Harry (no period after the) S Truman once said “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
First. Let’s get the no period thing out of the way. It has always bugged me, so I need to shine some light on this. Apparently, Truman once told reports that there should be no period after the S in his name because it did not stand for anything. The S was a compromise between two ancestral names. But these days, most style editors of the English Language suggest that there should be a period. The “sticklers” for this — those people who make their lives of grammatical correctness — have their underwear all in a bunch over this controversy. His Presidential Library, and most others employ the period. That’s a lot of hoo-ha over a little dot. On a page. About a dead guy’s non-middle name.
Anyway, Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”
Leave it to a man to say this.
It should be more like, “If you are making the soup or baking the bread, get out of the kitchen. You are in the way.”
At least, if I were rewriting the book of quotes, that is how I’d mark that one during editing.
There are a lot of quotes I would rewrite. Most are quite endearing, but they don’t hold water for me, sometimes.
Like the Dr. Seuss quote that is so very popular. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” Of course, that is all very fine and good in theory. But I think it is totally okay to cry. Especially when you are empty and hurting. And if someone, or something, is gone, and it makes you sad, you should cry if you want. Sure, there is the other part of me that gives thanks that the person or the thing ever happened in the first place. But once it is finished, it can make your heart break. It is okay to cry that it is over. I think.
Here is another. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” by Bernard M. Baruch. A lot of different people have ripped this one off, but I think it is his, originally.
Again, in theory this is great. Superb. But. Sometimes discretion is advised. Trust me, a homosexual woman in a small town, where the good old boys roam. I probably shouldn’t have just said that. Because sometimes people do mean things. They will harm you, or yours, because you are different from them. So those who mind DO matter, if they intend to cast harm. We shouldn’t have to fear others, but it is a cold, hard truth of our world.
How about I lighten things up here with this? “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” ― Alcoholics Anonymous, and too many other sources to list here.
Well, hold the phone. I agree with this one, 100 percent. And I am incredibly guilty of this, at times. Over and over, like a woodpecker, I beat my head against the wood. “Gawd why won’t this tree fall over? Peck at it again Polly, and again, and again! Tree, fall down, already! Peck, peck, peck.” Yet another scene from Crash Kronenberger and the Insanity Scrolls.
These quotes are all over the place really. Far and wide. This. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ― George Eliot. You know, it is noble to think this. Truly splendid. But it isn’t true. Once upon a time, I had dreams of being the first little girl who would grow up to play for the Cincinnati Reds. I think my time card expired on this notion. Before it even got started. I bet a lot of people have missed something that they aspired to, and now, that time is long gone.
The thing with this quote by Eliot though, is that we can move to some other greatness if we want. We might have missed the bus the last time it came through town, but another bus could be on the way.
There may be other paths, right around the bend, if we keep walking. If we have gratitude in our hearts, about who we are, and what we do, and those steps we are taking, we will be shown that life could not possibly be more beautiful than it already is. When we are thankful, we see things in a different light. Maybe not so much as Eliot put it, that things “had never been” — but instead, the things that are miraculously waiting to happen.
You can quote me on that.
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“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Happy Prince and Other Stories
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“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
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