Classic Comments on the Quote

[Eureka]

(Since it is so close to Christmas, these comments seemed particularly relevant.)

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do." — John Holt

LLapp
November 6, 2014, 12:17 pm
There are lots of variations on this. Like Maya Angelou's comment about knowing a person by how s/he handles tangled Christmas tree lights.

LLapp
February 23, 2015, 6:17 pm
John Holt (1923-1985) - educator, Yale graduate, famously wrote "How Children Fail" and "How Children Learn," strongly advocated homeschooling and "unschooling" children. I am a huge fan of his ideas.

marnita
May 29, 2016, 1:52 pm
I flunked that Christmas tree light test.

abra
July 9, 2016, 6:10 pm
Hubby's really good about putting the lights away, so they're not usually tangled. If they were tangled, we'd both fail the test.

marnita
February 26, 2018, 8:29 am
After my meltdown, my husband has also taken on the task of making sure they don't get tangled.

MadDoctor
April 29, 2018, 2:54 pm
Xmas tree lights - easy solution. Sit down in front of the TV. It keeps your fingers busy. Remember, the TV is more important than the lights, so don't stress out.

maradnu
December 26, 2018, 3:50 pm
I read his books many years ago, along with A.S. Neill's Summerhill and other books on education. Few parents have the time or knowledge to properly home school their children.

NotTooOld
August 5, 2024, 8:22 pm
I homeschooled my son and taught him how to handle the Christmas tree lights.

[LLapp]

The cat factor....

"It's easier to be wise for others than for ourselves." — Francois de la Rochefoucauld

LLapp
September 27, 2016, 2:19 pm
8 seconds!!! You're safe for now, Lurker.

Lurker
July 17, 2017, 6:41 am
Thanks, LLapp. Nanrich had it for a while, but I just squeaked out my 2nd 5-second solve ever. Yay me! Yay fast internet connection!

LLapp
October 7, 2017, 1:01 pm
Yow, 5 seconds! How many here have ever done that? I haven't....yet.

Altoid701
December 13, 2018, 10:39 am
I've done 5 seconds a few times, but usually it's not a record because it's tying somebody else who had done it before. Never done 4, I don't think.

imsoeasy
January 13, 2019, 5:12 pm
I'm so slow, no one need know.

badbob
June 13, 2019, 11:50 am
staring at the quote takes me 5 seconds. brushing crumbs off my shirt another five. pushing the cat away five more i'm dealing with a lot of issues

whatthe
September 28, 2019, 1:33 am
45 sec.

darkyr
December 9, 2019, 11:53 pm
whatthe has several cats.

blueladyblue
June 22, 2020, 4:23 pm
Love it, badbob! Based on my score I must have a thousand cats. Even more crumbs.

hrossa
May 20, 2023, 10:08 am
No cats, and 20 sec is pretty good for me. Once I had a 7 sec solve, but there were many faster ones. No cats, no crumbs that day.

Bulldog1967
March 6, 2024, 1:46 am
My cat passed away, no improvement in my times. Ebenezer used to sit on my lap and help me solve.

[Eureka]

"When I only begin to read, I forget I'm on this world. It lifts me on wings with high thoughts." — Anzia Yezierska

Baileys
January 21, 2012, 11:55 pm
Great quotes lift me on wings with high thoughts.

montyb
December 21, 2012, 1:38 pm
The thought of meeting my son for wings after the game lifts me high.

cindidido
March 19, 2014, 2:25 am
Monty's funny comments lift me up. Thanks for the laughs!

kb83
January 2, 2020, 5:26 pm
What language was this saying written in?

Ian123
August 23, 2021, 8:27 am
Yezierskian.

[bees]

"The thing I've found with pigeons is: they've got wings, but they walk a lot."

skeeter
March 10, 2019, 4:38 pm
And isn't it funny they don't stumble more often since they are pigeon-toed.

[hrossa]

"Good taste is the worst vice ever invented." — Edith Sitwell

montyb
February 3, 2014, 4:42 am
In that case, I'm as pure as the driven snow. (As I write this we are expecting another 6 to 10 inches starting tomorrow.)

montyb
October 7, 2015, 5:55 pm
On top of insomnia I get this quote twice in 5 minutes.

LLapp
March 25, 2016, 7:44 am
Not surprising, monty. No Z's.

[hrossa]

RedEnoch's quip is great fun!

"Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate. " — Soren Kierkegaard

RedEnoch
December 5, 2022, 10:04 pm
Look at Soren. When he was born, he was named “Churchyard”. After he died, he was himself a resident.

[LLapp]

One of my favorite instances of Roxanne spinning a detailed history out of one little factoid. The first line is true.
-------------------

We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream." — Arthur O'Shaunessey

Roxanne
December 29, 2017, 2:57 am
Four, count them four, lizard species were named after him. Seriously. Back in the nineteenth-century day you could buy a species name the way nowadays you can buy a star name. His aunt Josephine thought this was all the rage among the Victorian hipsters (like her nephew) and kept buying him lizard names for Christmas until at a big family conference in 1874 Arthur suggested that every Christmas each person pick a name of a family member out of a hat and give a present ONLY to that person the next year. By keeping his slip of paper up his sleeve, he cleverly arranged it so that each year thereafter his name was entered the lottery only after Josephine had already picked. This meant that he had to stand next to her as they toasted the queen, the Empire, etc. and make conversation with her. The people who did pick his name occasionally gave him little porcelain figurines of lizards, thinking that he enjoyed all things pertaining to them. At Whitsuntide he used to take the most recent gift-lizard out to the orchard, set it on a stone wall and use it for shotgun target practice. It became quite the sport amongst his cousins to get him some junk-store bric-a-brac lizard figurine for Christmas (even if someone else had picked his name and gotten him the latest Thomas Hardy novel) They'd all gather at his house at Whitsuntide, get him drunk, and watch him try to nail a lizard figurine with the shotgun he'd inherited from his uncle (ironically, Aunt Josephine's late husband). Sometimes he resorted to just bashing the figurine with the butt of the shotgun. In one such incident involving the plus-one of his third cousin, he met his future wife. In real reality, O'Shaughnessy was a herpetologist at the British Museum.

