PINE NUTS: Useful Quotes to Brighten One’s Day – Continued

Continuing from last week…over the years I’ve contented myself in collecting poignant quotes that I thought might shed some light upon a long and winding road toward old age. Recently I opened that file and was astonished to discover it had grown to thirty pages in length. So I thought for fun I might like to select my next eleven favorite non-Twainian quotes, and share them with you here in this fine family journal…

We pick it up here with number eleven from Quincy Jones: “No matter how much you feel, you have to have your science and craft together to express it.  Otherwise you are in deep doo-doo.” Mr. Jones still has it all together at ninety years young and going strong. 

Number twelve? Douglas Casey, while at Georgetown University, shared this satirical observation: “Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.”

Robert Frost gives us number thirteen with his astute definition of freedom, “You have freedom when you are easy in your harness.” 

For number fourteen we turn to Kahlil Gibran, “In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures.  For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

At number fifteen Mike Caro weighs in on gambling: “Every conscious act requires risk. Every conscious act requires decision. Put these two facts together and you realize that the secret to life is not to avoid gambling, but to gamble well.”

Moving right along, Erich Fromm asserts “Giving is the highest expression of your aliveness.” 

Marcus Aurelius checks in with number seventeen, “Waste no time debating what a good man should be.  Be one.”

A short list of useful quotes would not be complete without one from H.L. Mencken: “Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

We miss you, George Burns: “Happiness?  A good cigar, and a good woman -or a bad woman.  It depends on how much happiness you can handle.” 

Number twenty brings us closer to home. Las Vegas is not renowned as a literary town. In truth, Las Vegas, literally translated from its original Spanish means, “place of general inebriation.” Deke Castleman tells us, “The word ‘book’ around town, 90% of the time is a verb.”     Finally we shall culminate this short list with a manifesto from Bertrand Russell & Albert Einstein: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

Those two very smart men leave us on page 15 of 30 pages of useful quotes that I’d like to share, but the remaining 15 pages will have to wait for another day. Meanwhile, I hope these eleven might give you a lift as they did me…

Audio: https://anchor.fm/mcavoy-layne