poems for pastors

The best helping hand that you will ever receive is the one at the end of your own arm. ~Fred Dehner



Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it. ~J.K. Rowling, "The Parting of the Ways," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore



I don't think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. ~Agatha Christie, An Autobiography, 1977



Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours should not be numbered by years, days, and hours. ~Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weeks and Works, 1578



It is good to feel lost... because it proves you have a navigational sense of where "Home" is. You know that a place that feels like being found exists. And maybe your current location isn't that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it. ~Erika Harris, lifeblazing.com



The future influences the present just as much as the past. ~Friedrich Nietzsche



Luxury is an ancient notion. There was once a Chinese mandarin who had himself wakened three times every morning simply for the pleasure of being told it was not yet time to get up. ~Argosy



The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. ~Marcus Aurelius



We are, perhaps, uniquely among the earth's creatures, the worrying animal. We worry away our lives. ~Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail, 1979



I don't know what the future may hold, but I know who holds the future. ~Ralph Abernathy



Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung. ~William Morris



That's the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious they've been all along. ~Madeleine L'Engle



Young wives are the leading asset of corporate power. They want the suburbs, a house, a settled life, and respectability. They want society to see that they have exchanged themselves for something of value. ~Ralph Nader



Platitude: a banal or stale remark; a commonplace or trite remark or idea, especially one uttered as if it were original or momentous.



Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too. ~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky



I eat merely to put food out of my mind. ~N.F. Simpson



May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after! ~Philip Dormer Stanhope, 1749



When you invite trouble, it's usually quick to accept. ~Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.



Dogs, the foremost snobs in creation, are quick to notice the difference between a well-clad and a disreputable stranger. ~Albert Payson Terhune



There can be no situation in life in which the conversation of my dear sister will not administer some comfort to me. ~Mary Montagu