Thought for the day

One thing I collect, apart from fleece and yarn, is witty remarks.
My favourite at the moment comes from the title of a book I wish I had written - the title, not the book.
If they give you lined paper write sideways.
Now that's a philosophy close to my heart.
Another of my favourite sayings comes from a friend called Lee, who was the RE coordinator at the school I taught at between children 2 and 3.
Lee used to say if you want to know what God thinks of money look at the people he gave it to.
And the light at the end of the tunnel could be an express train heading your way.
My friend Colleen used to say if you are going to be a victim make sure you can live that way for the rest of your life because things won't get any better. If you can't do that you need to stand up for what you believe, take a stand and live with the consequences.
A friend lives on long after they die through the words they pass on to the people they meet.
And when their children react as they have seen their mother do she lives on, in every instinctive action, in every word that echoes hers as they were growing up. That's eternal life and it only comes from touching the lives of others.
Colleen died many years ago, when my youngest child was a toddler but she is not forgotten. He would not be here, and neither would I, but for her influence and kindness.
And then there's Uncle Charlie, who built a shearing shed and taught himself to shear when he was in his 80s because he reckoned sheep would be easier to handle than cattle. He had a soldier settlement farm on the Nowa Nowa arm of a river in Gippsland. The farm gradually returned to its natural state as his needs grew less. He used to grow vegetables and graze through his crop, eating a few peas here, a carrot there. That was lunch until he married wife number three, having been a widower twice. He said that would stop the widows in the area from fighting over him. He had a twinkle in his eye even at 80. Charlie had been a prisoner of war on the Burma Railway. The first time I stayed overnight at his house he warned me not to be frightened by strange noises. It would just be him having nightmares. He spoke little about what caused them, simply saying in the dark all men are the same. The guards in the prison camp were fathers and husbands and missed their homes and many cried just as the prisoners did. In the dark.
Uncle Charlie said life went in cycles. There were times when people didn't want children and people treated each other badly but those times passed and the good in them returned.
He used to say God knew what he was doing when he made the young of every species because they always looked cute, no matter what they would grow up to be. He said it was good that humans didn't start life as teenagers or the human race would have ended by now. But young dogs and cats, young elephants, young humans always look so appealing. That's the key to survival.
Survival of the cutest, not the fittest. Doesn't have quite the ring of Darwin's theory but I think Charlie had something there.
They live on, the tellers of tales.