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;void(0)) . . . MORNING see: "CARPE DIEM" see: "LIGHT" see: "RISE & SHINE" see: "SUN" see: "TIME" for other related links Photograph: Morning in the Adirondacks. Oh! how I hate to get up in the morning, Oh! how Id love to remain in bed; For the hardest blow of all, Is to hear the bugler call: Youve got to get up, Youve got to get up, Youve got to get up this morning! Some day Im going to murder the bugler, Some day theyre going to find him dead. Ill amputate his reveille, And step upon it heavily, And spend the rest of my life in bed. --Irving Berlin (18881989) American songwriter. "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning" [1918 song] Oh, what a beautiful mornin', Oh, what a beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feelin' Ev'rythin's goin' my way. --Oscar Hammerstein II (18951960) American songwriter. "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" [1943 song] in the musical _Oklahoma_. Nothing could be finer Than to be in Carolina In the morning. --Gus Kahn (18861941) German-born American songwriter. "Carolina in the Morning" [1922 song] w/music by Walter Donaldson. It's completely usual for me to get up in the morning, take a look around, and laugh out loud. --Barbara Kingsolver (b. 1955) American author. _High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never_ [1996] I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning. --J.B. [John Boynton] Priestley (18941984) English novelist, playwright and critic. _Delight_, p. 170 [1949] Do not shorten the morning by getting up late; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. --Arthur Schopenhauer (17881860) German philosopher. _The Wisdom of Life; Counsels and Maxims_, ch. 2 [tr. by T. Bailey Saunders, 1890] For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm. --Edwin Way Teale (18991980) American naturalist, writer, and photographer. _Circle of the Seasons_ [1953] - I wake up in the morning and dust off my wits, I grab the newspaper and read the obits. If I'm not there, I know I'm not dead, So I have a good breakfast and go back to bed. --From a turn-of-the-century parlor song, as quoted in Studs Terkel _Coming of Age_ [1995]. ----- aubade [oh-BAHD], noun: A song or poem greeting the dawn; also, a composition suggestive of morning. aurora (noun) 1: In Roman mythology, the goddess of dawn. 2: The dawn or beginning of something. eosophobia: fear of dawn. matutinal [muh-TOOT-n-uhl], adjective: Relating to or occurring in the morning; early. pandiculation [pan-dik-yuh-LEY-shuhn], noun: An instinctive stretching, as on awakening or while yawning.  . . see: "PLACES" for related links The bus to Marrakesh, Morocco, Traverses landscapes simply socko The agricultural economy Suggests the book of Deuteronomy The machine has not replaced the mammal And everything is done by camel. I hope I'll never learn what flesh I ate that day in Marrakesh, But after struggling with a jawful I thought it tasted humpthing awful. --Ogden Nash (19021971) American writer of humorous poetry. 'Morocco', in _Everything but Me and Thee_ [1964]. ;void(0)) MOSCOW . . see: "COMMUNISM" see: "RUSSIA" see: "PLACES" for other related links - My first impression of Moscow was of violent impact a feeling so intense that, seeing the Kremlin for the first time, I wanted to swallow it in one gulp. This was the real blood and bones of Russia of Muscovy, of Pushkin's Golden- Headed Moscow. The Kremlin! What words can conjure up this fabulous conglomeration of palaces, churches, prisons, treasure- houses, belfries, gilded cupolas, pinnacles and crimson walls? Its terror, its legends, its loveliness are like nothing else in all the world. No life, I felt, would be long enough to know it in all its aspects. Seeing it rising, sumptuous and barbaric, archetypl Russia, shimmering above the grey waters of the Moskva river, my degree of possessive, lovers' greed was such that my mouth watered. Over the years the Kremlin's beauty has never staled for me. No other building or site compares and, for me, it remains the eighth wonder of the world. --Lesley Blanch (19042007) English fashion editor and writer. _Journey into the Mind's Eye_ [1968] - - Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Holidays in Hell_ [1989] The only way to enforce a contract is, as it were, with a contract and plenty of enforcers. What would be litigiousness in New York is a hail of bullets in Moscow. Instead of a society infested with lawyers, they have a society infested with hit men. Which is worse, of course, is a matter of opinion. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Eat the Rich_ [1998] - ;void(0)) MOTHER-IN-LAW . . see: "HOME & FAMILY" for related links [Pakistan is] the sort of place to send your mother-in-law for a month, all expenses paid. --Ian Botham (b. 1955) British cricketer and cricket commentator. (In a BBC Radio interview [17 March 1984]. The following month he was fined by the Test and County Cricket Board for making the remark.) [I] should, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. Letter to Thomas Moore, quoted in Thomas Mallon _Yours Ever: People and Their Letters_ [2009]. We had a civil ceremony his mother didn't come. --Phyllis Diller (b. 1917) American comedian. Quoted in "Phyllis Diller: Live and at Home" by Joanne Kaufman _Wall Street Journal_ [5 August 2005]. Honolulu it's got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife's mother. --Ken Dodd (b. 