Posts Tagged ‘modern proverbs’

Harshness is a rope, gentleness a microscope.

Gentleness has nothing to do with gender; it is a matter of genius.

Gentleness comforts the child, nutures the adult and consoles the aged.

Emotional brokenness is the birth mother of unblemished gentleness.

Cruelty is full of anxiety,  but gentleness overflows with safety.

In gentle places even the weak find their faces.

Gentleness domesticates.

A national border is sign of a disorder.

To protect himself, a gentle man may turn viciously on his own friend.

Religion may make men harsh.

Charity doesn’t begin at home; it begins in the bone.

The greatest act of charity is to treat others as if they are sane.

In charity there’s no excess except selflessness.

Selfishness ends where charity begins.

To give is to get something no one else can give.

To be uncharitable is to harm yourself.

Every culture of generosity is created in a petri dish of humility.

Don’t be silly; giving isn’t willy-nilly.

To receive what you wish you could give is harder than giving what you wish you could keep.

Shower charity on responsibility.

Make charity no rarity.

Be strong; ask for help for the weak.

The greatest acts of philanthropy the world has ever seen went unseen.

Scary dreams reveal the past; happy dreams reveal the future.

The beautiful future is already sprouting in the disturbed ground under our moving feet.

Run — toward the future.

Appreciate the past, love the present, trust the future.

Control the future wow; imaginate the now.

The future is known; it’s in the fruit already grown.

We make up the future out of the spool of thread we unwind in the present.

If you want to know your future just look closely at someone older.

A good future is made out of convincing good people to glom on to a good vision and fly it forward with you on board.

I was; I am; I will, Amen.

The seagull runs into the ocean so the soul rushes into wisdom.

The sea feeds the earth; the mind feeds the world.

The lovely ocean — until we step on a sting ray, have a limb ripped off by a shark or are swept away by a tsunami.

The tide pool gold, the sunlit soul.

Whales — the ocean’s explosions.

The waves that rush back from the shore; the hesitancy of the human spirit.

Swimming across the ocean, dancing by a smoking volcano, not change our ways.

The sand castle takes ability and reminds us of fragility.

The open sea, earth’s reverie.

Diseased inconsistence, immune to resistance.

To put the good life in the bag run a constant zig and zag

Overworking — it involves inconsistent resting.

Consistency leads to maturity — and uncertainty.

A consistent dollar beats an imagined million.

A wise consistency is the faithful valet of great minds.

Consistency is the best policy — except when it is not.

Children and cats love consistency; adults love an anomaly.

Love, eat, work, rest; live by the best.

When justice goes missing, few go looking.

The news tries the case, but the jury decides the matter.

In the courtroom, the boardroom and the backroom, fear and bias kidnap the facts and justice goes missing.

Nothing matters more than giving the injured a fair hearing.

When the world is hungry, justice feeds it.

The just man with an invisibility cloak will be yet be just when he is invisible.

Crimes happen quickly; justice moves slowly.

The man who oppresses another must live with an oppressor.

Nothing matters more than that we give injured a hearing.

By peremptory challenge a lawyer rejects biased jurors, so the healthy mind rejects biased thoughts.

 

 

A headache at a party is better than a heartache at home.

A kiss a day keeps Kaiser away.

New ailments are enemies, old ones friends.

The thrill in being really sick is getting amazingly well.

Our bodies are cities; what happens in one neighborhood spreads to another.

A person who is sick is not a sick person.

Fools feel only their pain; the wise see pain’s worldwide refrain.

Green food; preventative medicine.

Illness is a stop sign, health a green light.

Illness isolates; healing repatriates.

We are mechanical; slowing results in towing.

A long illness offers a quick PhD in compassion.

The newly aged talk about being really old; the really aged talk about still feeling young.

“You won’t always feel this way” is hope to the depressed.

When faced with the worst, think of the best.

Children relieve us from the boredom of being adults.

Children may be seen but not heard — when  asleep.

A child a day keeps leisure at bay.

The timeout is to train children and reward parents.

A child should always say what’s cute, and laugh when she is tickled too.

Spare the dad, spoil the child – be nice to the mom too.

Reject a child, reject yourself.

Abuse a child, obliterate yourself.

The glory of civilization is a good story, a soft chair, a warm light and a curious child.

To love a child is to love oneself.

