Quotes by Columnists - Page 2

Few things are more delightful than grandchildren fighting over your lap.
Doug Larson
Teaching kids to count is fine but teaching them what counts is best.
Bob Talbert
Faith is a curious thing It must be renewed it has its own spring.
Gladys Taber
You don't always win your battles but it's good to know you fought.
Marjorie Holmes
When in doubt make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell leap.
Cynthia Heimel
In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.
Bill Vaughan
Passing the SAT: My personal theory is that it has to do with how much money you send them in the mail. I think the amounts they tell you to send are actually just suggested minimum donations - if you get my drift.
Dave Barry
He couldn't get into Harvard even if he had the dean's wife at gunpoint.
Dave Barry
Trouble like the hill ahead straightens out when you advance upon it.
Marcelene Cox
While the work or play is on ... don't constantly feel you ought to be doing the other.
Franklin P. Adams
Miami drivers will attempt to pass you inside a car wash.
Dave Barry
I would say that the single most important conclusion I reached after traveling through Japan as well as countless hours reading studying and analyzing this fascinating culture is that you should always tighten the cap on the shampoo bottle before you put it in your suitcase.
Dave Barry
He's an honest man - you could shoot craps with him over the telephone.
Earl Wilson
Christmas is over and Business is Business.
Franklin Pierce Adams
Then here's to the City of Boston The town of the cries and the groans Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
Franklin P. Adams
You're only young once but you can always be immature.
Dave Barry
Middle age occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.
Franklin Pierce Adams
The swaggering underemphasis of New England.
Heywood Broun
One trouble with growing older is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure who didn't amount to much when he was your age.
Bill Vaughan
People are far more revealing by the questions they ask than the answer they give. To get closer to understanding what is really on someone’s mind, answer their questions briefly so they ask follow-up questions. By their third question you’ll get a glimpse of their biggest fear or desire on the topic.
Kare Anderson
To boost bonding among others so they are more apt to work (or play) well together, ask them, when together, to do two powerfully simple things that can be done rather quickly:1. Write down the ways they are like each other. Hint: Create a level playing field. Writing rather than immediately sharing helps slow thinkers keep up with fast thinkers. Fast thinkers aren't smarter, just different in their thinking processes, and each kind has advantages and pitfalls, so they can accomplish more together than when a majority in a group think and speak at the same speed. Hint: Salespeople are often fast thinkers.2. Share with each other what they wrote, going around the circle, one by one.Bonus benefit: Other studies show that when you reflect on how you are similar to those with whom you are talking, you pay more attention to them. You care about them more. That spurs the other person to listen more closely to you.
Kare Anderson
Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.
Guy Browning
As a Christian, my highest calling is not motherhood; my highest calling is to follow Christ.
Rachel Held Evans
Three-Step Method for Making Stronger Connections: Take the Triangle Talk approach to connecting and reaching agreement with others: You, Me, Us. First refer to their interest, then yours - and then note how your interests coincide. This approach enables diverse people to gain traction sooner toward a common goal.
Kare Anderson
It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it's ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It's like shooting polygamist fish in a barrel of coffee.
Mark Morford
When Benedict dies, he will have the pleasure of standing before whatever furious God he believes in, to answer for how it was that he knew for undeniable fact that one -- if not dozens -- of his priests repeatedly molested, abused and/or raped young children for decades, and he did nothing to stop it. How much does God believe the pope's argument that Vatican PR trumps pedophilia? Joe Ratzinger, 82, will soon find out.
Mark Morford
Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.
Doug Larson
Why do you think politicians send soldiers to the wars they declare, if, of course, they still go to the bother of declaring them. . . . mediation, keeping a distance from the actual events and being privileged enough not to have to witness them.
Javier Marías
Here is an old tradition badly in need of return: You have to earn your way into politics. You should go have a life, build a string of accomplishments, then enter public service....
Peggy Noonan
Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in journalism.
Dave Barry
Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people's lives as a distraction from their own.
Javier Marías
A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that’s one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting—well, that’s entirely different.
Diana Vreeland
The world's most sensible and the most idiotic person lies within us..the worst part is we can't say who is who
Chetan Bhagat
In this snug, over-safe corner of the world… we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed and streaming world.
George F. Will
Just as an apple a day keeps the doctor away,a book a week keeps the mind ever sleek
Azuka Onwuka
Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we've got.
Art Buchwald
if you do not share the universities' values, it could be a big mistake to send your children to college before they are intellectually and morally prepared for the indoctrination-rather-than-education they will receive there. Therefore, prepare them morally and intellectually and, if possible, do not send them to college right after high school. Let them work for a year, or perhaps travel (for example, given the antipathy to Israel on campuses, a trip to Israel would be both morally clarifying and maturing). The younger the student, the less life experience and maturity they have, the more they are likely to embrace the rejection of your values.
Dennis Prager
The physical vanity of the diet-and-exercise obsessive is recast as the pursuit of a kind of ritual purity, hedged about with taboos and guilt trips and mysticized by yoga.
