Lake Forest: quotes; plump

 

Carol and I walked to the beach on Sunday.  1.33 miles from our apartment to the bottom of the 118 steps.  As you can see a lovely day.  75ºF/24C with a moderate breeze moving a few sailboats smoothly on the lake.  We sat on a shady bench and people watched for a while.  The small boy in the red suit just below the center of the photo was a bundle of energy.  Swatting at and missing plastic balls with his slightly older brother.  Running down to the water and carrying buckets of it back to fill a hole they had dug.  Dancing wildly, almost screwing himself into the sand.  About 77 years from now he may be sitting on a bench watching another three year old do the same.

I have read the sections of THE 1000 SMARTEST THINGS EVER SAID on Love and Friendship and the one on Success.  Here are some quotes.  I did warn you.

A person is only as good as what they love.   —Saul Bellow

It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.   —Henry Rollins

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.  —Winston Churchill

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.  —Paul  Valery

Take calculated risks.  That is quite different from being rash.  —George Patton, Jr.

The greatest danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.  —Michelangelo

The cure for boredom is curiosity.  There is no cure for curiosity.  —Ellen Parr

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.  —Antoine de Saint-Exupery     (Some of you may remember that I have quoted this before.)

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire Cat in a tree.  “Which road do I take?” she asked.  “Where do you want to go?” was his response.  “I don’t know,”  Alice answered.  “Then it doesn’t matter.”  —Lewis Carroll

You can get a lot farther with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.  —Al Capone

You can’t build a reputation on what you’re going to do.  —Henry Ford   (This no longer seems to be true.)

The wind and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigator.  —Edward Gibbon

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving—we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, or lie at anchor.  —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.  —Christopher Morley

When you reach the top, keep climbing.—Zen aphorism

I’ve started reading AMERICAN LION, a biography of Andrew Jackson which is prefaced by a good quote from him:  I was born for a storm and a calm does not suit me.

He was President from 1829 to 1837.  At the beginning of his second term he was 65 years old faced with the threat that South Carolina would try to secede from the Union.  I did not remember that there was talk of secession as early as that.

Jackson is described at being my height—6’1”—but weighing only 140 pounds.  I have always considered myself slim, but by comparison I am positively plump at 153 and will have to go on a diet.  A week from today I am in Hilton Head.  I’ll start then.