New Year's Eve Advice

Photo by David Zellaby
If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt.

~ Dean Martin ~

Waste Not, Want Not

Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.

~ Steve Allen ~

Photo by Drunken Monkey

Maybe If You Use a Flashlight...

Photo by bunchofpants
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

~ Groucho Marx ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The true soul is the one that flickers in the eyes
Of an animal, like a cat that lifts its head and yawns
And stares at you, and then goes back to sleep.

~ John Koethe from "Chester" ~

The Gift

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.

~ Emile Zola ~

Yesterday Was Her Graduation Day--R.I.P.

I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.

~ Eartha Kitt ~




Photo by Carl Van Vechten

Peace on Earth

I heard the bells on Christmas Day; their old familiar carols play, and wild and sweet the word repeat of peace on earth, good-will to men!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ~

Christmas Eve--At Last!

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.

~ Clement C. Moore ~

Something to Think About...

The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

The Right Attitude

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble.

~ Rudyard Kipling ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Photo by -syko-

The naming of cats is a difficult matter. It isn't just one of your holiday games.

~ T.S. Eliot ~

A cat is not like dog--if it wants to come when you call it, you can call it anything! If it doesn't want to come it won't, and that's all there is to it! I'm afraid Eliot would have been better off playing a game or two! --KK

The Silver Lining to Our Current Economic Crisis?

We can no longer allow the money economy to grow like a cancer on our society, until it takes over all facets of life. The economy needs to serve people, communities, and the health of natural systems, not the other way around. Instead of relying on footloose unaccountable global corporations, we can turn to local and regional production to serve our needs and provide sustainable employment, including small and medium-sized businesses, co-ops, farmer’s markets, and so on.

~ Sarah van Gelder and Doug Pibel ~

Poetry Friday

Poets are never young in one sense. Their delicate ears hear the far off whispers of eternity, which courser souls must travel toward for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them.

~ Oliver Wendell Holmes ~

Oh, Yeah?

The cops can't catch every crook, but a sophisticated financial system should be able to spot a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme operating in its midst for years.

~ Wall Street Journal ~

Reading is Sexy!

For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too.

~ Honor Wilson-Fletcher ~

Elf Advice

The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear.

~ Will Farrell in Elf ~

With Thanks to Those Who Helped Others After the Ice Storm

At such moments, you realize that you and the other are, in fact, one. It's a big realization. Survival is the second law of life. The first is that we are all one.

~ Joseph Campbell ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Friday was Frank Sinatra's birthday, so, in his honor, I'm taking a little liberty with my Kat Kwote for today. --KK


I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats. I'm not looking for the secret to life....I just go on from day to day, taking what comes.

~ Frank Sinatra ~

Thoughts For After the Ice Storm

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

~ Albert Schweitzer ~

A Dangerous Weapon

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

~ Dorothy Parker ~

Ya Got That?

Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.

~ Russell Lynes ~

Funny How That Works...

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.

~ Richard Lamm ~

The Only Reason to Sing!

Photo by ricmcarthur.
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

~ Maya Angelou ~

Wonders of the Internet

Radio on the Internet is yet another world-shrinking example of what communications analysts call "death of distance."

~ Tim Jones ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Photo by gripso banana prune

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye from "Famous" ~

Something to Remember on a Cold Grey Day

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

~ Joseph Addison ~

Poetry Friday--It's Comin'

'Most all the time, the whole year round, there ain't no flies on me.
But jest 'fore Christmas I'm as good as I kin be!

~ Eugene Field from "Jest 'fore Christmas" ~

So That's What Love Is?

Sometimes me think what is love, and then me think love is what last cookie is for. Me give up the last cookie for you.

~ Cookie Monster ~

Fruitcake

A little publicized method of determining whether a woman was a witch during the Salem Witch Trials was to offer the suspect a piece of fruitcake. If she ate it and lived, it was considered proof that she was, in fact, a witch.

~ The ReTRo HouSeWiFe ~

Decorating

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

~ Anna Quindlen ~

Comforting Thought

We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

~ Robert Heinlein ~

Right-Brained People Have a Definite Advantage

Life isn't about finding yourself--life is about creating yourself.

~ George Bernard Shaw ~

No Matter What It's Called, There's a Whole Lot of It Goin' On

If men liked shopping, they'd call it research.

~ Cynthia Nelms ~

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing you a life full of sweets! --KK

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

With Undivided Attention

The first duty of love is to listen.

~ Paul Tillich ~

Getting Ready!

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

~ Andy Rooney ~

The Theory of Relativity

How long a minute is depends on what side of the bathroom door you're on.