Ross Douthat
One of the most often asked questions posed after America was attacked on 9/11 was, ‘What has the United States done to arouse so much Muslim hatred?’ The question, however, is on the same moral level as asking what German and other European Jews did to cause the Holocaust, or what blacks did to arouse the hatred among the American whites who lynched them.
Dennis Prager
Muslim religious leaders — from Al-Azhar in Cairo to local imams throughout the world - need to say exactly what Pope Francis said to the Catholic members of the Mafia: ‘Any Muslim who commits an act of terror — that is, deliberately murders civilians of any nationality or religion — goes to hell.
Dennis Prager
As of the second decade in the twenty-first century, nearly all acts of terror around the world (as opposed to acts of terror confined to one country, as in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka) have been committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Of course the vast majority of Muslims are not terrorists. But this frequently noted fact is meaningless. The vast majority of Germans were not members of the Gestapo, nor were the vast majority of Russians members of the Communist Party, let alone the KGB. Not only is international terror overwhelmingly Muslim, but there are virtually no terrorists committing terror in the name of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion.
Dennis Prager
Bring out others’ better side and they are more likely to see and support yours.
Kare Anderson
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.
Marilyn Vos Savant
The most wonderful street in the universe is Broadway. It is a world within itself. High and low, rich and poor, pass along at a rate peculiar to New York, and positively bewildering to a stranger.
Frank Rich
On a New York subway you get fined for spitting, but you can throw up for nothing.
Lewis Grizzard
A face on him as long as a hare's back leg.
Myles na gCopaleen
But an intelligent man like you would know that to live in an unrealistic hope is a very foolish way to spend a life." - Lena Gray
Maeve Binchy
I thought about my [Punjabi] family. The only nakshatram we think about is the division of petrol pumps when we have to see the girl.
Chetan Bhagat
I saw [Chennai]. It had the usual Indian elements like autos, packed public buses, hassled traffic cops and tiny shops that sold groceries, fruits, utensils, clothes or novelty items. However, it did feel different. First, the sign in every shop was in Tamil. The Tamil font resembles those optical illusion puzzles that give you a headache if you stare at them long enough. Tamil women, all of them, wear flkowers in their hair. Tamil men don't believe in pants and wear lungis even in shopping districts. The city is filled with film posters. The heroes' pictures make you feel even your uncles can be movie stars. The heroes are fat, balding, have thick moustaches and the heroine next to them is a ravishing beauty.
Chetan Bhagat
Marble flooring is to a Punjabi what a foreign degree is to a Tamilian
Chetan Bhagat
She is too intelligent to be a good daughter-in-law
Chetan Bhagat
Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo.
Shobhaa Dé
Even as I took a long, hard look at some of the obvious downsides (Q: 'What are the three things keeping India down? A: Corruption, corruption and corruption.'), I still felt the upsides (Q: 'What is so fantastic about the India story? A: People, people and people.') tilted the scales in our favor.
Shobhaa Dé
The trouble is Indians aren't used to being prosperous. We are more comfortable dealing with poverty- after all, poverty has been the staple here, and has been for many centuries.
Shobhaa Dé
These stupid biases and discrimination are the reason our country is so screwed up. It's Tamil first, Indian later. Punjabi first, Indian later. It has to end. National anthem, national currency, national teams - still, we won't marry our children outside our state. How can this intolerance be good for our country?
Chetan Bhagat
When we choose a mobile network, do we check whether Airtel or Vodafone belong to a particular caste? No, we simply choose the provider based on the best value or service. Then why do we vote for somebody simply because he belongs to the same caste as us?
Chetan Bhagat
Natives of the Florida Keys often refer to themselves as Conchs, and for good reason: They have been drinking.
Dave Barry
The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it.
Lewis Grizzard
Four healthy ways to spur people to keep the agreements they make:1. Specificity Boosts Clarity and AccountabilityThe more concrete the agreement, the more clear the obligation and the more difficult it is for someone to misunderstand. "Please get right on that" does not create as much clarity nor accountability as, "Please finalize your choice of vendors by 5 p.m. tomorrow."2. Peer Accountability Pins Us TogetherAlthough this did not work on the non-profit committee, when peers meet face-to-face or via group video and make specific agreements with each other and they all have a stake in the outcome there's a higher probability of securing accountability.3. Written Proof So We Don't GoofTo reinforce the power of mutual accountability, have a designated meeting recorder (or take turns with the role) so one participant is responsible for recording action items, deadlines and who's responsible for each item. The recorder sends that list to all participants' computers before they leave the meeting.4. Upfront Rules of Engagement Are Our GuardrailsA company, team, or committee is more likely to spur mutual accountability when it adopts a few, specific agreements about how people will operate together, from punctuality to pithiness in writing or conversing.
Kare Anderson
Agape is the concrete commitment to the flourishing of someone or something outside of oneself. Even and perhaps especially when that flourishing, hence the joy, is threatened.
Bas Heijne