The Bill of Rights

Amendments I-X of the Constitution of the United States

"Now for some reason, politicians have a feeling that culture is a very dangerous subject and they should avoid it.... The arts are indeed a critical measure of the 'quality of life' -- a fact that historians, if not always politicians, have recognized for centuries. We are constantly faced in government with combating the negative, inherited problems that have become to much for any other segment of society to handle -- crime, poverty, drug addiction, to name a few. But the arts offer us the rare opportunity to further something that is positive -- the expansion of human capacity and the pursuit of happiness -- which is, after all, not only the central element of the arts, but of good government as well. Twentieth-century man is so surrounded by mass production, by machines and anonymous consumer goods that his eye thirsts for individuality. He turns to art to enjoy individual expressiveness. Paintings and sculptures, artifacts created by individual hands and conceived by individual spirits, satisfy a craving for personality, for uniqueness.... I deeply believe that the ultimate test of democracy lies in the quality of the artistic and intellectual life it creates and supports.... The arts are not for the privileged few -- they are for the many, for the people as a whole. This is the central fact and the very essence of the strength of the arts in a democratic society. The values of the arts are universal: Everyone can feel the impact of cultural experiences, once his eyes and ears have been opened and his mind sensitized. There is no reason why anyone in our society should be denied the opportunity for these same experiences, the spiritual exhilaration that the arts offer.... the arts can add a new dimension: They can teach us to hear when we listen and see when we look. They can sensitize us, teach us to feel, and in the process, help to make us more complete human beings. The impact of the arts goes far beyond the opera house, the concert hall, or the museum, needless to say. Our leading sociologists and educators insist that the arts are fundamental to the program for every student. The ability of the arts to reach out and create new enthusiasm for learning among children in slum areas is being proven day by day...."
-- Nelson Rockefeller in We Can Save The Environment, 1960

Edward S. Curtis was a photographer devoted to preserving images of Native Americans before their culture, and in some cases existences as tribes and individuals, might vanish from our planet. This visual record is housed within the Library of Congress, which has set up a wonderfully informative and exhaustive on-line site with background and indexed graphics to share a special part of our history and heritage from only plus or minus a century past: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award98/ienhtml/curthome.html.

"The height of NASA in the 1960s saw 500,000 employees scattered all over America. Their technical expertise and fortitude took just nine years from the launch of Alan Shepard in 1961 to the first steps on the Moon by Neil Armstrong in 1969. Total cost in those yesteryear dollars was $40 billion -- maybe $100 billion today. NASA just celebrated its first 50 years, and every dollar spent has been out of the pockets of the American taxpayers. In that five decades of scientific and human triumph, few aspects of human life have been untouched by spinoffs from space exploration. And the total cost to taxpayers from 1959 to 2009 -- about $850 billion dollars in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars, according to the Government Accounting Office. Does that number sound familiar? Oh, that's right, Congress has okayed an $800 billion economic bail out package for Wall Street ... not once, but twice in the past five months! Boy, can you imagine what NASA could do with all that $1.6 trillion? That's 100 years of NASA's budget! By the way, NASA 2009 Fiscal Year budget is $17.5 billion, about one-half of one percent of the U.S. National Budget."
-- Mark D. Marquette for The Loafer, 3/31/09

