A Fun Anniversary

Vickie and I celebrated our 8th anniversary on Tuesday the 17th. We had been planning to just hit dinner and a movie, but those plans changed markedly for the better. Here's the story.

Vickie is involved with planning a yearly women's retreat. A few weeks ago the ski resort where the retreat has been held for a couple years called and said that they were not going to have a summer season this year, so the retreat would have to find a new site. Slight panic ensued, since the retreat draws about 70 women, and involves meetings and seminars, not to mention meals and a place to stay overnight. So Vickie sent out feelers to all kinds of places, including several in Park City. If you're not familiar with Utah, Park City is about 30 miles from Salt Lake, and was the site of many Winter Olympic events in 2002. It's a terrific and funky ski town. Click here for some more information on the place.

Tuesday afternoon, the meeting consultant for a motel in Park City called and invited Vickie and her committee to come up and take a look at their facility. Vickie said that she would love to, but that it was hard to get the committe together, and anyway, it was our anniversary. The response was, "I've got a hot-tub suite with your name on it if you'd like to come use it tonight." So we ended up taking a quick ride up the canyon and spending a night in the Honeymoon Suite at the Best Western Landmark Inn in Park City.

I don't know if the committee will decide to hold their meeting there, but it was certainly a wonderful place for an anniversary. We first went out to dinner at the Red Rock, a brew pub close to the motel. This place has a great reputation, and based on our meal, it's justified.

After dinner, we went back to the motel and took a tour of the place to see if it would be suitable for the meeting (I think it would be terrific, but I'm not the one who decides.) Then we took out the DVD we brought, started filling the hot tub, and settled in for the night. What a place! Here are some pictures:

Aphorisms - IV (and end)

Here are the last of my collection, for now:

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, but quite another to put him in possession of truth. - John Locke

Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon. - Mark Twain

If you add to the truth, you subtract from it. - the Talmud

Judge talent at its best and character at its worst. - Acton

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. - Henry Adams

The primary danger of the TV screen lies not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents - the talks, the games, the family activities, and the arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed. - Urie Bronfenbrenner

You don't always have to solve problems; sometimes technology enables you to bypass a problem. - E. E.David, Jr. , scientific advisor to Presidents Nixon and Johnson

Canned thinking, like canned meat, is not dangerous, providing that fresh thinking has preceded it.

The paradox of time - few people have enough, yet everyone has all there is.

Be sure, when you think you are being extremely tactful, that you are not in reality running away from something that you ought to face. - Frank Medlicott

The growth of wisdom may be gauged accurately by the decline of ill temper. - Nietzsche

We must interpret a bad temper as the sign of an inferiority complex. - Alfred Adler

He who learns but does not think is lost;
he who thinks but does not learn is in danger.
- Confucius

On losing one's temper - It's like a sharp nail that tears the threads of something durable and lovely. We may use every bit of patience and skill in mending it, but we cannot make it like new again. The darned place will always be conspicuous. - Margaret E. Sangster

There is time for everything. - Thomas A. Edison

Those who do the least always seem to have the least time. - Arnold Glascow

No hour is to be considered a waste which teaches one what not do to. - Charles B. Rogers

Tradition means handing on all that is valuable to the next generation.

The obscure we see eventually; the completely apparent takes longer.

Work is a great blessing; after evil came into the world, work was given as an antidote, not as a punishment. - Arthur S. Hardy

Nothing would be done at all if a person waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault with it. - John Henry Newman

Wisdom is special knowledge in excess of all that is known. - Ambrose Bierce

The wise avoid evil by anticipating it. - Publilius Syrus

Work fascinates me; I could sit and watch it all day. - Mark Twain

Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright. - Benjamin Franklin

Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if only we didn't spend half our time wishing. - Alexander Wollcott

There are two things needed in these days: first, for rich men to find out how poor men live; second, for poor men to find out how rich men work. - Edward Atkinson

All I want is less to do, more time to do it, and more pay for not getting it done.

Cease from the folly of metaphysical speculation...and pursue one end alone - how you may do what your hands find to do and go your way with never a passion, always a smile. - Lucian

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily. - Schiller

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more. - William Cowper

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do. - Oscar Wilde

An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction. - Booker T. Washington

If your luck is good, you get credit for wisdom.

True wisdom comes from the overcoming of suffering and sin. All true wisdom is therefore touched with sadness. - Whittaker Chambers

Nothing is work unless you would rather be doing something else. - James M. Barrie

Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes. - Miguel de Cervantes

Experience has shown that success is due less to ability than to zeal. The winner is he who gives himself to his work body and soul.

