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PRACTICALITY --- PRAIRIE --- PRAISE
PRANKS --- PRAYER

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.
.


PRACTICALITY

So I really think American gentlemen are the best after all,
because kissing your hand may make you feel very very
good but a diamond and safire bracelet lasts forever.
--Anita Loos (1893-1981)
American novelist and Hollywood screenwriter,
_Gentlemen Prefer Blondes_ [1925]

Be nice to people on your way up because
you'll meet 'em on your way down.
--Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)
American playwright,
in Alva Johnston _The Legendary Mizners_ [1953]

-----

quixotic (adj.)
1. Tending to take a romanticized view of life
2. Motivated by an idealism that overlooks practical considerations





PRAIRIE

.
.

see: "COWBOYS"
see: "FARMING"
see: WEST (THE WILD/OLD)
see "NATURE" for other related links


I long for scenes, where man hath never trod, a place
where woman never smiled or wept - there to abide with
my creator, God, and sleep as I in childhood sweetly
slept, untroubling, and untroubled where I lie, the
grass below - above, the vaulted sky.
--John Clare

-

There's not a log to make a seat
Along the River Platte,
So when you eat you've got to stand
Or sit down square and flat.

It's fun to play with buffalo chips,
Take one that's newly born.
If I knew once what I know now,
I'd have gone around the Horn.

--anon. Forty-Niner on the way to California
in Alistair Cooke
[Alfred Cooke] (1908-2004)
British-born American broadcaster and journalist.
_America_ [1973]


By this time they had been together for
three or four months. It was August and
normally one hundred or one hundred and
ten degrees in any discoverable shade,
and the nerves began to snap. People went
mad: one man shot his brother because he
could no longer stand the sound of his
voice, another man tried to strangle a
partner for the crime of twirling a luxuriant
mustache. This was, they thought at the
time, the nadir of the trek. Certainly,
brotherly love gave out.
--Alistair Cooke [Alfred Cooke] (1908-2004)
British-born American broadcater and journalist.
_America_ [1973]
{Forty-Niners crossing the prairie.}

-

To live and work in this kind of open country, with
its hundred-mile views, is to lose the distinction
between background and foreground. When I asked an
older ranch hand to describe Wyoming's openness, he
said, "It's all a bunch of nothing - wind and
rattlesnakes - and so much of it you can't tell where
you're going or where you've been and it don't make
much difference."
--Gretel Ehrlich

'Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a
log hut on the frontier. You would think they
found it under a pine stump.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American philosopher and poet,
"Civilization" _Society and Solitude_ [1870]

It's been a quiet week in Lake Woebegone, my
home town, out here on the edge of the prairie.
--Garrison Keillor (1942- )
American writer and radio host

I ascended to the top of a cut bluff this morning,
from whence I had a most delightful view of the
country, the whole of which except the valley
formed by the Missouri is void of timber or
underbrush, exposing to the first glance of the
spectator immence herds of Buffaloe, Elk, deer
and Antelopes feeding in one common and boundless
pasture.
--Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809)
American explorer,
[April 22, 1805], in eastern Montana

...meandering across an immense prairie whose vegetation
is better supplied and more varied and where the land
seems disposed to provide all the agricultural needs for
a civilized society. But the mosquitoes are there, in
myriads on each square foot! For several days we hardly
suspected their existence on the high, sterile plains.
Today the suffering they made us endure in the midst of
the fertility raises the question where on the earth is
man well off?
--Joseph Nicollet (1786-1843)
French geographer and mathematician,
(in 1838 journal of his expedition through what is
now southern Minnesota and eastern South Dakota)

I am here when the cities are gone. I am here before
the cities come. I nourished the lonely men on horses.
I will keep the laughing men who ride iron. I am dust
of men. . . . Have you seen a red sunset drip over one
of my cornfields, the shore of night stars, the wave
lines of dawn up a wheat valley? . . . I am the prairie,
mother of men, waiting. They are mine, the threshing
crews eating beefsteak, the farmboys driving steers to
the railroad cattle pens.
--Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
American poet