"Humor helps us tap into another level of thinking, to give voice to spontaneous ideas that would otherwise stay trapped in our head. For this reason, I always allow room in my readings for play, for absurd, whimsical comments. This way I don't block the good stuff from coming through, the unexpected jewels....There is an old saying that the devil never laughs at himself. He might tease and mock others, but he is unable to experience self-irony.... Always be willing to laugh at yourself, because no matter how intuitive you become, you are still just a human being, and capable of misperceiving reality just as much as anyone else.... If I stay humble, and keep humor close by, everything works out fine. Children have an amazing talent for sensing when an adult is not being genuine.... Humor for some people is like Valium. It softens their bones, makes them more available to love and affection. Allowing more humor into your perceptions will give you a clearer sense of when something is off, when somebody is trying to be something they aren't.... If you let yourself play the fool now and then, your observations will become more intuitive. You will be able to spot a fraud in the blink of an eye. At a conference I heard the Dalai Lama say that we should examine our spiritual teachers with the curiosity of a dog. We should sniff their behind as well as their front, so that we get the whole picture of who they are. Humor gives us this kind of broad view. It shows us what is hidden and cloaked -- the good, the bad, and the ugly of someone's character.... Don't be afraid to see everything. In the long run, it will make you a more compassionate person. As you start to see other people's secrets, you will see your own. As you start to identify what is false in those around you, you will identify what is false in yourself.... Humor is vast. Knowing this part of yourself will give you the confidence to plunge into the moment and not be afraid to make mistakes, to be the shaman and not worry whether or not your hat has stars on it. In developing your psychic ability, it is crucial you have this range, that you are willing to screw up every now and then, to turn into a clown to convey the trust that is stirring in your bones.... Being psychic is like navigating by starlight.... Every great shaman is also a great fool.... There is a story about Chang-Tsu that says when his wife died, rather than grieving at the funeral, he picked up a salad bowl and began drumming it and singing to the heavens. When his friend asked him what he was doing, he said there was no way of bringing her back, so he just wanted to play music. There is a part in all of us that is this brave and joyous even in the face of death. Getting to know your own humor, its pitch and flavor, will lead you to this place. Along the way, you'll recover all the intuitive power that the serious, grown-up world has forced you to abandon. Where before you got angry, now you'll be laughing, because you will see the universe at play.... Trust your humor. It can be a great receiver for psychic truth.... It is a wild show, this life, enough to make anyone roll on the floor."
--Andrei Ridgeway, Psychic Living: Tap Into Your Psychic Potential

"Our nation faces some of the greatest challenges it has in generations and we know it’s going to take a lot of hard work to get us back on track. While Michelle and I are calling on every American to participate in United We Serve, the call to service doesn’t end this fall. We need to stay involved in our towns and communities for a long time to come. After all, America’s new foundation will be built one neighborhood at a time – and that starts with you."
-- President Barack Obama announcing United We Serve

Random quotes from around the region and nation

"Our entire life consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are." -- Jean Anouilh

"No quonking: That's quonking -- not honking -- and it's something people should avoid if they are on radio or television. It's the extra sounds, like throat-clearing and sighing, that can be picked up by the microphone or that may distract the announcer or guest." -- Coffee News

"Reality is what refuses to go away when you stop believing in it." -- anonymous

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." -- St. Francis of Assisi

"When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder." -- unattributed

"If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles." -- anonymous

"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." -- Clarence Budington Kelland

"What do you call a pig that's lost its voice? A disgruntled pig." -- not attributed

"Like most endeavors, life is seriously over-advertised and under-funded." -- anonymous

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." -- anonymous

"Children have never been very good at listening to their fathers, but they never fail to imitate them." -- James Baldwin

"It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling." -- not attributed

"What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity." -- Jean-Paul Richter

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." -- unattributed

"I dress this way to horrify the tourists." -- unattributed

"Clinically speaking, you're a total asshole." -- anonymous

"Whoever teaches his son teaches not only his son but also his son's son -- and so on to the end of generations." -- The Talmud

"One father is more than one hundred schoolmasters." -- George Herbert

"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." -- unattributed

"The greatest good is wisdom." -- Saint Augustine

"Children are a great comfort in your old age -- and they help you reach it faster, too." -- anonymous

"As children hear their parents praying for wisdom and direction, they learn that parents can't fix everything. I believe God designed it this way. After all, if parents were perfect, children would never sense their need for God." -- Dr. Paul Meier

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned." -- Mark Twain

"Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow." -- not attributed

"There are seniors, then there are old-times like Mariam Amash, of Jsr az-Zarka, Israel. She is 120 years old and holds the record for oldest human being on the planet. The previous record was 114 years, held by an American woman. Mariam's record was realized when she produced her birth certificate. It came from the Ottoman Empire and showed she was born in 1888. The golden oldie says eating lots of vegetables helped her reach a ripe old age. 'I hope to keep going for another ten years,' says Mariam, who has 410 descendants over four generations." -- Coffee News