Childood heals us of adulthood.

Children know the truth — until we teach them otherwise.

The common cold could be entirely irradicated if we got rid of children.

We are never not children.

The invention of the collar raised the self-esteem of civilization.

America wears out its exercise clothing washing it.

The purpose of aging was to keep nudity from becoming popular.

Clothes cover a multitude of gastronomical sins.

The beach is one of the few places you can walk around in colored underwear and not be arrested.

Before buttons, zippers, hooks and snaps, it was harder to keep on our wraps.

God made clothes so it would be easier to love each other.

The fashion most whacky is flying dressed tacky.

Clothes make the fun.

The uniform serves the world.

Clothes unmake the man.

Reductive is most seductive.

It’s a sin to be humorless.

Humor crashes the party, and gets invited back to dinner.

The funniest is the most serious not taken seriously.

Humor assassinates the murk and escapes with a smirk.

Wit splits hairs with humor’s wares.

The guffaw was born in the pause.

Humor’s couth resells the truth.

Disambiguation’s toot is a hoot.

Mix demotic, academic, and slang — stir and laugh.

Funny wins, in backrooms.

The  droll remark may not get the big guffaw, but it leaves the neurons of the astute silently shaking.

Laughter not only has the last word, it is the last word.

When hyperbole is on a roll, we fall out of our chairs, clutch our stomachs and beg her to stop.

Jokes turn back at the border.

Sounds are funnier than words.

The funny guy gets the serious girl.

Human trumps gender.

Gender is the identity of wonder.

Around the glow of gender’s fire, spins galaxies of hot desire.

God invented the man for practice, then he invented the women.

Gender becomes most obvious when we are naked, pregnant or shopping.

The tendency to dominate isn’t a gender trait; it’s a human trait.

Men keep women in their place for fear that they will lose theirs.

Blessed are the male chauvinists, for they will inherit all of the inclusiveness, open mindedness and sensitivity of themselves.

When men and women are in the presence of other attractive men and women, they do not find themselves thinking about similarities.

Unblessed are the feminists if they inherit the dominating, oppressive, brutal and violent tendencies of men.

I heard the voice of God once; it sounded strangely like my wife’s.

When women play professional football and nearly naked men are the cheerleaders, then we’ll know things have changed.

The differences between men and women are mostly similar.

The first women to play in the NFL will receive unwanted attention and wanted compensation.

Having a baby is harder on men than women; men have to drive to the hospital, count, listen to yelling and miss the game.

We, men, are better than women; we are better at becoming completely delusions concerning our attractiveness as we age.

That men are rational and women emotional is the fairy tale made up by men and women who are afraid of themselves.

Everytime a popular book about gender differences is published nuanced thinking goes out the window again.

There is nothing as lonely as a talking wife and a silent husband.

The most upsetting conversations are silent, vicious and take place between two ears.

Honesty is the best publicity policy.

The silent treatment requires the talking cure.

I make it my rule never to open my mouth around closed minds except my own.

Great conversation requires two or more people, unless you are alone.

Emotions speak louder than words.

Talk will show; the careful know.

When the facts go to work, the truth goes on vacation

To understand, what is not said is what must be deciphered.

“I know how you feel,” is the “abracadabra” that heals a soul who has been sawn in two.

The abandoned child must make up reality, but the loved child receives a good explanation.

 

 

 

A product is sold for the good of the seller; it is bought for the mood of the buyer.

Making an old product new is better than making a new product old.

A  good slogan sells itself.

Civilization is a mad rush toward the reproduction of more consumers.

Greed puts stuff near need — and raises the price.

Our character is a product we give away to others for free.

Products are traitors; they seduce us, then  rot.

Love is the most expensive free product on the planet.

Yesterday’s technology is in today’s landfills.

The philosophy of the supermarket is to pile it on high, sell it on low; a superior philosophy is to pile it high on the lowly.

You know you have become a grownup when you have to plan to play.

Too much work will make you jerk; take a day to heal — with play.

Tomfoolery risks what sincerity can’t imagine — the laughing cure.

Live fast, die old and leave a beautiful child.

Fun rides on a rollicking river of justice.

Nonsense may become good sense — anon.

Playfulness is the suspicion of the overriding value of workfulness.

We always carry our own weather with us, and so we are always either raining on someone else’s parade or shining on their marching band.