1927) English comedian and singer songwriter. Quoted in Jon Winokur _The Traveling Curmudgeon_, p. 28 [2003]. Never rely on the glory of the morning or the smiles of your mother-in-law. --Japanese Proverb But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses. --Jerome K Jerome (18591927) English novelist and playwright. _Three Men in a Boat_, ch. 3 [1889] She is an old lady and the age of chivalry is not dead while a Gudgeon lives. Perhaps a different son-in-law might have described her as a sensless, whining, nagging, leather-faced old whitlow not fit to cohabit with a rhinoceros beetle. But I wouldn't. --Lennie Lower (19031947) Australian humourist. _Here's Luck_ ch. 22 [1930] ^^ In Texas, when Orvell Lloyd was asked why he had killed his mother-in-law, he said he had mistaken her for a raccoon. _The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes_ Introduced by Edward Leeson [2005], "Crime and the Law" ^^ Ambrose Wolfinger (W.C. Fields): My poor mother-in-law died three days ago. I'm attending her funeral this afternoon. Ambrose's Secretary (Carlotta Monti): Isn't that terrible, Mr. Wolfinger! Ambrose: Yes, it's terrible. It's awful. Horrible tragedy. Secretary: It must be hard to lose your mother-in-law. Ambrose: Yes it is, very hard. It's almost impossible. --Man on the Flying Trapeze [1935 film] Screenplay by Ray Harris & Sam Hardy. Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. --H.L. (Henry Louis) Mencken (18801956) American journalist and literary critic. Attributed in "Saturday Review" [1967]. If you don't need them, don't feed them. That goes for cats, rats, mother-in-laws and so forth. --James Murphy, rodent control officer, Washington, D.C., in the "New York Times" [10 August 1985]. - A youthful beef-packer named Young, One day, when his nerves were unstrung, Pushed his wife's ma, unseen, In the chopping machine, Then canned it and labelled it 'Tongue'. --anon. - An older gentleman was on the operating table awaiting surgery and he insisted that his son, a renowned surgeon, perform the operation. As he was about to get the anesthesia, he asked to speak to his son. "Yes, Dad, what is it? " "Don't be nervous, son; do your best and just remember, if it doesn't go well, if something happens to me, your mother is going to come and live with you and your wife...." - ;void(0)) MOTHERS . . see: "HOME & FAMILY" for related links This is the reason why mothers are more devoted to their children than fathers: it is that they suffer more in giving them birth and are more certain that they are their own. --Aristotle (384322 B.C.) Greek philosopher. _Nicomachean Ethics_ [c. 350 B.C.] [Humorous reply to his mother who had suggested he marry:] A man's mother is his misfortune, but his wife is his fault. --Walter Bagehot (18261877) British economist and essayist. Quoted in _Fraser's Magazine_ [March 1879]. Never marry a man who hates his mother, because he'll end up hating you. --Jill Bennett (19311990) British actress. In Connie Robertson _The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 37 [1998]. As is the mother, so is her daughter. --_Bible_ "Ezekiel" 16:44 - "Somebody's Mother" Mary D. Brine (c.18361925) American poet. The woman was old, and ragged, and gray, And bent with the chill of a winter's day; The streets were white with a recent snow, And the woman's feet were aged and slow. At the crowded crossing she waited long, Jostled aside by the careless throng Of human beings who passed her by, Unheeding the glance of her anxious eye. Down the street, with laughter and shout, Glad in the freedom of "school is out," Came happy boys, like a flock of sheep, Hailing the snow piled white and deep, Past the woman, so old and gray, Hasten the children on their way. None offered a helping hand to her, So weak and timid, afraid to stir, Lest the carriage wheels or the horse's feet Should trample her down in the slippery street. At last came out of the merry troop The gayest boy of all the group; He paused beside her, and whispered low, "I'll help you across, if you wish to go." Her aged hand on his strong young arm She placed, and so without hurt or harm, He guided her trembling feet along, Proud that his own were firm and strong; Then back again to his friends he went, His young heart happy and well content. "She's somebody's Mother, boys, you know, For all she's aged, and poor, and slow, And some one, some time, may lend a hand, To help my mother you understand? If ever she's poor, and old, and grey, And her own dear boy so far away." Somebody's mother bowed low her head, In her home that night, and the prayer she said Was: "God be kind to the noble boy, Who is somebody's son, and pride and joy." Faint was the voice, and worn and weak, But heaven lists when its chosen speak; Angels caught the faltering word, And "Somebody's Mother's" prayer was heard. - I have always admired the Esquimaux. One fine day a delicious meal is cooked for dear old mother, and then she goes walking away over the ice, *and doesn't come back.