"The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted." — Bojaxhiu

"The difference between adventure and disaster is preparation." -- anonymous

"Cool locally." -- not attributed

"Can't I just get a normal coffee?" -- anonymous

"Every object, every being, is a jar full of delight. Be a Connoisseur." -- Rumi

"The soil is the great connector of our lives, the source and destination of all." -- Wendell Berry

"Mothers who tell their children not to 'quiddle' are telling them that they are wasting their time on something trivial. Or, the mom may be admonishing her child for doing a task in an indifferent or superficial way. What she really means is, 'Get serious, junior!'"

"There are three dimensions to credit cards: length, width and debt." -- anonymous

"Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat." -- not attributed

"Don't expect to be congratulated for doing nothing. Not even a mosquito gets a slap on the back until it goes to work!" -- anonymous

"Goodbye, tension... Hello, pension!" -- not attributed

"A pessimist is an optimist who's been to Las Vegas." -- anonymous

"You can always tell a man who is a non-conformist, because he looks just like every other non-conformist." -- unattributed

"Being inside human beings is where God learns." -- Rilke

"I don't develop. I am." -- Picasso

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life's longing for itself." -- Kahlil Gibran

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

"It is not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild nature fades." -- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

".... The 9th harmonic is the transcendental chart, the higher vibrational frequency of Pluto that describes what's behind everything we do. As astrologer Delphine Jay defines it, this chart is both the soul itself, 'representing destined unfoldment,' that which fulfills us and nourishes us, and at the same time, it is the chart of the soul mate or soul-level relationship. The 9th harmonic reflects our true non-self or destined path 'through parallel symbology.' A powerful and under-utilized chart, rich with research possibilities, the 9th harmonic or novile aspect connection, can be found in intimate partnerships, but also between family members, or ourselves and a beloved pet, a teacher, a best friend, or even those you meet only in passing, i.e. anywhere where you feel a deep soul level kinships, that may not always be found between the natal charts. Other applications might be found in the charts between an individual and a location which they feel to be their soul place, as a 9th level relocation chart. An earth-shattering event that may change the course of a location's respective destiny would be an example of a mundane application of the 9th. For the purpose of this article, the soul mate or soul relationship may be described as one where we experience a sense of completion, a deep soul recognition or feel profoundly nourished on some level; we may simply experience a knowingness or simply as a deep ease, connection or familial feeling. The 9th harmonic chart is a useful tool for validating, corroborating and providing more conceptual information to clarify that which is often more clearly understood intuitively, or on the energetic level...." -- The 9th Harmonic: The Chart of the Soul Mate by Cathy H. Burroughs, 20/20

"We are departing for the skies. Who has a mind for sight-seeing?" -- Rumi

"I have always been able to see what others were unable to see; and what they did see, I did not see." -- Salvador Dali

"Poles apart, I am the color of dying and you are the color of being born. Unless we breathe in each other, there can be no garden." -- Rumi

"The past is in our midst, waiting to be touched with new eyes." -- Andrei Ridgeway

"Everything is part of it." -- Tom Robbins

"I feel, therefore I am." -- Andrei Ridgeway

"Listening is a form of accepting." -- Stella Terril Mann

"When a voice has heart it can heal a million people." -- Dr. Hubert

"When man is dreaming he is a genius." -- Akira Kurosawa

"It is all an open secret." -- Ramana Maharashi

"There is always another time, another second, another hour to do it right." -- Andrei Ridgeway

"When the right thing happens, the whole body knows." -- Robert Bly

"Wildness is a state of complete awareness. That's why we need it." -- Gary Snyder

"The glory of children is their father." -- Proverbs 17:6

"It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us." -- Nelson Mandela

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." -- Albert Einstein

"Learning is movement from moment to moment." -- J. Krishnamurti

"As the plant produces its flower, so does the psyche create its symbols." -- Carl Jung

"It is part of the mystery of life that when we stop clinging to what we think is our safety net, the universe provides marvels beyond our imagining." -- Bernadette P. Swanson in God's Presence: It's Everywhere!

