“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.” – Loren Eiseley
Category Archives: FIRST THINGS FIRST
Sell not the bear’s skin before you have caught him
The bear wants a tail, and cannot be a lion
The eagle does not hunt flies.
Mary Ritter Beard :
Woman’s success in lifting men out of their way of life nearly resembling that of the beasts—who merely hunted and fished for food, who found shelter where they could in jungles, in trees, and caves—was a civilizing triumph.
[Mary Ritter Beard (1876-1958), U.S. historian. Woman as Force in History, ch. 12 (1946).]
That cat that has its mouth burned by drinking hot milk will not drink even buttermilk without first blowing upon it.
“The only thing a cat worries about is what’s happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.”
― Lloyd Alexander, Time Cat
Don’t be stomping on ants when you have elephants to feed.” – Peter Turla
He is so mean, he won’t let his little baby have more than one measle at a time – Eugene Field.
http://www.fun-stuff-to-do.com/wittyquips.html
foto of clara milly sleeping in 2013
Those who educate children well are more to be honoured than they who produce them; for these only gave them life, those the art of living well.
http://mirrorfy.com/forum/topics/best-quotes-sayings-famous#
Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
I hated having to wake up in the middle of the night to walk to my bathroom – where suddenly there was a six-foot-seven-inch, headless figure with a sword and a horse!
Johnny Depp
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
“A Ritual to Read to Each Other
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe—
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.”
― William Edgar Stafford
As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frog in jest. But the frogs die in earnest.”
― Joanna Russ, The Female Man
“If you have to eat a frog, don’t spend a lot of time looking at it. If you have to eat more than one, eat the big one first.”
Bloom where you are planted.
http://www.gardendigest.com/cliche.htm
“All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this negative trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, such as gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him to do it. The procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely, and important tasks, however, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.”
― John Perry, The Art of Procrastination: A Guide to Effective Dawdling, Lollygagging and Postponing
The best way to eat the elephant standing in your path is to cut it up into little pieces.
African
The human heart is never satisfied, just like the snake that wants to swallow an elephant.
Chinese
“Be a duck, remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.” Michael Caine
“Don’t duck the most difficult problems. That just ensures that the hardest part will be left when you are most tired. Get the big one done – it’s downhill from then on.”
― Norman Vincent Peale
the house is on fire, but go ahead – finish painting the verandah…
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
“Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.”
― Joan Crawford
Let him who proposes to rob the tower first make the plan of it.
To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.
confucius.
http://www.famous-proverbs.com/Confucius.htm
foto – raleigh sunset
If your house is burning, there is not time to go hunting. (Priorities are important in planning activities.)
AFRICAN. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/African_proverbs
As the world passes by,
they think about life, considering
all the the things that are important
all the things that are simple
and new.
An Afternoon at Snowfall
by Dilawar Karadaghi
http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/86/An_Afternoon_at_Snowfall
foto – bateman’s bay 2010
Proverbs 19.2 . Enthusiasm without knowledge is not good. If you act too quickly, you might make a mistake.
Smith Wigglesworth.
“There are many things in your life that you cannot understand. But be patient, for when the Hand of
God is upon a thing, it may grind very slowly, but it will form the finest thing possible, if you dare wait
until the end of it.”
http://www.williswired.com/2009/02/20/impatience-vs-urgency/
foto – hare at coffs harbour health campus 2010
"If you stop every time a dog barks, your road will never end." Saudi Arabian
http://www.dogquotes.com/dogproverbs.htm
I may be with you for a week, or for years,
We will share many smiles, you will no doubt shed tears.
And when the time comes that God deems I must leave,
I know you will cry and your heart, it will grieve
An Old Dog’s Prayer
Author Unknown
http://www.wolfweb.com.au/acd/anolddogsprayer.html
foto – izzy and charlie in coffs harbour hospital carpark jan 2010
THE OLD PROVERBIAL RECOVERY 