Our prejudices plunder our pleasures.

The fun stops when the crying begins, and the fun doesn’t begin again until we see to it that the causes of the crying end.

The theocratic oath: First do no doom.

Divorce proof your marriage: shamelessly flirt with your own spouse.

Work approaches play when we ride it arms up and palms out.

Merrymaking is cheap psychotherapy.

Getting an education is hard, staying ignorant more so.

Love may cover a multitude of sins but it won’t put up with bad grades.

Invest in your own education; buy a plane ticket.

It is the mark of the modern educated mind to know many points of view but have none of its own.

A classic is a book known to the public by one of its decontextualized lines.

An alphabet is a song that sings a million words.

A wild creature is won with food, a reluctant learner with a story.

A good education includes some needed, unwanted lessons, how to fail, quit, grieve and come up swinging.

The educated person knows all the questions and mistrusts most of the answers.

We invest the least in what we should invest the most — our preschool teacher’s salaries.

The first rule of the educator is to not interfere with curiosity.

Every few years American educators make a brilliant discovery — how to educate American children.

When we teach to the test we ignore the best.

True faith loves healthy doubt.

The big questions survive all the small answers.

Every new door is opened with old doubt.

The true doubter doubts doubt.

Doubt weeps faith’s grief.

Doubt is merely faith’s time out.

Doubters ask questions believers think they have answered.

Doubt is the switch-back path to belief.

The tenacious doubter is the fanatical believer.

Our doubts are our friends; they take us by the arm and lead us from untruth.

God loves doubt; it is proof that what he created has finally begun to think up to its potential.

Those who love science love doubt.

Doubt everything to know anything.

Morality’s deep structure arises out of sacred texts, legal precedent and our mothers’ boyfriends.

Political morality isn’t.

Morality’s scurrility diminishes virility.

Moral — it’s choral.

Morality is the posture we adopt toward the people we love.

Fear isn’t morality’s mother; that would be love.

Soteriology ever trumps morality.

Immorality is the ruining of someone else’s moraltiy.

A person is diminished every time a wrong is justified.

Morality is not a whacking stick; it’s a map to guide a trip.

What we don’t get makes us who we need to be.

Wealth is our world’s way to health.

Those who romaticize poverty haven’t experienced it.

You can measure the wealth of a person by the number of children and animals who sleep near them each night.

Getting when we should have been giving is like taking a great photographic shot and finding we have included our own shadow.

Raise children so they know serving is getting.

The good life satifies need — not greed.

Carry something rich inside, for others, an interior cry.

Poverty is the overwhelming presence of absence.

Opportunity goes missing when compassion goes fishing.

To live justly, beg for the opportunity to come face-to-face with horrific need.

Death’s door will open to family, not money.

Having everything and being nothing is a recipe for self-loathing.

Good is giving, not getting.

Too much wealth is like a fast freight train going by too close — it leaves us all rattled.

A flat screen can’t compete with a natural scene.

Nature is a restaurant; the trick is to stay off the plate.

The bathroom keeps us connected to wilderness

We preserve wilderness to appreciate civilization.

When the Jacaranda blooms, the earth blushes.

Go to the woods to discover beauty and simplity, but rub on tick and mosquito repellant first.

The romantic movement was defeated by the chigger.

Redwoods absorb fog; great souls absorb truth.

The solar wind blows, the arrora lights; the seer is silent, the mind brightens.

If you can’t visit the Grand Canyon, visit a rose petal.

A sunrise a day keeps the doctor at bay.

Before drawing conclusions about nature, remember it includes you.

 

 

 

 

Never let happiness interfere with a good sulk.

Enjoy unhappiness; it’s that feeling you have just before you are happy again.

Men are happy when women are doing things; women are happy when men are helping them.

It’s better to laugh like an idiot than despair like a genius.

Happiness is being smacko; it’s twice as good is being whacko.

Be happy when people compliment you; be even happier when you  compliment yourself.

Like a hawk bathing in a bird bath, so happiness surprises in unexpected places.

Happiness resides in what we think, not in keeping from the brink.

Happiness is in what happens inside of us on the way home from making someone else happy.

Having something to do makes us happy; having someone to do it with even happier.

Be happy that all the unhappy things you thought would happen didn’t.

Always take along food in case of unhappiness, and take extra in case you meet unhappy people.