~ Anonymous ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Sufferin' succotash!

~ Sylvester ~






Succotash is a stew of corn, lima beans, and tomatoes.

Happy Birthday, Abigail!

I've always felt that a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting points of view he can entertain simultaneously on the same topic.

~ Abigail Adams ~

Abigail was born on this day in 1744.

Poetry Friday

The commonplace, the tawdry, the sordid all have their poetic uses if the imagination can lighten them.

~ William Carlos Williams ~

Don't You Just Love a Friend?

A Chinese bookseller, 1908

To read a book for the first time is to make the acquaintance of a new friend; to read it a second time is to meet an old one.

~ Chinese proverb ~

Two Ways of Getting There

Art and Religion are, then, two roads by which men escape from circumstance to ecstasy. Between aesthetic and religious rapture there is a family alliance. Art and Religion are means to similar states of mind.

~ Clive Bell ~

Something to Think About This Time of Year

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~

A Guinness Record Better Off Forgotten

The longest title of a book is 1,433 characters (290 words) and was written by Davide Ciliberti (Italy) in July 2007. The book describes the idiosyncrasies of the PR world. The full title is "Per favore dite a mia madre che faccio il pubblicitario lei pensa che sono un pierre e che quindi regalo manciate di free entry e consumazioni gratis a chi mi pare, rido coi vips, i calciatori le veline e le giornaliste, leggo Novella e mi fotografano i paparazzi, entro neI privé saltando la coda, bevo senza pagare, sono ghiotto di tartine e gin tonic, ho la casa piena di oggetti di design, conosco Paris Hilton, Tom Ford ed Emilio"

~ Guinness World Records ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The idea of calm exists in a sitting cat.

~ Jules Renard ~

Half Way Through the Month Already!

When chill November's surly blast make fields and forest bare.

~ Robert Burns ~

Poetry Friday

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

~ Percy Shelley ~

On Writing

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand--a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods--or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

~ Willa Cather ~

Natural Beauty

photo © Antonello Michele Mastinu for openphoto.net

It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.

~ David Attenborough ~

Why Do We Never Learn?

When the days of rejoicing are over,
When the flags are stowed safely away,
They will dream of another wild "War to End Wars"
And another wild Armistice day.

~ Robert Graves ~

So, How Many Do You Need?

Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.



~ D.H. Lawrence ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

www.catsforobama.com

Pigs

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

~ Winston Churchill ~

Poetry Friday

The poet and the politician have this in common: their greatness depends on the courage with which they face the challenges of life.

~ John Fitzgerald Kennedy ~

A Time to Celebrate!

Photo BBC News
Altogether shout it now.
There's no one
Who can doubt it now.
So let's tell the world about it now
Happy days are here again.

~ from "Happy Days Are Here Again" music and lyrics by J. Yellen and M. Ager ~

On This Glorious Day!

It's the morning after the election of our new president, Barack Obama, and I think this is an appropriate quote:

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.

~ Woodrow T. Wilson ~

Too Bad He Wasn't Around for 2008!

What ass first let lose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege? Looking back over my 19 years (of it) I can recall few times when I have voted with anything approaching exhilaration.

~ Henry Louis Mencken ~

Waiting for Tomorrow

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.

~ Samuel Johnson ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Smudge and Skippy--friends at last!
True Friendship is a plant of slow growth.

~ George Washington ~

What a Way to Live

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

Happy Halloween!

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!

~ Traditional Scottish prayer ~

Isn't It Better to Learn to Work Together?

Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side.

~ Mark Twain ~

Oooh...Scary

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital.

~ Horace Mann ~

I Think Writers All Agree

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

~ Robert Frost ~

You Still Can Make Egg Salad Out of a 20-Minute Egg

Photo by fille_de_photo
I have met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.

~ Oscar Wilde ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

With the qualities of cleanliness, affection, patience, dignity, and courage that cats have, how many of us, I ask you, would be capable of becoming cats?

~ Fernand Mery ~

Not Just Weakness, But Laziness

To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.

~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman ~

Poetry Friday

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

~ Emily Dickinson ~

Poor Dollies

Do dolls invite abuse, with their dent-able heads,
those tight little painted-on or stitched-in grins?
Hurt me, big botched being, they whine in a dialect
only puritans and the frequently punished can hear.

~ Amy Gerstler from "Touring the Doll Hospital" ~

Read the complete poem here.

I Think I Disagree...

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

~ Graham Greene ~

Oooh...Sounds Dangerous

Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.

~ Bertolt Brecht ~

Well-Dressed

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~