We cross the prairie as of old
The pilgrims crossed the sea,
To make the West, as they the East,
The homestead of the free!
--John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
American poet, "The Kansas Emigrants" [1854]


My baggage was lost; it had not come on my train;
it was adrift somewhere back in the two thousand
miles that lay behind me. And by way of comfort,
the baggage-man remarked that passengers often got
astray from their trunks, but the trunks mostly
found them after a while. Having offered me this
encouragement, he turned whistling to his affairs
and left me planted in the baggage-room at Medicine
Bow. I stood deserted among crates and boxes,
blankly holding my check, fungus and forlorn. I
stared out through the door at the sky and the
plains; but I did not see the antelope shining
among the sage-brush, nor the great sunset light
of Wyoming. Annoyance blinded my eyes to all things
save my grievance: I saw only a lost trunk.
--Owen Wister (1860-1938)
American writer of western novels,
"The Virginian"

--

Two buffaloes were grazing contentedly on the open prairie when a
cowboy rode up. Looking the animals over, he shook his head and
said, "You two are the ugliest buffaloes I ever saw. Look at you --
your fur is tangled, you have humps on your backs and you slobber
all over the place." As the cowboy rode off, the first buffalo
remarked to the second, "I think I just heard a discouraging word."





PRAISE

.
.

see: "ADMIRATION"
see "COMMUNICATION" for other related links
see "KINDNESS" for other related links


Carve not upon a stone when I am dead,
The praises which remorseful mourners give;
To women's graves — a tardy recompense,
But speak them while I live.
--Elizabeth Akers Allen (1832—1911)
American poet.
_Till Death_

There is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good wit
and encourage a will to learning, as is praise.
--Roger Ascham (1515—1568)
English scholar, writer, and courtier,
_The Schoolmaster_ [1570]

Praise from the common people is generally false, and
rather follows vain persons than virtuous ones.
--Francis Bacon (1561—1626)
English philosopher and essayist.

Be quick to praise people. People like to praise
those who praise them.
--Bernard Baruch (1870—1965)
American financier.

Let another man praise thee,
and not thine own mouth.
--Bible
"Proverbs" 27:2

If with pleasure you are viewing,
Any work a man is doing,
If you like him or love him, tell him now.
Do not wait till life is over,
And he's underneath the clover,
For he cannot read his tombstone when he's dead.
--Berton Braley (1882—1966)
American poet.
_Do It Now_

Watch how a man takes praise, and
there you have the measure of him.
--Thomas Burke (1886—1945)
British author.

Self-laudation abounds among the unpolished; but
nothing can stamp a man more sharply as ill-bred.
--Charles Buxton (1823—1871)
English author.

I praise loudly. I blame softly.
--Catherine the Great (1729—1796)
Empress of Russia fron 1762—1796.

Modesty is the only sure bait when
you are fishing for praise.
--G.K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton (1874—1936)
English essayist, novelist, and poet.

It would be nice if sometimes the kind things I say were
considered worthy of quotation. It isn't difficult, you
know, to be witty or amusing when one has something to
say that is destructive, but damned hard to be clever
and quotable when you are singing someone's praises.
--No๋l Coward (1899—1973)
English playwright, actor, and composer.
In William Marchant _The Pleasure of His Company_ [1981].

Nothing so soon the drooping spirits can raise
As praises from the men, whom all men praise.
--Abraham Cowley (1618—1667)
English poet and essayist.
"Ode upon a Copy of Verses of My Lord Broghill's" [1663]

It's pleasant to hear these nice words while I'm still
alive. I'd rather have the taffy than the epitaphy.
--Chauncey Depew (1834—1928)
American orator, politician, and railroad president.

We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure
on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil
in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment
and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance
turns.
--Henry Fielding (1707—1754)
English novelist and dramatist.

Blame-all and Praise-all are two blockheads.
--Benjamin Franklin (1706—1790)
American politician, inventor, and scientist.
_Poor Richard's Almanack_ [February 1734]

Praise makes good men better and bad men worse.
--Thomas Fuller (1654—1734)
English writer and physician.
Comp., _Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs_ [1732]

My soul preached to me and said, 'Do not
be delighted because of praise, and do not
be distressed because of blame.'
--Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931)
Lebanese poet.

