I drove up and down the main drag trying to figure out which cross-street looked important enough to be the one that led across the railroad tracks and out of town toward Abo. I could have just stopped and asked somebody, but like most other American males, I hate having to walk up to a stranger and admit that I don’t know where I am. There’s a loss of manhood in it.

— Charles Kuralt

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

— Lao Tzu

 

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

 — Yogi Berra

 

We don’t go anywhere. Going somewhere is for squares. We just go!

— Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1954)

 

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, “Oh I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.”

— Jerry Seinfeld

Third Rock From the Sun could never blend in, because it looked and acted so differently from everything else on television. This individuality was precisely the reason to admire it. It’s just too bad that it was also a lot like a UFO: An amazing thing to see, but with such an irregular schedule that few people were ever around to appreciate it when it showed up.

— Craig Tomashoff (the NBC-TV series ended its six-season run May 22)

God made man first to give him time to think of an answer for her first question.

— unknown

Enlightenment doesn’t come all at once. It comes in grubby little pieces every day.

— singer-songwriter Greg Brown

If we had a keen vision of all ordinary life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well-wadded with stupidity.

— George Eliot

You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain and learn to accept it, not as a curse of punishment, but as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose.

— Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Once one determines that he or she has a mission in life, that it’s not going to be accomplished without a great deal of pain, and the rewards in the end may not outweigh the pain – if you recognize historically that always happens, then when it comes, you survive it.

— Richard Nixon

When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle.

— Spanish proverb

The thing that influenced me the most was the way Tommy played his trombone … It was my idea to make my voice work in the same way as a trombone or violin, not sounding like them, but “playing” the voice like those instruments.

— Frank Sinatra

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

 — Richard Strauss

Earth’s crammed with heaven, / And every common bush afire with God: / But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

 

Simply to have all the necessities of life and three meals a day will not bring happiness. Happiness is hidden in the unnecessary and in those impractical things that bring delight to the inner person... When we lack proper time for the simple pleasures of life, for the enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating, visiting friends, and watching children at play, then we have missed the purpose of life. Not on bread alone do we live but on all these human and heart-hungry luxuries.

— Ed Hays

 

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.

— Winnie-the-Pooh

(Each week this column features quotations gleaned from the readings and experiences of our editors, reporters, readers, and friends. All are invited to submit quotations for inclusion here. They may be sent to Gleanings, c/o The Newtown Bee, 5 Church Hill Road, Newtown, CT 06470 or emailed to editor@thebee.com.)