Rivers

Some people drift along like a cork on a river, feeling that they cannot do anything except drift, moment to moment. This is an attitude of mind. Everyone can be constructive even in tiny ways.
- Edward de Bono

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid.
- Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Upon those who step into the same rivers different and ever different waters flow down.
- Heraclitus of Ephesus

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.
- Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, 1894 - 1971

Swimming for his life, a man does not see much of the country through which the river winds.
- William Ewart Gladstone, 1809 - 1898

Admit it, sport-utility-vehicle owners! It's shaped a little differently, but it's a station wagon! And you do not drive it across rivers! You drive it across the Wal-Mart parking lot!
- Dave Barry

Fashion

Fashion can be bought, style one must possess.
- Edna Woolman Chase

Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity; and fashion will drive them to acquire any custom.
- George Bernard Shaw, 1856 - 1950

Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
- George Santayana, 1863 - 1921

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
- Lillian Hellman, 1905 - 1984

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.
- Quentin Crisp, 1908 - 1999

The principle of fashion is ... the principle of the kaleidoscope. A new year can only bring us a new combination of the same elements; and about once in so often we go back and begin again.
- Katherine F. Gerould

Slow

These people who are always briskly doing something and as busy as waltzing mice, they have little, sharp, staccato ideas, such as: I see where I can make an annual cut of $3.47 in my meat budget. But they have no slow, big ideas.
- Brenda Ueland, 1891 - 1985

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
- Chinese proverb

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast, you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
- Eddie Cantor, 1892 - 1964

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible.
- Edward Teller, 1908 - 2003

He who is slowest in making a promise is most faithful in its performance.
- Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712 - 1778

Maybe I'm lucky to be going so slowly, because I may be going in the wrong direction.
- Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

Pronunciation

I was the kind nobody thought could make it. I had a funny Boston accent. I couldn't pronounce my R's. I wasn't a beauty.
- Barbara Walters

They spell it da Vinci and pronounce it da Vinchy. Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

My father's name, when he came to America, was Kassell. At Ellis Island, the registrars changed it to Cohen. I honored my father's name by changing it back to its original pronunciation.
- Howard Cosell

Demosthenes overcame and rendered more distinct his inarticulate and stammering pronunciation by speaking with pebbles in his mouth.
- Plutarch, 46 - 119

I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain't spelled.
- Josh Billings, 1818 - 1885

The golden rule when reading the menu is, if you cannot pronounce it, you cannot afford it.
- Frank Muir, 1920 - 1998

Wires

A woman's dress should be like a barbed-wire fence: serving its purpose without obstructing the view.
- Sophia Loren

In my day a reporter who took an assignment was wholly on his own until he got back to the office, and even then he was little molested until his copy was turned in at the desk; today he tends to become only a homunculus at the end of a telephone wire, and the reduction of his observations to prose is commonly farmed out to literary castrati who never leave the office, and hence never feel the wind of the world in their faces or see anything with their own eyes.
- Henry Lewis Mencken, 1880 - 1956

[Edward R. Murrow] believed that ... there had to be a message to start with, that in the beginning was the Word. Otherwise, he said, "all you have is a lot of wires and lights in a box."
- Alexander Kendrick

We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.
- Henry David Thoreau, 1817 - 1862

With electricity we were wired into a new world, for electricity brought the radio, a "crystal set" and with enough ingenuity, one could tickle the crystal with a cat's whisker and pick up anything.
- Theodore H. White, 1915 - 1986

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none.
- Doug Larson

Escape

All the best stories are but one story in reality - the story of escape. It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
- Arthur Christopher Benson

Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.
- Ayn Rand, 1905 - 1982

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
- Brooks Atkinson

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.
- Chinese proverb

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908 - 1973

Dreams, ideas, and plans not only are an escape, they give me purpose, a reason to hang on.
- Steven Patrick Callahan

Water

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton, 1874 - 1936

The cure for anything is salt water; sweat, tears, or the sea.
- Isak Dinesen, pen name of Karen Blixen, 1885 - 1962

The highest goodness is like water. Water benefits all things and does not compete. It stays in the lowly places which others despise. Therefore it is near The Eternal.
- Lao-Tzu

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
- Leonardo da Vinci, 1452 - 1519

If there is Magic on this planet, it is contained in water.
- Loren Eiseley, 1907 - 1977

Women are like tea bags, You never know how strong they really are until you put them in hot water.
- Nancy Reagan

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.
- Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man.
- Henry David Thoreau

Filthy water cannot be washed.
- African Proverb

It is wise to bring some water, when one goes out to look for water
- Arab Proverb

Man is a complex being; he makes deserts bloom and lakes die.
- Gil Stern

Nothing on earth is so weak and yielding as water, but for breaking down the firm and strong it has no equal.
- Lao-Tsze

The noblest of the elements is water
- Pindar, 476 B.C.

When you drink the water, remember the spring.
- Chinese Proverb

Don't empty the water jar until the rain falls.
- Philippine proverb

March

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.
- Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931)

Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will.
- Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881

Don't ever become a pessimist ... A pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun - and neither can stop the march of events.
- Robert A. Heinlein, 1907 - 1988

This, then, is the test we must set for ourselves; not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.
- Hubert H. Humphrey, 1911 - 1978

The truth is on the march and nothing will stop it.
- Emile Zola, 1840 - 1902

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

Mr Rogers

All I know to do is to light the candle that has been given to me.

I love whimsy, don’t you? If you’re going to be working for children, you need to do your best not to lose your childlikeness ... it's wonderful to be able to just be yourself.

The world is not always a kind place. That's something all children learn for themselves, whether we want them to or not, but it's something they really need our help to understand.

There's a generous current in the American spirit. And if we can simply give voice to that once in a while, I think it's a good message.

We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.

I feel the greatest gift we can give to anybody is the gift of our honest self

You know, you don't have to look like everybody else to be acceptable and to feel acceptable

I have a very modulated way of dealing with my anger. I have always tried to understand the other person and invariably I've discovered that somebody who rubs you the wrong way has been rubbed the wrong way many times.

Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.

What makes the difference between wishing and realizing our wishes? Lots of things, and it may take months or years for wish to come true, but it's far more likely to happen when you care so much about a wish that you'll do all you can to make it happen.

How sad it is that we give up on people who are just like us.

Knowing that we can be loved exactly as we are gives us all the best opportunity for growing into the healthiest of people.
- All from Fred McFeely Rogers, 1928 - 2003

About:
Fred McFeely Rogers was born at Latrobe, Pennsylvania on 20 Mar in 1928. His bachelor's degree from Rollins College was in musical composition, but he went directly into television. He was hired by WQED Pittsburgh when that educational station wasn't yet on the air and developed their early children's programs. After work he went to seminary and was ordained a Presbyterian minister. He composed over 200 songs and wrote several books for children and their parents. For more than thirty years, Mr Rogers walked onto the set of Mr Rogers' Neighborhood, set aside his sport coat and put on a red cardigan sweater, and talked straight to America's kids.