There is no friend like an old friend
Who has shared our morning days,
No greeting like his welcome,
No homage like his praise.
--Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809—1894)
American physician, poet, and essayist.
"No Time Like The Old Time"

The way of this world is to praise dead
saints and persecute living ones.
--Nathaniel Howe (1764—1837)

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes
its value only to its scarcity.
--Samuel Johnson (1709—1784)
English poet, critic, and lexicographer.
_The Rambler_ [6 June 1751]

Never praise a sister to a sister, in the hope of
your compliments reaching the proper ears.
--Rudyard Kipling (1865—1936)
English writer and poet.
_Plain Tales From The Hills_ [1888], "False Dawn"

-

The refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.
--Fran็ois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.
_Maxims_ [1665], Maxim 149


The praise we give to new comers into the world arises
from the envy we bear to those who are established.
--Fran็ois de La Rochefoucauld (1613—1680)
French classical author.

-

Once in a century a man may be ruined or made
insufferable by praise. But surely once in a
minute something generous dies for want of it.
--John Masefield (1878—1967)
English novelist, poet, and playwright.

-

Praise is always pleasing, let it come from
whom, or upon what account it will.
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.
"Of vanity", _Essays_ [1588]


When all is summed up, a man never speaks of
himself without loss; his accusations of himself
are always believed, his praises never.
--Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533—1592)
French moralist and essayist.

-

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
--Alexander Pope (1688—1744)
English poet.
"An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" [1735]

A little praise is not only merest justice
but is beyond the purse of no one.
--Emily Post (1873—1960)
American authority on social behavior.
_Etiquette_ (1922)

We bestow on others praise in which we do not
believe, on condition that in return they bestow
upon us praise in which we do.
--Jean Rostand (1894—1977)
French biologist and philosopher.
_De La Vanite_ [1925]

I don't mind a little praise — as long as it's fulsome.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.

The way we respond to criticism pretty
much depends on the way we respond to
praise. If praise humbles us, then
criticism will build us up. But if
praise inflates us, then criticism
will crush us; and both responses
lead to defeat.
--Warren W. Wiersbe
Bible conference teacher and author.

I'm sick of praise. I want money.
--Thomas Wolfe (1900—1938)
American novelist.
_Thomas Wolfe's Letters to His Mother_ [1943]

-

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever
is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious,
if there is any excellence, if there is anything
worthy of praise, think about these things.
--St. Paul,
"Epistle to the Philippians," Chapter 4, Verses 4-8

-----


apotheosis (noun) [๊-pah-thee-'o-sis]
Elevation to divine status, to the position
of a god; an absolutely perfect example.

approbation [ap-ruh-BAY-shuhn], noun:
1. The act of approving; formal or official approval.
2. Praise; commendation.

encomium [en-KOH-mee-uhm], noun;
plural encomiums or encomia -mee-uh:
An often formal expression of warm or
high praise.

exalt [ig-ZOLT], verb:
1. To praise, glorify, or honor.
2. To heighten or intensify.

extol [ik-STOHL], transitive verb:
To praise highly; to glorify; to exalt.
Ex.: Let your deeds themselves praise you,
for here I leave them in all their glory,
lacking words to extol them.
--Cervantes,
_Don Quixote de la Mancha_

laudable [LAW-duh-bul], adjective:
Worthy of praise; commendable.




PRANKS

.
.

see "DECEPTION" for related links


[James Thurber] had an affair with a New Yorker secretary but his
blindness made for tactical problems. He had to rely on one of the
magazine's office boys to lead him about; as his run of bad luck
would have it, the office boy assigned to him was 18 year old Truman
Capote. "I worked as a boy in the Art Department then", Capote
recalled, "and one of my jobs was to take Thurber to his
girlfriend's apartment. She was as ugly as sin, so it served
him right. I would have to wait for him at the apartment till he
was finished, and then I'd dress him. He could undress by himself,
but he couldn't dress himself. Now since Helen Thurber would dress
him in the morning, she knew how he looked. Well, one time I put
his socks on wrong side out, and when he got home, I gather Helen
asked him a lot of questions. The next day, Thurber was furious at
me - he said I did it on purpose. But I was still assigned to lead
him to the girl's apartment -back and forth, back and forth."
--Burton Bernstein
Staff writer for "The New Yorker" [1957-1992]
_Thurber_ [1975]