It is usually better to do the wrong thing than to do nothing. - Winston Churchill

There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness. - Robert Burton

Work is dull only to those who take no pride in it. - William Feather

Concentrate on your work and the applause will take care of itself. - B.C.Forbes

My little sayings - III

Here are some more of my aphorisms - enjoy!

If priesthood were perfect, all the world would be converted. - from Piers Plowman, ca 1340, John Langeland

I have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid for whatever reason to follow the course that he knows is best for the state; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare - I have no use for him, either. - Sophocles, 495-505 BCE

A man need not extol his virtues nor comment on his failings; his friends know the former and his enemies will search out the latter. - Charles B. Rogers

Praise is like perfume: it's fine if you don't swallow it. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Pollution is of three types: 1 - Actual, 2 - Political, 3 - Emotional

Essential steps in any program:

1. Wild enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic
4. Search for the guilty
5. Punish the innocent
6. Reward and promote non-participants

Reading with reflecting is like eating without digesting. - Edmund Burke

Unlike the movies, real life provides no musical background to help us recognize the climactic moments.

We are judged by what we do - not what we claim we do. - William Feather

The inevitable law of results: Cheap, Quick, Good - pick any two

Repentance makes a man live longer. - The Talmud

The problem is not shortage of data, but rather our inability to perceive the consequences of the information we already possess. - Jay W. Forrester

If resolutely people do what is right, in time they come to like doing it. - John Ruskin

I forget the greater part of what I read, but all the same it nourishes my mind. - Georg C. Lichtenberg

The real steps of research:

1. Interest
2. Preparation
3. Incubation
4. Illumination
5. Verification
6. Exploitation

We keep saying that Johnny doesn't read because he's deprived, hunger, and discriminated against. However, one of the biggest reasons Johnny doesn't read well is because Johnny doesn't practice reading. - Rev. Jesse Jackson

Children see major events reported in 90 seconds of a newscast. If a shooting war can be covered in less than two minutes, then a 200-page book seems just too long to read. - Dr. Nicholas Long

The price of greatness is responsibility. - Winston Churchill

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been - it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. - Thomas Carlyle

Facts are of slight value unless they are intelligently interpreted. - William Feather

It is no paradox to say that in our most theoretical moods we may be nearest to our most practical applications. - Alfred North Whitehead

Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns. - J.M.Clark

The element of the unexpected and the unforeseeable is what gives some of its relish to life and saves us from falling into the mechanical thralldom of the logicians. - Winston Churchill

Reverence for life does not allow the scholar to live for his science alone. Reverence for life does not permit the artist to exist only for his art, even if he gives inspiration to many by its means. Reverence for life refuses to let the businessman imagine that he fulfills all legitimate demands in the course of his business activities. Reverence for life demands for all that they should sacrifice a portion of their own lives for others. - Albert Schweitzer

A team is where a boy can prove his courage on his own; a gang is where a coward goes to hide. - Mickey Mantle

One of the charms of the scientific enterprise is how deficient we can be and still play some meaningful part in it. - Robert Oppenheimer

Science has its cathedrals, built by a few architects and many workmen. - G.N.Lewis

Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. - Thomas Dekker

Whatever one may call the Creator, his only authentic revelation is the universe. Science is the study of the work of the Creator, a kind of divine service, a search for truth, searched with uncompromising honesty. - Albert Szent-Gyorgi

History shows that, no matter how generous others may be, those who have been helped the most are those who have helped themselves. - William Simon

Man seeks his own good at the whole world's cost. - Robert Browning

Failure is harder than success. Who works harder, the man who saunters down to the train ahead of time, or the one who misses it by 15 seconds after running three blocks? - William Feather

It took TV soap operas to get sex education out of the schools and into the home, where it belongs. - Linda Ellerbee

Seriousness is the final refuge of the shallow intellect.

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves. - Napoleon Bonaparte

The most significant data are the most elusive. - Hugh D. Crone

Science is a process that seeks truth;
politics is a process that seeks survival.

There are seven sins in the world:
wealth without work
pleasure without conscience
knowledge without character
commerce without morality
science without humility
worship without sacrifice
politics without principle
- Mahatma Gandhi

There are hundreds who can stand failure to one who can stand success; the good loser is far more common than the good winner. - Franklin P. Adams

Endurance is the best success insurance. - Arnold Glascow

He who is master of himself will soon be master of others. - H.G. Bohn

Only a few men can be counted on to rise to the occasion. Even fewer know when to sit down.

