need serious help."




Grammar Anyone?

If you say "hone in" instead of "home in," have you ever seen a honing pigeon?


If you say "different than" instead of "different from," do you think a horse differs than a pig?


If you say, "between you and I" instead of "between you and me," do you say "between you, I and the fencepost?"


~~ Robert Brault

Five From The Fairway (Plus Bonuses)

I missed a few putts yesterday while thinking these up, so I hope you like. If it seems that I am posting every Wednesday, it's beginning to seem that way to me, too.



"Once in a while it's good to retrace our footsteps, just to remind ourselves that they are all our own."



"To have a child is to know that of all the lives you might have lived, only one was ever really possible."



"Our destiny hides among our free choices, disguised as the free-est of all."



"It is a common fancy that we have the children of our destiny with the partner of our choice."



"Between destiny and free will, there's enough to ponder without wondering where our parents figured in."



Plus Bonuses...



"Know thyself" said the ancient Greeks, not necessarily ruling out a second opinion.



"It was perhaps after viewing an action adventure that God, in His mercy, decided to make life a mystery."



"Man is the only animal who believes that there is a list of exquisite tortures that other animals like having done to them."



"Whenever you hear talk of the betterment of a species, you know that the individual specimens of that species are in for hell."



~~ Robert Brault

Thoughts From The Microwave

Here's ten from my mental microwave, each having had a minute or so on HALF-BAKE.



"A people conditioned to believe what is false will believe most firmly what is most demonstrably false."



"An optimist is someone who figures that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's the bluebird of happiness."



"One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot."



"Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie."



"When you are through proving a truth, let me have the evidence, and I will prove a perfect illusion."



"Without faith there is no truth, for that is all that truth is."



"You wonder if computer-animated figures go to bed each night pondering the meaning of animation."



"We know we are 5000 years into recorded history. We just don't know whether this is the first time through."



"I guess my favorite Japanese film is "Night of the Zombies," where Tokyo is taken over by an army of walking cremation urns."



Just released for the kiddies is a new video chess game that answers the age-old question, "What happens if the checkmated king is armed with an AK47?"



~~ Robert Brault

Ten For The Road

"Sometimes it is the person closest to us who must travel the furthest distance to be our friend."


"If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not already been."


"Sometimes, I believe, we are allowed to get lost that we may find the right person to ask directions of."


"There comes a time in life when you realize that if they will start without you, you don't have to go. "


"Worse than breaking a promise is spending the rest of our lives staying true to a broken promise."


"No matter how mourned your death, there will be a gathering after the funeral where the chief topic of conversation is how good the squash casserole is."


"In people who change the world there is a calm that is the storm."


"There is scarcely one of the Ten Commandments that if acted upon in concert would not be a plot to overthrow the government."


"It takes a while, but eventually we realize that the people who were always there for the special occasions of our childhood had other things to do."


"Thinking that a new government is the answer is like thinking that the road would be safer if there were a new troll under the bridge."


~~ Robert Brault