* --Agatha Christie (18901976) English crime fiction writer. _An Autobiography_ [1977] It is odd how all men develop the notion, as they grow older, that their mothers were wonderful cooks. I have yet to meet a man who will admit that his mother was a kitchen assassin and nearly poisoned him. --Robertson Davies (19131995) Canadian author and playwright. _The Papers of Samuel Marchbanks_ [1985] I did not have my mother long, but she cast over me an influence which has lasted all my life. The good effects of her early training I can never lose. If it had not been for her appreciation and her faith in me at a critical time in my experience, I should never likely have become an inventor. I was always a careless boy, and with a mother of different mental calibre, I should have turned out badly. But her firmness, her sweetness, her goodness, were potent powers to keep me in the right path. My mother was the making of me. The memory of her will always be a blessing to me. --Thomas Alva Edison (18471931) American inventor. Quoted in "The Expositor and Current Anecdotes" [May 1912]. Men are what their mothers made them. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _The Conduct of Life_ [1860] "Fate" A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary. --Dorothy Canfield Fisher (18791958) American educational reformer and social activist. _Her Son's Wife_, ch. 37 [1926] If a man has been his mother's undisputed darling he retains throughout life the triumphant feeling, the confidence in success, which not seldom brings actual success along with it. --Sigmund Freud (18561939) Austrian psychiatrist. "A Childhood Recollection" in _Dichtung und Wahrheit_ [1917]. You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's. He's more particular. --Robert Frost (18741963) American poet. In George Plimpton _Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews; Second Series_, p. 25 [1963]. You may have tangible wealth untold; Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold. Richer than I you can never be I had a mother who read to me. --Strickland Gillian (18691954) "The Reading Mother" Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth. --Robert Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. _Time Enough for Love_ [1973] - Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. ... Mom was working as a maid with a white family. When they found out she was going to have a baby they just threw her out. Pop's family just about had a fit, too, when they heard about it. They were real society folks and they never heard of things like that going on in their part of East Baltimore. But both kids were poor. And when you're poor, you grow up fast. It's a wonder my mother didn't end up in the workhouse and me as a foundling. But Sadie Fagan loved me from the time I was just a swift kick in the ribs while she scrubbed floors. She went to the hospital and made a deal with the head woman there. She told them she'd scrub floors and wait on the other bitches laying up there to have their kids so she could pay her way and mine. And she did. Mom was thirteen that Wednesday, April 7, 1915, in Baltimore when I was born. --Billie Holliday [Eleanora Fagan] (19151959) American jazz singer. _Lady Sings the Blues_ [1956], "Some Other Spring" - A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest. --Irish proverb A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy. --Washington Irving (17831859) American author, essayist, and travel book writer. Quoted in Adam Woolιver (comp.) _Treasury of Wisdom, Wit and Humor_, p. 254 [4th ed. 1881]. - The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. --"Ladies' Repository" [September 1849] but note: All history shows that the hand that cradles the rock has ruled the world, *not* the hand that rocks the cradle! --Clare Boothe Luce (19031987) American playwright and politician. _Slam the Door Softly_ [1970] - All I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [1861-65]. Attributed in "The Spirit of '76" [September 1895]. The best academy, a mother's knee. --James Russell Lowell (18191891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. Quoted in Louis Albert Banks _The Christ Brotherhood_, ch. XVIII [1897]. When I was a small boy and unhappy I used to dream night after night that my life at school was all a dream and that I should wake to find myself at home again with my mother. Her death was a wound that fifty years have not entirely healed. --W. Somerset Maugham (18741965) English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer. _The Summing Up_, ch. LXXVII [1938] Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? ... In my heart it don't mean a thing. --Toni Morrison (Chloe Anthony Woffard) (b. 1931) American novelist. _Beloved_ [1987] Every mother is like Moses. She does not enter the Promised Land. She prepares a world she will not see. --Pope Paul VI [Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini] (18971978) Pope [1963-78]. _The Pope Speaks: Dialogues of Paul VI with Jean Guitton_ [1968] It takes one woman twenty years to make a man of her son and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. --Helen Rowland (18751950) American writer. _A Guide to Men_, prelude [1922] No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. --Florida Scott-Maxwell (18841979) American playwright, author, and Jungian analyst. _The Measure of My Days_ [1968] "Working mother" is a misnomer. ... It implies that any mother without a definite career is indolently not working, lolling around eating bon-bons, reading novels, and watching soap operas. But the word "mother" is already a synonym for some of the hardest, most demanding work ever shouldered by any human. --Liz Smith (b. 1923) American gossip columnist. _The Mother Book_ [1978], "Work, Work, Work!" An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. --Spanish proverb [Ruby Carter (Mae West) speaking:] That guy's no good. His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. --Mae West (18931980) American stage and film actress. "Belle of the Nineties" [1934 film], screenplay by West. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. _The Importance of Being Earnest_ [1895] - When I was in public school, I had the same teacher for three years (grades one-four in an accelerated class). She was fairly young then, and still teaching when my mother and I ran into her in a local store and stopped to chat. It was a fabric store, and she asked my mother, who, as she knew, had made all my clothes when I was in her class, a couple of questions about the best way to make curtains, and then commented that my mother was obviously as smart as I thought. Apparently, for twenty years, I had stood out in her memory because, one day, I had told her she was very smart, and knew nearly as much as my mother. --author unknown, alt.fifty-plus.friends - This is for all the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's OK honey, Mommy's here." when they keep crying and won't stop. This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse. For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T. This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes. This is for all the mothers who froze their buns off on metal bleachers at football or soccer games Friday night instead of watching from cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see me ?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the World," and mean it. This is for all the mothers who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair when they stomp their feet like a tired 2-year old who wants ice cream before dinner. This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and explained all about making babies. And for all the mothers who wanted to but just couldn't. For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then read it again. "Just one more time." This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead. This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot. This is for all mothers whose heads turn automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own off spring are at home. This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach aches, assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up right away. This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them. For all the mothers who bite their lips sometimes until they bleed when their 14 year olds dye their hair green. What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it heart? Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib 2 A.M. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby? The need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying? For all the mothers of the victims of all these school shootings, and the mothers of those who did the shooting. For the mothers of the Survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of their TVs in horror, hugging their child who just came home from school, safely. This is for mothers who put pinwheels and teddy bears on their children's graves. This is for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation. And mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers. Single mothers and married Mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without. This is for you all. So hang in there. --anon. - Mother's Day Symbolism The pink carnation is a gesture to honor a living mother, while a white carnation is worn to symbolize remembrance. - On Motherhood Author Unknown We are sitting at lunch when my friend casually mentions that she and her husband are thinking of "starting a family". "We're taking a survey," she says, half-joking. "Do you think I should have a baby?" "It will change your life," I say, carefully keeping my tone neutral. "I know," she says, "no more sleeping in on weekends, no more spontaneous vacations...." But that is not what I meant at all. I look at my friend, trying to decide what to tell her. I want her to know what she will never learn in childbirth classes. I want to tell her that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but that becoming a mother will leave her with an emotional wound so raw that she will forever be vulnerable. I consider warning her that she will never again read a newspaper without asking "What if that had been MY child?" That every plane crash, every house fire will haunt her. That when she sees pictures of starving children, she will wonder if anything could be worse than watching your child die. I look at her carefully manicured nails and stylish suit and think that no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub. That an urgent call of "Mom!" will cause her to drop a soufflι or her best crystal without a moment's hesitation. I feel I should warn her that no matter how many years she has invested in her career, she will be professionally derailed by motherhood. She might arrange for childcare, but one day she will be going into an important business meeting and she will think of her baby's sweet smell. She will have to use every ounce of her discipline to keep from running home, just to make sure her baby is alright. I want my friend to know that everyday decisions will no longer be routine. That a five year old boy's desire to go to the men's room rather than the women's at McDonald's will become a major dilemma. That right there, in the midst of clattering trays and screaming children, issues of independence and gender identity