Thursday, December 17, 2009

LIFE MOTTOES


This post is in response
to a writing prompt at
Prompt: "What is one of your life mottoes?"
Click on the link to join in or view other responses.

I actually have dozens of life mottoes. After all there are many aspects to one's life, so one needs a motto for just about everything. So instead of limiting myself to just one, I am making a list, in random order, as I think of them.

Stop to enjoy the wild flowers.

You can do ANYthing you want, but you can't do EVERYthing you want.

Cleanliness is next to impossible.

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform." (Mark Twain)

Love is NOT all you need.

Those who disagree with me are stupid or insane ---probably both.

The best way to stay healthy is not to worry about things.

Live and let live.

If you rest, you rust.

Forget what others think. Do your own thing and have fun doing it.

Virtue is its own punishment.

"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity." (Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long)

“The thing about religion is that everybody else’s always appears stupid.” (Dave Barry)

There is no free lunch, but the best things in life are free.

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrowmindedness... Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." (Mark Twain)

What goes around, comes around.

"The human race has one really effective weapon and that is laughter." (Mark Twain)

A closed mouth gathers no feet. (I don't follow this one often, but I agree with it.)

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

"Most married couples, even though they love each other very much in theory, tend to view each other in practice as large teeming flaw colonies, the result being that they get on each other's nerves and regularly erupt into vicious emotional shouting matches over such issues as toaster settings." (Dave Barry)

I have more of these little gems, so consider this post a work-in-progress. I will add more as I think of them.

7 comments:

brainella said...

I have to like the "those who disagree with me are insane" motto. :-) Actually there are quite a few on there I adhere to also.

Unknown said...

Love is all you need - along with food, water, air, shelter, ...

Glad to see you are a Heinlein and Twain fan - I like the pithy observations of life that both of them made in their works.

Karen & Gerard Zemek said...

Some of these I never heard of before. Enjoyed reading your list but disagree with "If you rest, you rust." I must rest to get recharged!

Visiting from Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.

Kim Lehnhoff said...

I think my favorite in your list is Twain's comment about travel.

Your mind can't stay closed if you visit other places and see how folks live.

Jenners said...

I'm loving your life mottoes!!! And I knew Twain would make it on your list!

Mama Kat said...

Are these just off the top of your head?? Geez...you're like a walking book of inspiration. ;)

Carolina said...

Mama Kat ---most are off the top of my head ---the ones without quotation marks.

Most of the Twain quotes I know without looking them up because Twain is one of my passions and I've been quoting him for years. But I had to look up the other quotes. I could have relayed the general ideas, but wanted to get them exactly right since I was quoting someone else.

It wasn't difficult. I've been collecting quotations since I was 10. I used to write them on little scraps of paper, but I started to enter them on a computer about 25 years ago. So I can search by author or subject and find what I want rather quickly. but I still have boxes filled with handwritten quotations that haven't been entered yet. And of course, I keep finding more.

My husband and I almost never fight, but once in a while, usually when we are both tired, we get on each other's nerves. One evening, after we argued over some trivial thing, I happened upon the Dave Barry quote (the last one on the list) and we both had a good laugh.