Fun Thoughts on Marriage & Miscellaneous

"The trouble with crediting success to skill and hard work is that it doesn't account for a successful brother-in-law."


"It would be easier to make up with your in-laws if it weren't for the kissing requirement."


"Sometimes two people stay together for the sake of the kids -- two kids who sat under a full moon and pledged to be forever true."


"A lovers' quarrel is always about every quarrel you ever had."


"The top two reasons for long marriages are love and procrastination."


"One coincidence you note in married life is that there are exactly as many days in the week as there are different dishes to have for supper."


"In marriage, it's either a new reason for the same old argument or a new argument for the same old reason."


"Eventually, time takes care of everything. The trouble with procrastination is that people give up on it too soon."


"One learns to ignore criticism by first learning to ignore applause."


"Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie."


"One of Murphy's tricks is to get you to act decisively when a situation needs to be left alone."


"A domestic quarrel is never about something you did; it's about something you always do."


"The wedding is where two people become one.  The marriage is where they decide which one."


~~ Robert Brault

Brault Thoughts: The Best Collections

The Quote Garden.

Some 400 of my thoughts, arranged by subject and interspersed with those of other writers.  This link takes you to a list of 100 categories in which my thoughts appear.

The Painter’s Keys

A collection of my thoughts on art and artists.  A few thoughts on other topics are included.  Artist and art commentator Robert Genn has selected some 80 of them.

CloverQuotes

Although labeled, “The Top 100 Robert Brault Quotes”, this collection actually includes nearly 300 of my thoughts.  

Inspire21

This list includes about 100.  I personally favor it because most of the items are not found in other collections, except right here in The Reader.

RobertBrault1 on Twitter

I began tweeting a thought or two or day in August, and this growing list of more than 200 items offers the most popular.  I delete items that are not retweeted or chosen as favorites by others.

My Quoted Items on Twitter

In addition to my own tweets, I am frequently quoted on Twitter from other sources.  These are items of mine that other people are currently quoting.

The Robert Brault Reader

And, of course, don’t forget The Reader itself.  There are some 2500 lonely and dusty thoughts in the archives begging for attention.  The SEARCH box in the right sidebar will help somewhat in locating by subject, although the blog is really built for a leisurely browse.  

Enjoy,

rb

A Thanksgiving Recollection

  
I remember one Christmas being told that there was no Santa Claus, and the next Easter being told that there was no Easter Bunny, and I remember how I feared, as Thanksgiving approached, that they would tell me there was no Grandmother.




"Lord, we gather as a family to thank Thee for Thy every blessing, most especially for making us this family and granting us this gathering."




Happy Thanksgiving All,
rb

Fifteen New Thoughts

"A partial failure is a partial success.  Put together enough partial failures, and you have a total success."


"What you discover about successful people is that they aimed high, and when they failed, they aimed higher."


"Retirement is having nothing to do and someone always keeping you from it."

"Actually, the most irritating thing about retirement is to listen to some chatty old friend drone on and on and realize that he isn't keeping you from a darn thing."


"The reward usually goes to someone who bothered."


The Columbus Principle: If every day you do the same thing expecting a different result, you're insane --unless one day somebody shouts "Land ho!"


"Life starts out as partly destiny and partly free will, but then you have kids, and it's all destiny."


"Maybe life is a vacation, and when you die, you go back to whatever you were doing, refreshed."


"It would be great to live your life backwards because, see, each stage would prepare you for the next."


"You wonder if animated figures have a Big Bang theory that tells them there was never actually an Animator."


People keep telling you that "Life goes on" when the question is why.


"Even if we knew for sure how old the Earth is, we wouldn't know how many times it has been this old."


"I suppose when you die, you resume whatever you were doing when you were born, which obviously wasn't something that urgent."


"What is a human being but a marionette pulling his own strings, trying to do watercolor and needlepoint."


"The chief evidence that a society has embraced foolishness is that no one is asking fool questions."


~~ Robert Brault

Thanksgiving Notes (Reprise)

Got a nice response on this post last Thanksgiving, so thought I'd repeat it.


"This year we tossed a coin, and the kids will sit at the dining room table and the adults at the card table in the living room."