will be weighed against the prospect that a child molester may be lurking in that restroom. However decisive she may be at the office, she will second-guess herself constantly as a mother. Looking at my attractive friend, I want to assure her that eventually she will shed the pounds of pregnancy, but she will never feel the same about herself. That her life, now so important, will be of less value to her once she has a child. That she would give it up in a moment to save her offspring, but will also begin to hope for more years not to accomplish her own dreams, but to watch her child accomplish theirs. I want her to know that a cesarean scar or shiny stretch marks will become badges of honor. My friend's relationship with her husband will change, but not in the way she thinks. I wish she could understand how much more you can love a man who is careful to powder the baby or who never hesitates to play with his child. I think she should know that she will fall in love with him again for reasons she would now find very unromantic. I wish my friend could sense the bond she will feel with women throughout history who have tried to stop war, prejudice and drunk driving. I hope she will understand why I can think rationally about most issues, but become temporarily insane when I discuss the threat of nuclear war to my children's future. I want to describe to my friend the exhilaration of seeing your child learn to ride a bike. I want to capture for her the belly laugh of a baby who is touching the soft fur of a dog or a cat for the first time. I want her to taste the joy that is so real, it actually hurts. My friend's quizzical look makes me realize that tears have formed in my eyes. "You'll never regret it," I finally say. Then I reach across the table, squeeze my friend's hand and offer a silent prayer for her, and for me, and for all of the mere mortal women who stumble their way into this most wonderful of callings. The blessed gift of God and that of being a Mother. - Famous Mothers COLUMBUS' MOTHER: "I don't care what you've discovered, you still could have written!" MICHELANGELO'S MOTHER: "Can't you paint on walls like other children? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get that stuff off the ceiling?" NAPOLEON'S MOTHER: "All right, if you aren't hiding your report card inside your jacket, take your hand out of there and show me." ABRAHAM LINCOLN'S MOTHER: "Again with the stovepipe hat? Can't you just wear a baseball cap like the other kids?" GEORGE WASHINGTON'S MOTHER: "The next time I catch you throwing money across the Potomac, you can kiss your allowance good-bye!" THOMAS EDISON'S MOTHER: "Of course I'm proud that you invented the electric light bulb. Now turn it off and get to bed!" PAUL REVERE'S MOTHER: "I don't care where you think you have to go, young man, midnight is past your curfew." ALBERT EINSTEIN'S MOTHER: "But it's your senior picture. Can't you do something about your hair? OY! Styling gel, mousse, something...?" - My four-year-old son, Shane, had been asking for a puppy for over a month but his Daddy kept saying, "No dogs! A dog will dig up the garden and chase the ducks and kill our rabbits. No dog, and that's final!" Each night Shane prayed for a puppy, and each morning he was disappointed when there was no puppy waiting outside. I was peeling potatoes for dinner, and he was sitting on the floor at my feet asking for the thousandth time, "Why won't Daddy let me have a puppy?" "Because they are a lot of trouble. Don't cry. Maybe Daddy will change his mind someday," I encouraged him. "No, he won't and I'll never have a puppy in a million years," Shane wailed. I looked into his dirty, tear-streaked face. How could we deny him his one wish? So I said the words that were first spoken by Eve, "I know a way to make Daddy change his mind." "Really?" Shane wiped away his tears and sniffed. I handed him a potato. "Take this and carry it with you until it turns into a puppy," I whispered. "Never let it out of your sight for one minute. Keep it with you all the time, and on the third day, tie a string around it and drag it around the yard and see what happens!" Shane grabbed the potato with both hands. "Mama, how do you make a potato into a puppy?" He turned it over and over in his little hands. "Shh! It's a secret!" I whispered and sent him on his way. "Lord, you know what a woman must do to keep peace in her home!" I prayed. Shane faithfully carried his potato around for two days, he slept with it, bathed with it and talked to it. On the third day I said to my husband, "We really should get a pet for Shane." "What makes you think he needs a pet?" my husband leaned against the doorway. "Well, he's been carrying a potato around with him for days. He calls it Wally and says it is his pet. He sleeps with it on his pillow and right now he has a string tied to it and he's dragging it around the yard." "A potato?" my husband asked and looked out the window and watched Shane taking his potato for a walk. "It will break his heart when the potato gets mushy and rots," I said and started getting out food for lunch, "Besides, every time I try to peel potatoes for dinner, Shane cries because he says I'm killing Wally's family." "A potato?" my husband asked, "My son has a pet potato?" "Well," I said shrugging, "you said he couldn't have a puppy. He was so disappointed, in his mind, he decided he had to have a pet..." "Maybe you're right, but explain to me why he is dragging that potato around