[LLapp]

"Golf is not just an exercise; it's an adventure, a romance... a Shakespeare play in which disaster and comedy are intertwined." — Harold Segall

abra
August 27, 2015, 11:27 am
Someone is too involved with golf. C'mon Harold, a Shakespeare play?? Another hobby might help. I'll suggest Crypograms.

kb83
February 13, 2017, 6:09 am
And anon, methought. The woods began to move.

LLapp
April 19, 2017, 10:52 am
I can just imagine one of those hushed golf commentator voices whispering, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from green to green...."

munchlet
July 1, 2017, 3:17 am
To golf or not to golf...

Barnabas
October 21, 2017, 10:51 am
Titleist, oh Titleist where for art thou? "Tis nobler in the mind to hit thee down the fareway."

kb83
December 15, 2017, 2:44 am
Who steals my purse steals trash. But he who robs from me my good game...

DaddyOmar
March 15, 2021, 6:29 pm
I think i just invented a sport: one golf player toward the little hole, might get tackled by linebacker and if gets by he has to pass , that would be real exercise a catcher that is guarding the hole

Eureka
July 2, 2021, 4:17 pm
^I'd watch that!

kb83
May 3, 2022, 2:51 pm
All the world's a green. And all the men and women merely putters.

montyb
March 19, 2024, 8:25 pm
As far as my golf game is concerned It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. (Or so I've been told.)

[Eureka]

"Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience." — Albert Einstein

dovid1946
January 7, 2015, 7:29 am
axioms of science, axioms of ethics. It's all relative

badbob
July 2, 2016, 2:13 am
who were Einstein' relatives and did they matter?

LLapp
September 24, 2018, 3:59 pm
His Auntie Matter says they did not.

NoiseLTD
January 17, 2021, 4:07 pm
I'm not sure that Karl Popper would agree.

Ian123
February 4, 2021, 9:41 am
Karl Popper was related to Auntie Matter ?

Baylor Bears
July 4, 2021, 6:12 am
Auntie Matter was "Doesn't's mother.

[LLapp]

"The conviction that we should all drink eight glasses of water a day is the most enduring of dietary misunderstandings." — Bill Bryson

TPaineRedux
June 17, 2024, 12:11 pm
Is it OK if I dilute it with something?

[kb83]

To me, the name sounds like the new-age Gods who went on a vegetarian diet

[Eureka]

"Good laws have their origins in bad morals." — Ambrosius Macrobius

momn8r
March 28, 2016, 12:21 pm
He sounds like a Harry Potter spell.

badbob
August 9, 2018, 7:44 pm
momn8r, you are correct i waved my wand after saying his name and the cat disappeared

momn8r
March 9, 2019, 7:34 pm
@babbob: oh you crypytowizard, you! Fluffy showed up here and now he wants to go home. Im sending him back right away. POOF!

[Eureka]

Bowling humor really strikes a chord with me.

"Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying." — Baba Ram Dass

onlyinvowels
March 28, 2018, 7:09 am
It kind of makes sense... You only truly understand the things said by the part of a person you can identify with. E.g. I hear (understand) people when they talk about cryptograms, but not when they talk about bowling, because one piece of me is cryptogram fan, but no piece of me is bowling fan.

lertsek
April 28, 2018, 7:51 pm
I thought everybody liked bowling. Perhaps my mind is in the gutter, so I'll spare you my split from reality.

bigdave
April 3, 2019, 6:54 pm
OIV framed the quote nicely, really pinned it down.

[LLapp]

"The hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men." — Henry David Thoreau

jnoodles
August 15, 2013, 1:01 am
Thank you. Thank you very much.

dovid1946
April 14, 2015, 3:37 am
The mythic hero usually lives his early years in obscurity and then his true heritage is revealed.

badbob
October 5, 2018, 10:15 pm
my cape is in the closet. just waiting for the call

pickleball
March 10, 2021, 3:27 pm
badbob- how you making out with no more telephone booth

badbob
August 20, 2022, 5:05 am
now I run into an Apple store and ask to use the men's room

[pj48]

"Honor is not to be won, it must only not be lost." -Arthur Shopenhauer


montyb
October 18, 2014, 6:10 am
I'm certain I put mine on the night stand last night. Now where is it?
montyb
March 28, 2015, 6:49 am
Now my keys are gone!
Roxanne
February 28, 2016, 2:33 pm
I think I saw the dog carrying it around.
montyb
June 22, 2016, 1:42 pm
Great...my honor is probably buried by now.
Eureka
January 25, 2019, 12:37 pm
LOL montyb. I do hope you find it.
Elephino
September 1, 2020, 1:31 am
I saw an ad on Craigslist today: "1 honor, 3 keys $10 OBO. The honor is in "fair" condition"
montyb
April 15, 2021, 4:45 pm
Mine was never in that good of condition.
hrossa
August 14, 2021, 5:08 pm
LOL montyb, I bet yours was fine. Maybe it's with my glasses.
rasbury
August 22, 2021, 4:14 pm
Mine is a tie.