"A secret I will take to the grave is how I carve the dark meat in slices and the white meat in chunks."


"My wife says that this year she'll carve the turkey and I can carve the gelatin mold."


"You can be humbled by praise, or you can be humbled by carrying in the turkey and having it slide off the plate into your mother-in-law's lap."


"I've read where the body cells completely replace themselves every seven years. So at my age, I've already been ten different people, all with a tendency to skip the Waldorf salad."


This year we're having the words. "There's more gravy in the kitchen" stitched right on the napkins.


"At our house we have a rule that the cook has to come to the table so we can all get started, then she can go back to the kitchen."


This year we've designated Aunt Viv to say grace and Uncle Howie to say "Let's eat."


"As usual, we've invited an odd number of people, so there won't be a tie vote on whether to have the pies right after dinner or wait an hour."


"As always, the pie-serving honors will go to Cousin Marian, who cuts the biggest slivers."


"Speaking for myself, when I ask for a sliver of mince pie, I do mean a sliver." 


"I suppose I will die never knowing what pumpkin pie tastes like when you have room for it."


"What greater blessing to give thanks for at a family gathering than the family and the gathering."


Robert Brault

A Walk on the Light Side

"There's nothing like self-improvement to get your friends to like you for who you were."


"There are days when you seek the company of your solitude, and your solitude just wants to be left alone."


"I'm at the age when you only meet new people when you drive into their living room."


"Sometimes it's hard to communicate with kids, because their brains are undeveloped and yours is only starting to undevelop."


"You never get people's fuller attention than when you're listening to them.


On the Sixth Day, God saw everything that He had made, and He saw that it was good, and He said, "Let there be Murphy."


Overheard in a Washington D.C. church confessional: "Bless me Father, for sins have been committed."


Washington D.C. classified: "Unaffiliated hack seeks party."


"Until you confess your sins publicly, you have no idea how much people don't care."


"Every kid tries to find out how badly he can screw up and still have his mom blame herself."


"There are days in retirement that are the waking equivalent of a dreamless sleep, if you know what I mean."


~~ Robert Brault

Small Thoughts on Large Subjects

"Whether you're talking about democracy or simple civility, when the end comes to justify the means, it means the end."


"The basic dilemma of politics is that there is less wealth than there are fair shares."


"The most basic strategy is to get time on your side, the most basic tactic to sit and wait."


"If you understand compound interest, you basically understand the universe."


"The ultimate test of majority rule is its willingness to educate the minority's kids."


"A theory of creation that offers no solace is like a headache remedy that offers no pain relief."


"The basic debate within the Christian world is whether loving thy neighbor increases the size of government."



"Some days are such perfect disasters that there's really nothing to do but sit back and admire their perfection."



"It is unclear how a group of fallible human beings can become infallible by forming a political party."


"Reasonable people can disagree, although usually not with each other."


"Meanwhile, excavations in the ruins of Pompeii, formerly thought destroyed by a volcanic eruption, have turned up evidence of a 5% surcharge on millionaires."


"The lesson of history is that nothing worse can happen to a civilization than to be discovered by a more civilized one."


~~ Robert Brault

Random Thoughts in a Power Outage

"It is the help most needed that is never asked for, the cry most desperate that is never uttered."


"I value the friend who in time of need is just a phone call away, but I cherish the friend who in time of need I don't have to call."


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


"Nothing science discovers ever dispels the notion that there is a larger plan. It only makes it seem larger."


"Whatever you put aside to seek happiness, remember where you put it."


"How, child, do I know where you're headed?  Because I'm there, and I can see you coming."


"One day your youngest leaves the nest, and you plop yourself down in an easy chair and thank God for the phone call that never came."


"I have an old dog that used to bark at strangers, but now he just kind of keeps an eye on them."


"I go around wanting to explain myself, searching for someone entitled to an explanation."


The voice of optimism: "I know he's still alive because he never calls or writes, which is just like him."


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


"I don't know if we're all God's children, but I know if I am, you are."


Lines from unfinished novels:

"He had lived all his life in small towns, having dreamed as a young man that he would meet his soulmate at the corner of Elm and Sycamore."


"She lived alone, kept company by a dog that never barked and a phone that never rang."


~~ Robert Brault