Favorite little sayings - II

Here are some more of them:

A fanatic is simply a person who does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew all the facts. - F.P.Dunne

To believe is to learn to think like God. - Andre Frossard, French theologian

The wise man will want to be ever with him who is better than himself. - Plato

If businessmen took their jobs for granted in the same way that many of them neglect their wives and children, they'd be looking around for another position. - George Penn

Liberty is a luxury of the self-disciplined. - Montesquieu

People who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try nothing and succeed. - Lloyd Jones

Anyone who believes that business runs on fact rather than fiction has never read old five-year projections. - Malcolm Forbes

When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship. - Harry Truman

God should not be judged on the basis of this world - it is just one of his rough sketches. - Vincent Van Gogh

An elephant is a mouse designed to government specifications.

Everyone is always in favor of general economy and particular expenses. - Anthony Eden

Central government is the most efficient agency for the collecting of money, and the most inefficient for spending it. - E.G.Schumacher, British economist

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks. - St. Ambrose

Unless you know where you are going, any road will get you there. - Theodore Levitt

No wind favors him who has no destined port. - Michel de Montaigne

He who is not liberal with what he has deceives himself when he thinks he would be liberal if he had more. - William S. Plumer

Rocks have been shaken from their solid base, but what shall move a firm and dauntless mind? - Joanna Baillie

Beware of what you set your heart on, for it shall surely be yours. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we hate our enemies, we give them power over us. - Dale Carnegie

The first condition of happiness is a clear conscience. - David O. McKay

It is just as hard to break a good habit as a bad one, so get good habits and keep them. - William McKinley

There can be no happiness if the things we believe are different from the things we do. - Freda Stark

A healthy body is a guest-chamber for the soul; a sick body is a prison. - Francis Bacon

The greatest thing in the world is to be able to do something well, and say nothing about it. - E.W.Howe

The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. - Marcus Aurelius

One can endure sorrow alone, but it takes two to be glad. - Elbert Hubbard

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana

There is something in humility that strangely exalts the heart. - St. Augustine

To know is science; merely to believe one knows is ignorance. - Hippocrates

An intellectual is a person educated beyond his intelligence. - Fulton Sheen

Innovation consists of seeing what everyone has seen and thinking what no one else has thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

More of us might live up to our ideals if we knew what they were. - Arnold Glascow

The smallest good deed is better than the grandest intention.

Men, like nails, lose their usefulness when they lose direction and begin to bend. - Walter Savage Landor

Every invention goes through three stages: doubt of its existence, denial of its importance, credit to someone else. - Alexander von Humboldt

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. - Goethe

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment. - 'Kingfish' on Amos n' Andy

Never carry your shotgun or your knowledge half-cocked. - Austin O'Malley

People are born to kindness as a wind is born to movement. - Neil Miller

Since we cannot know all there is to be known of everything, we ought to know a little about everything. - Blaise Pascal

Diligence is the mother of good luck. - Benjamin Franklin

Life is made up not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things in which smiles and kindnesses and small obligations, given habitually, are what win and preserve the heart and secure comfort. - Humphrey Davy

Some folks believe liberty is doing as they please, but with controls on others. - Arnold Glascow

Love your enemies; not only does the Good Book say so, but it will make them madder than anything else you could do. - Mark Twain

There are no chances so unlucky from which clever people are not able to reap some advantage; and none so lucky that the foolish are not able to turn them to their own disadvantage.

Leadership is the ability to get people to do what they don't want to do - and like it. - Harry Truman

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which he attempts to do. There is a sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work - a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in all its parts - which the superficial man, who leaves his work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns work into art. The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic. - William Mathews

There is a difference between the casualness of mastery and the carelessness of ignorance. - Charles B. Rogers

Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn't need if you had stayed single. - Jimmy Townsend

I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position. - Mark Twain

The first hour of the morning is the rudder of the day. - Henry Ward Beecher

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards. - David O. McKay

To live is good. To live vividly is better. To live vividly together is best of all. - Max Eastman

When there are no other values, money counts for everything. - Digby Baltzell

Management: When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble.

Mathematicians are a species of Frenchmen: if you say something to them, they translate it into their language and presto! it is something entirely different.

A good musical comedy consists largely of disorderly conduct interrupted occasionally by talk. - George Abe

Without music, life would be a mistake. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Concentrated preparation for musical performances should be tempered with physical conditioning. - Eugene Fodor, concert violinist

Our life would stagnate if it were not for the enexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wilderness. We can never have enough of nature. - Henry David Thoreau

We are faced with great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems. - John Gardner

If you're going to have strong opinions, you can't be intimidated by facts that don't fit. - Malcomb Forbes

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Every man has a right to his opinion, but he has no right to base it on the wrong facts. - Bernard Baruch

Philosophers learn less and less about more and more until they finally know nothing about everything. Scientists, on the other hand, learn more and more about less and less, until they finally know everything about nothing.

