Sage Advice

The following was presented as “Old Farmers Advice”. I’m not sure who compiled it, but some pretty good points are made.

– Your fences need to be horse-high, pig-tight, and bull-strong.

– Keep skunks and lawyers at a distance.

– Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.

– A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.

– Words that soak into your ears are whispered... not yelled.

– Meanness doesn’t just happen overnight.

Do not corner something

that you know is

meaner than you.

– It doesn’t take a very big person to carry a grudge.

– You cannot unsay a cruel word.

– Every path has a few puddles.

– When you wallow with pigs, expect to smell like a pig.

– The best sermons are lived, not preached.

– Most of the stuff people worry about ain’t going to happen anyway.

– Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

– Live a good and honorable life; then when you get older and think back, you’ll enjoy it a second time.

– Don’t interfere with somethin’ that ain’t botherin’ you none.

– Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.

– If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.

– Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.

– The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with watches you from the mirror every mornin’.

– Always drink upstream from the herd.

– Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.

– Letting the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin’ it back in.

– If you get to thinkin’ you’re a person of some influence, try orderin’ somebody else’s dog around.

– Live, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God.

– Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.

Percentages

This one came in over the transom.

A U. S. Marine colonel, while waiting for the coffee to brew, asked his fellow Marines this question: “How much of sex is work, and how much of it is pleasure?”

A major chimed in: 75 percent pleasure and 25 percent work.

A captain said it was 50-50.

A lieutenant responded with 25 percent work and 75 percent pleasure.

With no consensus, the colonel turned to the private in charge of making the coffee.

Without hesitation, the young man said, “Sir, it has to be 100 percent pleasure.”

The colonel was surprised and asked, “Why?”

“Well, sir, if there were any work involved, the officers would have me doing it for them.”

Rhymes

Mr. Fred, keeping an eye out for hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, says the following is from a Washington Post contest. They asked for a two-line rhyme with the most romantic first line and the least romantic second line. Here are the winners:

• My darling, my lover, my beautiful wife; marrying you has screwed up my life.

• I see your face when I’m dreaming. That’s why I always wake up screaming.

• Kind, intelligent, loving, and hot. These describe everything you are not.

• I thought I could love not another ... that is, until I met your brother.

• Roses are red; violets are blue; sugar is sweet and so are you. But the has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” – Henry Adams “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”– H. L. Mencken “The budget should be human activity, so we do not reduce the vision of God we present to those we are evangelizing.

Second, if we believe God is good, He is not only good, but He also does good things. We, Christians, believe God desires that people share roses are wilting; the violets are dead; the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.

• I want to feel your sweet embrace; but don’t take that paper bag off your

Political Quotes

“Politics, as practiced, balanced; the treasury should be refilled; public debt should be reduced; the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled; and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”— Cicero, 55 BC “Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”—George Burns of who God is and what He does. We need theological reflection.

“Government exists to protect us from each other.

Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves.”—Ronald Reagan In America, we do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who