Some malicious person or persons in the ship took
advantage of his [a crew member] being drunk and
cut all the clothes from off his back; not being satisfied
with this, they some time after went into his cabin and
cut off part of both his ears as he lay asleep in his bed.
--James Cook (1728-1779)
British naval captain, navigator, and explorer

-

This e-mail has been printed on paper treated with a deadly Chinese
poison - using herbs so deadly that it will do you no good to wash
your hands. As soon as you opened this e-mail you became infected.
Unless you take the special antidote, you will die a horrible and
lingering death within five hours. Said antidote will be e-mailed
to you upon my receiving $50,000 in wired funds. Hurry!





PRAYER

.
.

see "RELIGION" for related links


Tho' there's one motor gone, we can still carry on,
Comin' in on a wing a pray'r.
--Harold Adamson (1906-1980)
American songwriter.
"Comin' In On a Wing and a Prayer" [1943 song];
(Music by Jimmy McHugh).

Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe
be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner
confessedly unworthy.
--Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
American newspaperman, wit, and satirist.
_The Cynic's Word Book_ [1906]
{Retitled in 1911 as _The Devil's Dictionary_}.

O, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger
men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers.
Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
--Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)
American religious leader.
_Going Up to Jerusalem_

Pray not for things, but for wisdom and courage.
--H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940- )
American author.
_Life's Little Instruction Book_ [1991], Maxim #158

And lips say, 'God be pitiful,'
Who ne'er said, 'God be praised.'
--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
English poet.
"The Cry of the Human" [1844]

-

Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin
will entice a man to cease from prayer.
--John Bunyan (1628-1688)
English writer and allegorist.


In prayer, it is better to have a heart
without words than words without a heart.
--John Bunyan (1628-1688)
English writer and allegorist.

-

I used to pray that God would do this or that. Now
I pray that God will make His will known to me.
--Madame Chiang Kai-Shek [Soong Mei-ling]
(1898-2003)

He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
English poet, critic, and philosopher.
_The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ [1798]

I have found the greatest power in the world in the
power of prayer. There is no shadow of doubt of
that. I speak from my own experience.
--Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959)
American filmmaker.

There can be prayers without words
just as well as songs, I suppose.
--George Busson du Maurier (1834-1896)
British artist and writer.

The wise man in the storm prays to God, not for
safety from danger, but deliverance from fear.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
American philosopher and poet.
_Journals_ [1833]

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all men
would quickly have perished: for they are always
praying for evil against one another.
--Epicurus (341-270 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single
act is better than a thousand heads bowing
in prayer.
--Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)
Indian statesman and leader of the nationalistic
movement against British rule.
In Ronni Lundy
_Crafts for the Spirit: 30 Beautiful Projects to
Enhance Your Personal Journey_, p. 39 [2003].

Prayer indeed is good, but while calling on the
gods a man should himself lend a hand.
--Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC)
Greek physician.
_Regimen_, bk. IV, sec. 87

Those who always pray are necessary to
those who never pray.
--Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
French poet, dramatist, and novelist.

Religion's in the heart, not in the knees.
--Douglas Jerrold (1803-1857)
English playwright and journalist.

Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays.
--S๖ren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Danish philosopher.
In Robert Andrews
_The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations_, p. 207 [1987].

People who pray for miracles usually don't get miracles
...But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear
the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have
left instead of what they have lost, very often find
their prayers answered. Their prayers helped them tap
hidden reserves of faith and courage that were not
available to them before.
--Harold S. Kushner
Conservative rabbi.

Often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting
letters to a non-existent address.
--C.S. [Clive Staples] Lewis (1898-1963)
British scholar and novelist.
Letter to Arthur Greeves [24 December 1930]

I have been driven many times to my knees by the
overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else
to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me,
seemed insufficient for the day.
--Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861-1865].

