THAT'S A GOOD LINE!

[Stanley]

"They gave me everything I asked for and a brown paper bag to carry it away". I thought of this line as I walked out of the office of the Head of History at NYU in 1982. I had doorstepped him in his office and asked for a free Summer School US History course with accreditation, he gave me everything I asked for and my last question was how often they did this. He told me that I was the first, nobody had ever travelled 3,000 miles and asked him before. There is a lesson here somewhere!

[PostmanPete]

"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument" - Desmond Tutu

[Stanley]

I like Desmond and he reminds me of the Dalai Lama, perhaps it's the way he giggles.

"When I was young, my parents, with great love and affection, placed on my shoulders a burden of guilt and insecurity. It has taken me over forty years to learn how to deal with it". (David Moore in 1983.)

[Stanley]

" I have this car serviced every two years whether it needs it or not" Lorin, a teacher at Whitttier College CA when I pointed out his eight cylinder Rambler estate was only running on about five cylinders!

[Stanley]

"Poor folks have to trade with each other" SCG 1983

[Stanley]

"We are all a stage in somebody else's development"

[Stanley]

Two Scottish proverbs:
You get back exactly what you put in. And: When a man isn't fishing he should be mending his nets.

[Tripps]

A variation of the above -
"Life is like a sewer - you only get out what you put in"

[chinatyke]

"Is tha brekkin 'em in for 'oss?"

Said to a man with new and prominent false teeth, Stanley's post about his bottom set reminded me of this.

[Stanley]

In medieval times when shirts were made from very heavy coarse linen I came across a reference to a wealthy man giving a new shirt to his steward to break it in for him by wearing it for a year.

Bob Smith, of Nelson and Colne College at a meeting in 1984. "Trouble is we've been plaiting sawdust for years and now all our pigeons have come home to roost". The nice thing was that everyone understood perfectly what he was saying!

[Stanley]

"In one ear, gone tomorrow" (I love it when two proverbs get mixed up!)

[EileenDavid]

Not heard that one Stanley only in one ear out the other. Eileen

[Stanley]

Eileen, I once knew a woman who mixed her proverbs up. That one is a mixture of in one ear and out the other and Here today gone tomorrow. She also said "Don't encourage them, they'll be round you like a ton of bricks."

[EileenDavid]

Stanley sounds like Hilda Baker syndrome eh? Eileen

[Cathy]

(Precious Stanley, loved it )

[Tripps]

Then there was the grieving Indian chap who said "the hand that rocks the cradle has kicked the bucket"

I just googled it and it seems they are called "malaphors". Try it - there are lots of them.

[Stanley]

I've got a lot of my own to post yet.... David and I started a collection 30 years ago....
"The body never lies" Susan Obler, 1983.

[Cathy]

Stanley, you are a bottomless pit... i mean that in the nicest possible way hehe

[Stanley]

"If we are going to have enemies, let's have stupid ones!" (David Moore May 1983)

[Stanley]

"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but in the long run they are just as deadly" (Mark Twain)

[Stanley]

"He's the best piolt on the river. He should be. He's hit all the rocks" (Reputed to be Mark Twain but I've never been able to find the original.)

[Cathy]

Maybe it was a friend of Mark Twains referring to him as being the (so called) best pilot on the river.

[Stanley]

Could be Cathy, never bottomed it.
"There is a price to pay for any course of Further Education late in life. It could be a thrombosis, a gall bladder problem of a nervous breakdown. Educators should give this public health warning" (Susan Obler. In my case it was probably a divorce!)

[rossylass]

Heard one yesterday on a phone in on Radio 4. There was a programme discussing how to manage the finances of someone who was becoming incapable of dealing with their own, which one participant referred to as "Power of eternity".

[Stanley]

That's what it amounts to Rossy!
Two Dons overheard conversing as they walked down a corridor in an Oxford college. One said to the other "And ninthly...."