Favourite quotes

[Ed]

I saw this one for the first time, today, and I thought it was both relevant (to me) and funny -

"Planning is an unnatural process - it is much more fun to do something.  The nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise, rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression."  Sir John Harvey-Jones.

Ain't that the truth

[JoyceCarter]

Oh, I like that.  I don't always live by it, but it's great fun.

[PaulC44446]

I have one... but I don't know who said it. Just heard it someplace.

"The only thing in this world that will never change is the simple fact that everything changes."

Here's one I made up myself and have used before:

"I know a lot about a lot of things, but I don't know everything about anything."

PaulC44446

[JoyceCarter]

This one's from my Great-Aunt Maude, used whenever there was someone whining on about how badly they'd been treated, when actually, whatever had happened was just one of those things.

'Here we suffer grief and pain.
Over the road they do the same.'

[Ed]

One of my all time favourites is, "The grass is always greener on the other side, but it still needs mowing."  (Probably more than your own grass)

I don't know who coined it, but I don't think it was me

[PaulC44446]

"A Lie can march around the globe three times while the truth is still putting it's boots on."

General Paton WWII

[JoyceCarter]

Another one from Auntie Maude, which applies to a) the thankless nature of lots of necessary activity, or b) someone looking for praise they haven't really deserved.

Keep on keeping on.
Whatever you do is sure to be wrong.

[SharonBell]

Was your Auntie Maude a Department Chair? 

[Ed]

Was your Auntie Maude a Department Chair? 

It's strange how my mind works - I'm now picturing Auntie Maud as a comfortable woman, with five casters and a lever to adjust her height

[SharonBell]

 

[Walker]

what a coincidence, my son is a lazy boy.   

[JoyceCarter]

LOL, both of you!

My Great-Aunt Maude was a professional cook, in charge, at one point,  of a busy restaurant kitchen in London.  She once had a new worker, and gave her the fish pie to make (with a recipe to follow).  The trainee trotted round after her, repeatedly asking, 'How do I do x?'  'How do I do y?' when the answers were all given.  The latest question was, 'Mrs Harris, how much fish do I put in?', and, being occupied with something else at the time, she snapped, 'Oh, for goodness sake, what do you think? - just wave it over the bowl!'  A few minutes later, she saw her, yes... 

This is probably quite a lot like the job of a department chair, Sharon!

[SharonBell]

  With the added temptation of wanting to smack someone with the fish!!!

[Ed]

People like that really are out there, aren't they?

I once hired a guy, who stated his age, over the telephone, as being 25.  An hour later, he rang again, to confess he was actually 27.  When he got to the yard, he was 32, and by the time we reached work, he was 35.  I thought to myself, this might be a mistake on my part - by the end of the day, he'll have learnt how we work, but will be at retirement age by the following morning.

And he was - the - most - hopeless - person - I have ever met in my entire life.  There was asolutely nothing he could do right, but the most curious thing was, he was meticulous at every stage of each and every thing he cocked up.  Incredible.  Absolutely incredible.   

[JoyceCarter]

This has to be down to modern thinking and how schoolwork is marked these days (!).  It's right out of fashion to tell anybody, 'No.  You've got it wrong.  Go back and do it right.'  After all, you might hurt somebody's tender feelings - the fact that you'd also teach them that doing exactly what they've been told to do, correctly, matters, comes a long way in second place...  So you get exam marking schemes that give points for all the stages being remembered right, and only a whisker taken off for the answer turning out hopelessly wrong.

Did you see about the speech given to a teachers' conference this summer?  The suggestion was that nobody should be told they've failed an exam.   We should introduce the concept of 'deferred success', apparently.  What a load of BOLLOCKS.  (That is a educational term, of course!)  What alternative universe cut off from our real world do these people live in?  I know if I were looking to employ somebody, the advertisement would state that nobody whose success was deferred longer than a year need apply.