"When I was a kid, I used to imagine animals runnings under my bed. I told my dad, and he solved the problem by cutting off the legs of the bed." -- Lou Brock

"The most fulfilling moments in life are not characterized by complexity, or acquiriring or possessing. They are a product of simple awareness, pure consciousness, and love." -- Paula Godwin Coppel in Discovering the Law of Attention

"God is a circle that is centered in you. All the attributes of the Infinite are in focus as you, flowing forth through you." -- Eric Butterworth in In the Flow of the Healing Stream

"My father opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn't afraid to go into the basement by himself." -- Erma Bombeck

On accepting constructive progress and invention: "Humanity didn't leave the stone age because we ran out of stones." -- unattributed

"The same power [that Jesus expressed] is within you too -- to begin again, to break through, to heal or resolve any condition or challenge in your life -- however it appears." -- Daniel B. Rebant in Seize the Day!

"The thing to remember about fathers is, they're men. A girl has to keep it in mind: they are dragon-seekers, bent on improbable rescues." -- Phyllis McGinley

"Love is spelled T-I-M-E." -- Anonymous

"I owe almost everything to my father." -- Margaret Thatcher

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me." -- Jim Valvano

"A designer knows that he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- Antoine de St-Expurey

"My daddy doesn't work, he just goes to the office; but sometimes he does errands on the way home." -- a little girl

"I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking." -- Albert Einstein

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." -- Thich Nhat Hanh

"Dear and good -- dependable dad, always so steady and true; a man of few words -- he never says much, unless there is really need to." -- Anonymous

"A psychologist is selling a video that teaches you how to test your dog's IQ. Here's how it works: if you spend $12.99 for the video, your dog is smarter than you." -- unattributed

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon." -- anonymous

"Legend: A lie that has attained the dignity of age." -- unattributed

"Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination." -- unattributed

"Heroism is one of the shortest lived professions there is." -- unattributed

"I'm passionate about teaching people to transform negative emotions into positive ones. If you get mired in the muck of negativity, you can't lead a liberated, happy life.... As a UCLA psychiatric resident I learned to prescribe medications and use traditional psychotherapy.... I also bring spirituality, subtle energy, and intuition into this equation and offer strategies that go beyond mainstream medicine.... Emotional freedom is your ability to love by cultivating positive emotions and being able to compassionately witness and transform negative ones, whether they're yours or another's. This skill liberates you from fear and lets you navigate adversity without attacking someone, losing your cool, or being derailed by negativity.... To experience emotional freedom it's necessary to understand these four basic components of emotion: their biology, spirituality, energy, and psychology.... I see difficult emotions as a laboratory for spiritual growth -- whereas traditional psychiatry often views them more as tormentors, something to get rid of.... Each emotion is a prompt for us to get more in touch with our hearts and expand our light. This perspective really changes how you deal with all emotional challenges.... Many sensitive people come to me, as patients and in workshops, who've been labeled 'overly sensitive.' These people, including me, are what I call 'emotional empaths.' Because we are so sensitive, we absorb the energy of others. We sense their fear, anxiety, and stress and take them into our bodies. Then we get exhausted or feel ill ourselves.... people on a spiritual path tend to gain more sensitivity as they develop. Thus, they need to learn how not to absorb outside energy so they can feel joyous and free.... There's a chapter [in her book of the same name] on emotional vampires, which is my term for many difficult people -- for instance, a criticizer, a victim, a narcissist, or a controller.... Practice what I call 'the namaste effect' which is 'I respect the spirit within you even if I don't like what you're doing.' Your victories over emotional vampires are not small -- they're huge. With every success, you are creating more hope for the world. From an intuitive standpoint, we are all interconnected: my emotional freedom affects your emotional freedom affects everyone in the world.... [The four emotional types are] 'the intellectual,' 'the empath,' 'the gusher,' and 'the rock.'... Each type is determined by inborn temperament, upbringing, and perhaps karma. Since emotional freedom means being able to remain sensitive but centered in an overwhleming world, it's essential to know your emotional type.... You become a hero in your own life as you learn to use emotions as a chance to become stronger, brighter, more. This is critical on a personal level because it frees you from suffering. But it's just as important on a collective level because if we don't face the fear and anger in ourselves, then we risk projecting it onto a global sphere. This creates war and massive suffering to our human family. We must find inner peace before we can have outer peace. That's why I consider emotional freedom an inner peace movement." -- Emotional Freedom by Judith Orloff, MD