Let us not fall into the trap of doing that which is important at the expense of that which is most important. - Thomas S. Monson

Procrastination is just another form of fear.

The person who thinks he has no faults has at least one.

I shall tell you a great truth, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment: it takes place every day. - Albert Camus

No man can guess in cold blood what he may do in a passion. - H.G. Bohn

Professionalism means consistency of quality. - Frank Tyger

A man progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself. - George Bernard Shaw

Politeness is good nature regulated by good sense.

You can't pray with your fists clenched. - Geoffrey Bocca

Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers. - Austin O'Malley

The first mistake in public business is the going into it. - Benjamin Franklin

Knowledge in depth and in breadth are virtual prerequsites for significan invention. Unless the mind is thoroughly charged beforehand, the proverbial spark of genius, if it should manifest itself, probably will find nothing to ignite. - Paul J. Flory

Favorite little sayings - I

For years, I've been collecting sayings of all types, usually aphorisms giving sage advice in interesting and memorable language. So I thought I might share a few. There's not particular theme, just some that I remember or had written down. This is the first posting in a series (I've got a LOT of these.)

It's not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them. - Caron de Beaumarchais

We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once. - Calvin Coolidge

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
Nobody was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent. - Robert Frost

The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can. - Albertano of Brescia

When funds are limitless, the only economy is usually in thinking. - Parkinson

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile. - Laurence J. Peter

The world is divided into people who do things
And people who get the credit. - Dwight Morrow

The only unchangeable things in nature are either fossils or will soon become extinct.

Christianity is not something that has been tried and found wanting, but something that has been found difficult and left untried. - G.K.Chesterton

Words were given to man to enable him to conceal his true feelings. - Voltaire

Confidence is what you feel before you understand the problem.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. - Winston Churchill

The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions, but by his everyday conduct. - Blaise Pascal

Conscience is the voice that tells us what other people should do.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather a person of value. - Albert Einstein

Nothing tells more about the character of a man than the things he makes fun of. - Goethe

History is full of examples of lonely thinkers who were belittled by the established figures of the time and who, it now turns out, were deservedly neglected. - Leon Lipson

Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it. - James Russell Lowell

Courage consists in equality to the problem before us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life. - Linus Pauling

The composer Max Reger wrote the following rebuttal to a critical review: "I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

I read in a book that a man named Christ went about doing good. It is very disconcerting to me that I am so easily satisfied with just going about. - Toyohiko Kagawa

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare. - Mark Twain

A creative mind merely has ideas; a resourceful mind makes them practical. - Georges F. Doriot

Debt is a trap which people set and bait themselves, and then deliberately step into. - Josh Billings

It's not that people value money more, but that they value everything else so much less - not that they are more greedy, but that they have no other values to keep greed in check. - Dee Hock, former president of VISA

Scripture for dentists: "...open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it." - Psalms 81:10

To give great attention to details is one mark of genius - to putter with trifles is not. - Charles B. Rogers

Our doubts are traitors and cause us to miss the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. - Shakespeare

The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers; not because he is obstinate, but because he knows others worthy of consideration. - Allan Bloom

A great many of today's problems are caused by a tremendous surplus of simple answers, coupled with a horrible shortage of simple questions.

If God could have sons, all of us were his sons. If Jesus was like God, or God himself, then all men were like God and could be God himself. - Gandhi

There is no solution to any crisis that can allay an infinity of fears while assuming zero risk. Attempts to satisfy these two impossible constraints are responsible for the lack of positive action. Our current policy is enmeshed precisely in this zero-infinity dilemma. - Bernard S. Lee, President, Institute of Gas Technology

An economist is a person who, when he doesn't have a clue, will always come up with an estimate.

Education - that which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding. - Ambroise Bierce

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence. - Robert Frost

Anyone who promises you a return to the days of cheap, abundant energy is either naive, stupid, or blind to the realities of life. If this country had reacted to Pearl Harbor as we have to our energy problem, we would all be speaking Japanese today. - Robert Robel, Kansas State Univ. (from 1976!)

An expert doesn't necessarily know more than you do, but he has it better organized and shows slides. - Paul Harwitz

How many fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old! - Stanslaus Lee

It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good. Otherwise, he - with his specialized knowledge - more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. - Albert Einstein

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. - Aldous Huxley