Quotation Saturday

Isaiah 17:11 In the day shalt thou make thy plant to grow, and in the morning shalt thou make thy seed to flourish: but the harvest shall be a heap in the day of grief and of desperate sorrow.
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The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.
~Anna Quindlen (1953 - )

Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them - every day begin the task anew.
~Saint Francis de Sales (1567 - 1622)

The conception of two people living together for twenty-five years without having a cross word suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.
~Alan Patrick Herbert

A great marriage is not when the 'perfect couple' comes together. It is when an imperfect couple learns to enjoy their differences.
~Dave Meurer, "Daze of Our Wives"

Intimacy is what makes a marriage, not a ceremony, not a piece of paper from the state.
~Kathleen Norris

Laughter gives us distance. It allows us to step back from an event, deal with it and then move on.
~Bob Newhart (1929 - )

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.
~Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

Now on to my Christmas joke of the week:

A family had twin boys whose only resemblance to each other was their looks. If one felt it was too hot, the other thought it was too cold. If one said the TV was too loud, the other claimed the volume needed to be turned up. Opposite in every way, one was an eternal optimist, the other a doom and gloom pessimist.

Just to see what would happen, on the twins' birthday their father loaded the pessimist's room with every imaginable toy and game. The optimist's room he loaded with horse manure.

That night the father passed by the pessimist's room and found him sitting amid his new gifts crying bitterly.

"Why are you crying?" the father asked.

"Because my friends will be jealous, I'll have to read all these instructions before I can do anything with this stuff, I'll constantly need batteries, and my toys will eventually get broken." answered the pessimist twin.

Passing the optimist twin's room, the father found him dancing for joy in the pile of manure. "What are you so happy about?" he asked.

To which his optimist twin replied, "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!"