"In politics, absurdity is not a handicap." -- not attributed

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." -- unattributed

"Wealth is any income that is at least one hundred dollars a year more than the income of one's wife's sister's husband." -- unattributed

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." -- Carl Jung

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation." -- Pearl S. Buck

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward.They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." -- Goethe

"The radio is in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel." -- Elvis Costello in Radio Radio

"I Miss Being Broken, Lowdown and Alone." -- first track, described in liner notes as "a wistful look back at being young, miserable and lost," on CD Weary Things by cartoonist and musician Andy Friedman and band co-members The Other Failures

"The light we see from [star] Rigel (RYE-jell) left 910 years ago, yet its energy output is tremendous.... Procyon (PRO-see-on) is also in the Sun's neighborhood, only 11.3 Light Years away. That means that at a speed of 186,000 miles per second light that left Procyon in 1998 is just reaching Earth and therefore your eyes.... A Light Year is about 6 trillion miles, so this yellow-white star is more than 66 trillion miles away -- extremely close as outer space distances go.... Castor, the top star of the brothers Gemini, is an astonishing system of six stars! The naked eye sees a blue-white star of 1.6 magnitude. With a department store telescope, Castor's two close stars are revealed. And they orbit each other while orbiting Castor! The other stars of this amazing system, 45 Light Years away, are seen with more professional equipment. Pollux is an orange giant that is 36 Light Years away.... This star puts out more than 30 times the energy of our sun, and has at least one planet orbiting it -- some three times the size of our Jupiter!" -- Stargazer by Mark Marquette in The Loafer, 2/24/09

"Matter is nothing but condensed light." -- Andrei Ridgeway

"Like father like son: every good tree makes good fruit." -- William Langland

"Beware of gypsies who ask for big tipsies." -- Dr. Hubert

"I talk and talk, and I haven't taught people in fifty years what my father taught by example in one week." -- Mario Cuomo

"Blessed are the gentle. Gentleness, in its genuine and original meaning ... was a term denoting true inner strength under control." -- Charles R. Swindoll

"Blessed is the man whose strength is in You...." -- Psalm 84:5

"What do you get when you cross an agnostic with a Jehovah's Witness?"
"Someone who knocks on your door and shrugs." -- anonymous

"It is much easier to become a father than to be one." -- Kent Nurburn

"The ability to accept responsibility is the measure of a man." -- Roy L. Smith

"A child's hand in yours -- what tenderness and power it arouses. You are instantly the very touchstone of wisdom and strength." -- Marjoie Holmes

"Dad, when you come home at night with only shattered pieces of your dreams, your little one can mend them like new with two magic words -- 'Hi Dad!'" -- Alan Beck

"First we were loved, now we love." -- 1 John 4:19

"I think freedom comes in learning how to survive, how to prevent oppression, and illness and in realizing that your family are the friends at home in your heart." -- Letha Hadady in Asian Health Secrets

"I would be the last person to maintain that governments should become the sole supporter or even the prinicpal support of the arts in this country. The arts must continue to rely on individual effort, on individual benefactors, on private foundations, and on business. Those private sources, in fact, must be encouraged to increase their involvement with the arts if we are to be assured a stable cultural life. Nothing would be more deleterious than for those traditional sources to assume that increased governmental particiipation will relieve them of further responsibility. But there is one aspect of the arts in which government is singularly able to make a significant contribution -- making the arts as widely available to all the people as education or electricity.... The question was raised whether the arts and the state's concern should not properly be the function of the educational system. I replied that support for the arts should be to promote the freedom which the creative nature of the artist demands -- and to provide the availability of the arts to all the citizens of the state...." -- New York Governor, United States Vice President and Republican Presidential Candidate Nelson Rockefeller in The Environment Can Be Saved, 1960

"Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made." -- unattributed

"Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere." -- anonymous

"Better buy me another drink. Your face is still in focus." -- anonymous

"I had sex once. Tasted like chicken." -- anonymous

"Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks." -- unattributed

"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives." -- not attributed

"Silence is true wisdom's best reply." -- anonymous

"Not all men annoy us. Some men are gay." -- unattributed

"I like you but not enough to generate dirty thoughts." -- anonymous

"Didn't get enough attention as a child, now did we?" -- not attributed

".... whenever we first fall in love, whether we're fifteen or seventy-five, we're likely to feel that delicious feeling of excitement and joy that is the hallmark of the Innocent.... When disillusion sets in for the Innocent it may not lead to greater wisdom right away. It can lead to neediness, and the clinging lover is living the Orphan archetype. Any relationship is better than being alone for this figure, who wants to be 'adopted' by the one s/he loves.... The person who has been an Innocent -- who has faced deception and has decided to ask for more in life than the Orphan's compromise -- becomes a Pilgrim, a seeker after real love. It's a bold step. It's also risky, as everyone else will be putting pressure on the Pilgrim to 'settle down.'.... If the Pilgrim stays on the search s/he will find self looking for inner values, both personal and ethical, in self and partner. This is when the Warrior-Lover archetype emerges, and this is the person who doesn't just love the sex or the status or the fact the everyone else likes the lover. This person loves the other because s/he knows that together they can be good for each other -- and good within their community. This is a pretty strong place to be. But there is more. For as the Warrior-Lover pair learns to nourish each other's needs and abilities they find that they are leading others through the power of their example..... This marks the emergence of the Monarch archetype. This is the person whose trust, whose love becomes empowering for others -- and certainly this doesn't diminish the primary loving bond with the partner. In some ways the two different types of love fuel each other.... This couple will be working for the good of all, perhaps for the good of the planet and perhaps confronting social evils, because they recognize that these are more important things than whether or not they have the latest consumer toys in their lives. At the highest level love appears in the Magician archetype. We all can reach this, at least on occasions, when we are fully present and honest and loving with others. When that happens we can change lives just by being with people, sometimes people we hardly know, and accepting them for who they are. It's the most elusive of archetypes -- because the change happens in the other person as we allow them the space to alter their own energy. And that, after all, is the nature of someone who inspires others. Being able to see the six levels gives us a language, a sphere of reference, from which to reflect on our own actions and decisions. It gives us a chance to know ourselves more fully both in and out of the bedroom.... We can have the relationship we truly desire if we ask for it [and don't get captured by cannibals], yet we have to know exactly what to ask for or we'll certainly get the wrong thing...." -- The Six Archetypes of Love from Innocent to Magician by Dr. Allen G. Hunter

"There is something ultimate in a father's love, something that cannot fail, something to be believed against the whole world." -- Fredrich W. Faber

"It's only a gambling problem if you're losing. -- anonymous

"My dad and I hunted and fished together. How could I get angry at this man who took the time to be with me?" -- Dr. James Dobson

"I was a gay cowboy long before it became trendy." -- not attributed

"I like poetry, long walks on the beach, and poking dead things with a stick." -- unattributed

"Why don't you slip into something nice like unconsciousness." -- not attributed

"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope." -- Bill Cosby

"The love of a father is one of nature's greatest masterpieces." -- Anonymous

"I'm brilliant but I have to do dumb and self-destructive things to relax." -- anonymous

"No sir, we cannot provide donkeys for that purpose." -- unattributed

"I'm so sexy there's a support group for my stalkers." -- anonymous

"My father didn't do anything unusual. He only did what dads are supposed to do -- be there." -- Max Lucado

"Destined to become an old lady with lots of cats." -- not attributed

"You cannot stop me, you cannot destroy me, I am the cockroach of love." -- anonymous

"My pa can sweeten up a day that clouds and rain make gray. And tell me funny stories that will chase the clouds away." -- Marjorie Rawlings