There's really nothing like a woman's purse to tell whether she is prospering or languishing. It's not about the money inside so much as the BRAND of the purse. The smaller the better too. Mine - the one I like best - is a Fossil. Never in a million years would I have bought it for myself. Kids. Kids buy moms stuff.
-- Anonymous Woman –

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation…
-- Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Act 4, Scene 1 –

Have a great Monday!

Freud: Anna, although I am your father, as part of your education I must show you my penis so you understand certain fundamental concepts. Now, do you see the difference between the penis and the phallus?

Anna: Yes, Father. The penis is like the phallus, only much smaller.

← “In a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know.”
-- Steve Martin, on Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life –

Have a great Monday!

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.
-- Jose Saramago –

Have a great Monday!

At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, “How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.''
-- Miss Bingley, in Jane Austen’s, Pride and Prejudice –

Have a great Wednesday!

I swear, every year it happens. I have the flu. I've had it since Sunday through the holiday parties and Santa's visit. I haven't been much fun to be around for my hubby and child. Poor guys. Hopefully, I'll kick it soon. Usually, I'm getting over being sick during the holidays but this year I had to have the worst flu I've had in years smack dab in the middle of it. Ugh!

I did get some good books from my better half:

It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work.
-- William Faulkner –

And out the door I go…
Have a great Monday, y’all.

Years later, when he tried to remember what the maiden idealized by the alchemy of poetry really was like, he could not distinguish her from the heartrending twilight of those times. Even when he observed her, unseen, during those days of longing when he waited for a reply to his first letter, he saw her transfigured in the afternoon shimmer of two o’clock in a shower of blossoms from the almond trees where it was always April regardless of the season of the year.
-- From Marquez’s Love In The Time of Cholera –

Even in translation, so beautiful. I’m really enjoying this book.
Have a great Monday!
**********

The teacher, as has been recognized at least since Plato's Meno, is not primarily someone who knows instructing someone who does not know. He is rather someone who attempts to re-create the subject in the student's mind, and his strategy in doing this is first of all to get the student to recognize what he already potentially knows, which includes breaking up the powers of repression in his mind that keep him from knowing what he knows. That is why it is the teacher, rather than the student, who asks most of the questions.
-- Northrop Frye, in The Great Code –

Have a great Thursday!

In doctor’s waiting-rooms, a decade or two ago, the tedium would have been relieved with quiet background music: sentimental songs from Broadway, popular classics like Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Nowadays, however, one hears only the thudding, mechanical music favoured by the young. Their cowed elders bear it without protest: faute de mieux it has become their music too.

"When you stopped believing in God," Will asked, "did you stop believing in good and evil?"
"No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that’s an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels."

Yesterday I was a dog.
Today I'm a dog.
Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
[Sigh!]
There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy –

Have a great Wednesday!

The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines - so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright, New York Times, October 4, 1953 –

Have a great Monday!

“A long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain - then have a heart attack at that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?”
-- Robert A. Heinlein –

Have a great Monday!

Isn't poetry absolutely wonderful though? I mean, really there is something about it that prose writing will never be able to quite get to. Poetry is so not reporting. It's so finicky, it is inherently allowed to appeal to a much smaller audience than prose. It is always such a narrow rolled-up newspaper telescopic opinion of something.
To a certain extent, the fiction shelves have to be saying... "I can appeal to you, you will be able to relate to this, please buy me, BUY ME," but the poetry shelves [more scantily clad and less visited] whisper to no one in particular, "This is what I am. Perhaps no one can relate. But no matter. I am not really for sale."
-- Cipriano –

The sun sank, and they both felt its final shudder of warmth.
Turning, he looked into her eyes.
“I feel as though you are the one I have waited for, all my life. And now you are here.”
“I’m not even sure if I believe in such a thing,” she whispered.

Why does anyone write a poem?
Because they have to write one.
If they could have done something else with the those moments they’ve given to the composition process, it’s not a poem.
-- Cipriano –

Have a great Monday!

Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
-- W.S. Merwin –

Absence sometimes makes the heart grow ANGRIER, I say!
I have so missed being able to blog, and to converse with my great blog-friends.
But I think I am back in business now!
The MAC is fixed!

Have a great Thursday!
**********

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.
-- Thomas Carlyle –

Why am I choosing the above famous Carlyle quote as a Splash du Jour?
Because I want to go on record as saying that I DO NOT BELIEVE IN IT.

Chris Neil celebrates his game-winning goal, Nov.10, 2007.

In Grade 3, Neil’s principal asked him what he was going to be when he grew up. “I’m going to play in the NHL,” said Neil.

Do you think God gets stoned?
← I think so . . . look at the platypus.
-- Robin Williams –

Have a great Tuesday!

Wonder is a state of mind in which nothing is taken for granted. Each thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable. We are amazed at seeing anything at all; amazed not only at particular values and things but at the unexpectedness of being as such, at the fact that there is being at all.
-- Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) –

Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is a part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say ‘yes’ to life?
-- Paulo Coelho, in Eleven Minutes –

Have a great Monday!

A University of Illinois student went to a bookstore & asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?"
She said if she told him, it would defeat the purpose.

Have a great Friday!

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
-- W.B. Yeats –

Have a great Thursday!

Two newlywed University of Illinois grads were driving through Louisiana.
As they were approaching the town of Natchitoches, they started arguing about the pronunciation of the name.

Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.
-- Winnie The Pooh --

Have a great Wednesday!