the yard on a string," he said. My husband watched our son for a few more minutes. "I'll bring home a puppy tonight, I'll stop by the animal shelter after work. I guess a puppy can't be that much trouble," he sighed, "It's better than a potato." That night Shane's Daddy brought home a wiggling puppy and a pregnant white cat that he took pity on while he was at the shelter. Everyone was happy. My husband thought he'd saved his son from a nervous breakdown. Shane had a puppy, a cat and five kittens and believed his Mother had magic powers that could change a potato into a puppy. And I was happy because I got my potato back and cooked it for dinner. Everything was perfect until one evening when I was cooking dinner, Shane tugged on my dress and asked, "Mama, do you think I could have a pony for my birthday?" I looked into his sweet little face and said, "Well, first we have to find a watermelon..." . . see: "AMBITION" see: "CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES" see: "DESIRE" see: "ENCOURAGMENT" see: "INFLUENCE" see: "INSPIRATION" see: "INTENTIONS" see: "INTEREST" see: "PURPOSE" see: "REASONS" see: "SELF-INTEREST" see: "SUCCESS" for other related links A hound started a hare from his lair, but after a long run, gave up the chase. A goat-herd seeing him stop, mocked him, saying "The little one is the best runner of the two." The hound replied, "You do not see the difference between us: I was only running for a dinner, but he for his life." --Ζsop (c. 620 B.C.c. 560 B.C.) (Thought to be a legendary figure.) _Ζsop's Fables_ "The Hare and the Hound" - Abraham Lincoln and his law partner, William Herndon, were arguing the question of whether or not any person ever performs a completely unselfish act. They were riding together through the country and came upon a pig caught in a rail fence. Herndon pretended not to see the animal and passed on by. But Lincoln stopped, got down and waded through a muddy ditch, pulled the rails apart and released the pig. Herndon pointed triumphantly to Lincoln's muddy shoes and spattered trousers, saying, "You see now I am right. Men are capable of performing unselfish deeds." "Oh no," replied Lincoln, "if I had left that pig in the fence, I would have worried about him all night. I would have been so busy wondering if someone had rescued him, or if he was still held between those rails, that I would have lost my sleep. For my own peace of mind, I had to rescue the animal. So, you see, I was merely being selfish." --Charles Livingston Allen (19132005) American minister. _The Greatest of These is Love_ [1986], "Love Overcomes Destructive Emotions" - Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own. --Sir James Matthew Barrie (18601937) Scottish writer and dramatist. Rectorial address, St. Andrew's University, Scotland [3 May 1922]. It is a general popular error to imagine the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare. --Edmund Burke (17291797) Irish-born Whig politician and man of letters. "Observation on a Publication Entitled, 'The Present State of the Nation' " in _The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke_ [vol 1 of 3; 1792]. We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive. --Lord Byron [George Gordon Byron] (17881824) English Romantic poet and satirist. Letter to Lady Melbourne [28 September 1813]. The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self-activity. --Thomas Carlyle (17951881) Scottish historian and political philosopher. Attributed in James Wood (ed.) _Dictionary of Quotations ..._, p. 417 [1899]. A pat on the back, though only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, is miles ahead in results. --attributed to Bennett Cerf (18981971) American author, humorist, and publisher. Give me virtuous actions, and I will not quibble ... about the motives. --Lord Chesterfield [Philip Dormer Stanhope] (16941773) British writer and politician. Letter to his son [5 September 1748]. No man does anything from a single motive. --Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834) English poet, critic, and philosopher. _Biographia Literaria_ [1817] Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly. --attributed to Stephen Covey (b. 1932) American author. I have now for more than a year, I believe, ceased to write in my journal, in which I formerly wrote almost daily. I see few intellectual persons, and even those to no purpose, and sometimes believe that I have no new thoughts, and that my life is quite at an end. But the magnet that lies in my drawer, for years, may believe it has no magnetism, and, on touching it with steel, it knows the old virtue; and, this morning, came by a man with knowledge and interests like mine, in his head, and suddenly I had thoughts again. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Journal_ [April 1859] Sometime, Rock, when the team's up against it, when things are going wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper. I don't know where I'll be then Rock, but I'll know about it, and I'll be happy. --George Gipp (18951920) American football player. Whispered remark to his coach Knute Rockne as he lay dying from a viral throat infection two weeks after being named to the All-American team, December 1920. In Red [Walter] Smith "One for the Gipper," _New York Times_ [21 January 1981]. Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way. --attributed to Baltasar Graciαn (16011658) Spanish Jesuit philosopher. There comes a time in your life when people get very sweet to you. I don't mind people being sweet to me. In fact, I'm getting rather sweet back at them. But I'm a madly irritating person, and I irritated them for years ... I think they're beginning to think I'm not going to be around much longer. --Katharine Hepburn (19072003) American stage and motion-picture actress; winner of four Academy Awards. "Ageless Queen Full of Beans" in _LIFE_ (mag.) [5 January 1968]. Whatever be the motive of insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly scarcely can deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. _The Rambler_ (English twice-weekly journal), [15 February 1752] We should often blush at our noblest deeds if the world were to see all their underlying motives. --Franηois de La Rochefoucauld (16131680) French classical author. _Maxims_ 409 [1665] tr. Leonard Tancock [1959] The greater part of our daily actions are the result of hidden motives which escape our observation. --Gustave Le Bon (18411931) French social psychologist best known for his study of the psychological characteristics of crowds. _The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind_, 1.1 [1895] The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty. --Abraham Lincoln (18091865) American Republican statesman, President [18611865]. Speech in Baltimore, Maryland [18 April 1864]. - What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is not only true, but identical; that men always act from self-interest. --Thomas Babington Macaulay (18001859) English politician and historian. "Mill's Essay on Government" [1829] The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. --Thomas Babington Macaulay (18001859) English politician and historian. _History of England_, v. I, ch. 2 [1849] - A man always has two reasons for the things he does a good one and the real one. --John Pierpont Morgan, Sr. (18371913) American banker, financier, and benefactor of the arts. Remark to an associate, in Ron Chernow _The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance_, ch. 6 [1990]. In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit. --attributed to Albert Schweitzer (18751965) Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor. - Bob Richards, the Olympic pole vaulter of years ago, loved to tell the story of the goof-off who played around with football. He was somewhere between the bench and off the team. If there was mischief to be done, this kid was doing it. Everything was casual, no big deal. And he added very little to the team. He practiced, but he wasn't committed. He had a uniform and would show up to play, but never with enthusiasm. He liked to hear the cheers, but not to charge the line. He liked to wear the suit, but not to practice. He did not like to put himself out. One day the players were doing fifty laps, and this showpiece was doing his usual five. The coach came over and said, "Hey kid, here is a telegram for you." The kid said, "Read it for me, Coach." He was so lazy he did not even like to read. The coach opened it up and read, "Dear son, your father is dead. Come home immediately." The coach swallowed hard. He said, "Take the rest of the week off." He didn't care if he took the rest of the year off. Well, funny thing, game time came on Friday and here came the teams rushing out on the field, and lo and behold, the last kid out was the goof-off. No sooner did the gun sound than the kid said, "Coach, can I play today? Can I play?" The coach thought, "Kid, you're not playing today. This is homecoming. This is the big game. We need every real guy we have, and you are not one of them." Every time the coach turned around, the kid badgered him: "Coach, please let me play. Coach, I have got to play." The first quarter ended with the score lopsided against the coach and his team. At half time, they were still further behind. The second half started, and things got progressively worse. The coach, mumbling to himself, began writing out his resignation, and up came the kid. "Coach, Coach, let me play, please!" The coach looked at the scoreboard. "All right," he said, "get in there, kid. You can't hurt anything now." No sooner did the kid hit the field than his team exploded. He ran, blocked, and tackled like a star. The electricity leaped to the team. The score evened up. In the closing seconds of the game, this kid intercepted a pass and ran all the way for the winning touchdown! The stands broke loose. The kid was everybody's hero. Such cheering you never heard. Finally the excitement subsided and the coach got over to the kid and said, "I never saw anything like that. What in the world happened to you out there?" He said, "Coach, you know my dad died last week." "Yes," he said, "I read you the telegram." "Well, Coach," he said, "my dad was blind. And today was the first day he ever saw me play." --Charles R. Swindoll (b. 1934) American evanegelical Christian pastor. _Living Above the Level of Mediocrity_ [1987], "Vision: Seeing Beyond the Majority" - What is virtue, my friend? It is to do good. Do it, that is enough. We shall not worry about your motives. --Voltaire (Franηois Marie Arouet) (16941778) French writer and philosopher. "Falseness of Human Virtues" in _Philosophical Dictionary_ [1764], tr. Theodore Besterman [1971]. ["Address of Welcome" to incoming students at Harvard Law School:] Look well to the right of you, look well to the left of you, for one of you three won't be here next year. --Edward H. "Bull" Warren (18731945) American legal scholar. Quoted in "Harvard Law Review" [October 1945]. ;void(0)) MOTORCYCLES . . see: "TRAVEL" for related links The true biker exults in laying down an onslaught of noise that loosens the wisdom teeth of passers-by and blows soup right out of the bowl along the road. --Russell Baker (b. 1925) American journalist and columnist. _New York Times_ [21 July 1969] I believe many Harley guys spend more time revving their engines than actually driving anywhere; I sometimes wonder why they bother to have wheels on their motorcycles. --Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist. _Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus_ [1997] - When my mood gets too hot and I find myself wandering beyond control, I pull out my motorcycle and hurl it top- speed through these unfit roads for hour after hour. My nerves are jaded and gone near dead, so that nothing less than hours of voluntary danger will prick them into life. --T. E. Lawrence (18881935) English soldier and writer. Letter to Lionel Curtis [14 May 1923]. Another bend, and I have the honour of one of England's straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind be. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek; while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight 200 yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations. --T. E. Lawrence (18881935) English soldier and writer. "The Road" in _The Mint_ [1955]. - When he was on the edge of sixty he yielded to the fascination of a motor bicycle, and rode it away from the factory for seventy-seven miles, at the end of which, just outside his own door, he took a corner too fast and was left sprawling. --George Bernard Shaw (18561950) Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 [he didn't accept it.] Of himself, in "How Frank Ought To Have Done It" in Frank Harris _Contemporary Portraits: Second Series_ [1919]. This book is dedicated to all those men who betrayed me at one time or another, in hopes they will fall off their motorcycles and break their necks. --Diane Wakoski (b. 1937) American poet. "The Motorcycle Betrayal Poems" [1971] ;void(0)) MOUNTAINS . . Photograph: Mt. Colden (foreground) & Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks of New York State see: "NATURE" for related links The Old Man by Robert F Doane Published 1939 at 13 years of age Campton, New Hampshire On the crest of a mighty mountain Looking over the lake below, A face with a human expression Watches many a century go. It was made from a mountain of granite With the skill of a sculptor's hand, And guards the green valley below it As time passes over the land. At dusk when the birds cease their carols the wind murmurs through the trees, There's a sense of sadness about you, As you stand in the evening breeze. You feel that a great respect's due him So mighty beneath the blue sky, There are few who have not been inspired By that face as they've passed it by. And to me, as to Daniel Webster, The thought comes now and again That in the great State of New Hampshire The Master of Sculptors makes men. - [On conquering Mount Everest in 1953:] Well, we knocked the bastard off! --Edmund Hillary (19192008) New Zealand mountaineer. _Nothing Venture, Nothing Win_ [1975] [On being asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest:] Because it's there. --George Leigh Mallory (18861924) British mountaineer. In "New York Times" [18 March 1923]. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. --John Muir (18381914) Scottish-born naturalist who was largely responsible for the creation of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks. _Our National Parks_ [1901] "The Yellowstone National Park" - kap informs USENET: Let me tell you a story about the Old Man in the Mountains. I spent many summers in Maine and New Hampshire and so when my kids got older I wanted to show them the beauty of the region. One summer we drove to Franconia Notch in the heart of the White Mountains. On the drive up I told the two kids that I would show them the Old Man in the Mountains a rock formation that over time has taken on the appearance of (yes, you guessed it) an old man. We finally got there and the four of us got out of the car, I pointed excitedly at the Old Man and my daughter said: "So." That's all she said, "So." kap - Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades: shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers, a monster watch; and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men. --Daniel Webster (17821852) American orator and politician. Quoted in _The Granite Monthly_, vol. LIV in an article by Muriel Lydia Seymour "Our Trip to Old Man of the Mountain" [1922] ----- alpenglow [AL-puhn-gloh], noun: A reddish glow seen near sunset or sunrise on the summits of mountains. precipitous (adj.) [pri-'ci-pκ-tκs] Extremely steep and thus resembling a precipice. end page | MACARTHUR (DOUGLAS) - MALICE | MAN - MARINES | MARRIAGE | MARTYRS - MAUGHAM (WILLIAM SOMERSET) | McCARTHY - MEANNESS | MEDIA (THE) | MEDICINE - MEMORIAL DAY | MEMORIES - MEMORY | MEN - MEN v. WOMEN | MENTAL ILLNESS - MILK | MIND (THE) - MINDING OWN BUSINESS | MINNESOTA - MISERY | MISFORTUNE - MISSOURI | MISTAKES | MISTAKEN IDENTITY - MODESTY | MONEY | MONROE - MOON | MORAL ASSASINATION - MORALITY | MORNING - MOUNTAINS | MOVIE DIALOGUE - MUSHROOMS | MUSIC - MYTHOLOGY | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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