“I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It’s just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.”

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn’t turn it on.

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.

Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?

Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.

Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.

My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.

Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn’t even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.

When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.

I read one psychologist’s theory that said, “Never strike a child in your anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he’s recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?

Children make your life important.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, – but it returneth!

Being unconditionally happy is a practice: “Come what may, today I’m going to smile. Anyway, everything is going to die! Everything is going to vanish and disappear-so what! Who cares! Let me at least be happy, smile this moment, enjoy my very breath.”

Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

We all have to die some day. Not very many immortals have shown up in this world.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

Illness and problems are the specialties of life. But the death of a child is a cause of mental agony which can be overcome if one concedes this world to be a stage or stadium wherein praiseworthy are those who are not proud of their achievement and those who do not cry at their defeat.

My dear child, if you desire to be free from the cycle of birth and death, then abandon the objects of sense gratification as poison. Drink instead the nectar of forbearance, upright conduct, mercy, cleanliness and truth.