I have so much to do today that I shall
spend the first three hours in prayer.
--Martin Luther (1483-1546)
German Protestant theologian.

-

This supposed ability to sidestep, to forgo, ritual comes from a
mistaken belief in one's own powers and a misapprehension of
personal grace. It is misplaced and it is sad, like the viewer at
a magic show who confides, 'You know, he really didn't make
that duck disappear.'

Now of course the magician didn't make that duck disappear. What
he did was something of much greater worth - he gave a moment
of joy and astonishment to some who were delighted by it.

In suspending their disbelief - in suspending their reason, if you
will - for a moment, the viewers were rewarded. They committed an
act of faith, or of submission. And like those who rise refreshed
from prayers, their prayers were answered. For the purpose of the
prayer was not, finally, to bring about intercession in the material
world, but to lay down, for the time of the prayer, one's confusion
and rage and sorrow at one's own powerlessness.

--David Mamet (1947- )
American playwright and screenwriter.
_Three Uses of the Knife_ [1998]

-

If you pray for bread and bring no basket to carry
it, you prove the doubting spirit which may be the
only hindrance to the gift you ask.
--Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899)
American evangelist and publisher.

To spend more time in learning is better
than spending more time in praying.
--Muhammad (A.D. 570?-632)
Prophet to whom the religion
of Islam was revealed.

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity
the things which cannot be changed, courage
to change the things which should be changed,
and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the
other.
--Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
American theologian.
"The Serenity Prayer" [1934]
(authorship is questionable)

Prayer begins where human capacity ends.
--Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993)
American preacher and author.

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new
bike. Then I realized that The Lord doesn't work that
way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me.
--Emo Phillips [Philip Soltanec] (1956- )
American comedian.

Teach me to feel another's Woe;
To hide the Fault I see;
That Mercy I to others show,
That Mercy show to me.
--Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
English poet.

An act of goodness surpasses
a thousand prayers.
--Sa'di [Muslih-uddin] (c. 1184-1291?)
Iranian poet.

I have never made but one prayer to God
a very short one: "O Lord, make my enemies
ridiculous." And God granted it.
--Voltaire (Fran็ois Marie Arouet) (1694-1778)
French writer and philosopher.
Letter to M. Damilaville [16 May 1767].

-

Old Irish Prayer

May those that love us, Love Us.
And those that don't love us
May God turn their hearts.
And if He can't turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles,
so we know them by their limp!

-

On Sunday, Lord, a Mrs. Drew
Is coming here the house to view,
Which is, of course, for sale.
Grant Thou, O Lord, that she forbear
From standing long upon the stair
That is, alas! too frail.

O do not let her hand draw back
The curtain and reveal the crack
Along the windowpane!
O guide her as she comes and goes,
So that no smell assails her nose
From the adjacent drain.

Let her not see the neighbouring slum
As she approaches. May she come
Along the better road,
And grant that she may, in a trice,
Agree to the inflated price
We ask for our abode.

And grant, O Lord, to us who plead,
These favours that we may succeed
In what we now devise,
And through Thine all-embracing love
Be made eternal tenants of.

--unknown


TOPICAL

Now I sit me down in school
Where praying is against the rule
For this great nation under God
Finds mention of Him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,
It violates the Bill of Rights.
And anytime my head I bow
Becomes a Federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green,
That's no offense; it's a freedom scene.
The law is specific, the law is precise.
Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall
Might offend someone with no faith at all
In silence alone we must meditate,
God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks,
And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.
They've outlawed guns, but FIRST the Bible.
To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant Senior Queen,
And the 'unwed daddy,' our Senior King.
It's "inappropriate" to teach right from wrong,
We're taught that such "judgments" do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,
Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.
But the Ten Commandments are not allowed,
No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here I must confess,
When chaos reigns the school's a mess.
So, Lord, this silent plea I make:
Should I be shot; My soul please take!

Amen

--anon.

-----

tallith (noun)
A shawl with a ritually knotted fringe at each corner;
worn by Jews at morning prayer.
Synonyms: prayer shawl, tallis


end page



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