Bon Mots/Definitions

Bon Mots


When you get to the end of your rope time a knot and hang on!

The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way you use them.

Have you ever noticed people who know where they are going -- always seem to get there?

True contentment is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. -- G.K.Chesterton

Perhaps there is nothing to figure out after all; perhaps we only need to wake up. -- Thomas Merton

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting.  -- H.L. Mencken

Only one link in the chain to destiny can be handled at a time. -- Sir Winston Churchill

A good edge is good for nothing, if it has nothing to cut.  -- Thomas Fuller, M.D.

The object of teaching a child is to enable him to get along without his teacher. -- Elbert Hubbard

Great is the art of beginning, but greater the art is of ending. -- Longfellow.

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at. -- Goethe

Life is not any use at all unless we find a laugh here and there.  -- James Stephens

To be always ready, a man must be able to cut a knot, for not everything can be untied. -- Henri Frederic Amiel

Space isn't remote at all.  It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards. -- Sir Fred Hoyle

High Society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do. -- Woodrow Wilson

Knowledge is of two kinds; we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. -- Samuel Johnson

One unable to dance blames the unevenness of the floor. -- Malaysian proverb

Any party which takes credit for the rain must not be surprised if its opponents blame it for the drought.  Dwight D. Morrow

Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love and to put its trust in life! -- Joseph Conrad

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it! -- Publilius Syrus

He who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. -- Thomas Jefferson

Learn to read your own mind, and everything else will come by itself. -- Paul Valery

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness of one another. -- Eustace Budgell

Speeches are like steer horns -- a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between. -- Source Unknown

Tis not knowing much, but what is useful, that makes a wise man. -- Thomas Fuller, M.D.

A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. -- Baltasar Gracian

Some people think football is a matter of life and death.  I can assure you it is much more serious than that.  Bill Shankly

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.  H.L. Mencken

You cannot write in the chimney with charcoal.  -- Russian Proverb

There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must not let go of manifest truths because we cannot answer all the questions about them. -- Jeremy Collier

The greatest problem about old age is the fear that it may go on too long.  A.P. Taylor

Being an Old Maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle. -- Edna Ferber

Rather know nothing than half-know much. -- Nietzsche

Fortune pays you sometimes for the intensity of her favors by the shortness of their duration.  She soon tires of carrying anyone long on her shoulders.  Baltasar Gracian

Speaking personally, I have found the happiness of parenthood greater than any other I have experienced.  Bertrand Russell

Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle aged men. -- Kin Hubbard

How few are our real wants and how easy is it to satisfy them!  Our imaginary ones are boundless and insatiable.  J.H. Hare and A.W. Hare.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous. -- Confucius

The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity.  -- Henry Ford

Economy is half the battle of life; it is not so hard to earn money as to spend it well. -- Spurgeon.

Every path has its puddle. -- English Proverb

Everyone ought to do two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice. -- William James

Nothing is ever gained by winning an argument and losing a customer. -- Norton

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. -- Aldous Huxley

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise. -- Montesquieu

Bad news travels fast and far. -- Plutarch

The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right.  Edward C. Simmons.

Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.  Aesop

Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it.  -- James Russell Lowell

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but still 'tis nonsense. -- Ben Franklin

The secret of success is constancy to purpose. -- Benjamin Disraeli

All things come to him who waits -- provided he knows what he is waiting for.  -- Woodrow Wilson

The man who can keep a secret may be wise, but he is not half as wise as the man with no secrets to keep.  -- Edgar Watson Howe

The history of the world is the record of a man in quest of his bread and butter.  H.W. Van Loon

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will have the patience to do difficult things easily.  Schiller

In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and the undertake it.  -- Epictetus

Iman

He who neglects to drink of the always tell students that it is what you learn after you know it all that counts.  -- Harry Truman

To be president of the U.S. is to be lonely, very lonely, at times of great decisions. -- Harry Tru spring of experience is likely to die of thirst in the desert of ignorance.  -- Ling Po

Bread is the warmest, kindest of words.  Write it always with a capital letter, like your own name.  -- Russian Cafe Sign

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently. -- Anatole France

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. -- Theodore Roosevelt.

I have imagination, and nothing that is real is alien to me.  -- George Santayana

Everyone's allowed an occasional failure -- except the skydiver, of course. -- Unknown.

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey. -- Mark Twain

Few things are quite so embarrassing as watching your boss do something you just said couldn't be done.  -- Unknown.

luxury resort is a place with tropical plants outside and outstretched palms inside. -- Unknown

politician is a man who divides his time between running for office and running for cover. -- Anonymous

Creative minds always have been know to survive any kind of bad training. -- Anna Freud

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.  -- Berthold Auerbach

In America any boy may become president, and I suppose that's the risk he takes.  -- Adali E. Stevenson

"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
There's a porpoise close behind us, and he'd treading on my tail. -- Lewis Carroll

One starts an action simply because one must do something.  -- T.S. Eliot

Just about the time you think you can make both ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Unknown

Don't try to make children grow up like you, or they may do it. -- Russell Baker

To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.  -- Eric Hoffer

I began at the top and I've been working my way down ever since. -- Orson Welles

Many a man owes his success to his first wife -- and he second wife to his success. -- Jim Backus

Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. -- Shakespeare

politician is a man who approaches every question with an open mouth.  -- Adlai E. Stevenson

We ride through life on the beast within us.  Beat the animal, but you can't make it think.  -- Luigi Pirandello

Despite inflation, a penny is still a fair price for the thoughts of many people. -- Unknown

Knowledge is power.  -- Francis Bacon

He who is being carried does not realize how far the town is.  -- Nigerian proverb

When a man says it's a silly childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at.  -- Don Epperson

The town was so dull that when the tide went out, it refused to come back. -- Fred Allen

I used to have all the answers; now I don't even know what the questions are. -- Eileen Mason

When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion.  -- Ethiopian proverb

The surest way for a pedestrian to live longer nowadays is to buy himself a car.  O. A. Battista

Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are disgraced by the inferior. -- George Bernard Shaw

Definitions


Baby: A new acorn on the family tree.

Cemetery: (n) A marble orchard not to be taken for granite.

Cussin: what genealogists do when they can't find one.FLOOR: (n) The place for storing your priceless genealogy records.

Genealogists: Time unravelers.

Genealogist: One always in search of a good dead man!

Genealogy: People collecting people!

Genealogy: A hay stack full of needles. It's the threads I need.

Genealogy: Looking for needles in haystacks.

Genealogy: Collecting dead relatives and sometimes a live cousin!

Genealogy: The marriage of a jigsaw puzzle to a dungeon & dragons game.

Genealogy: Tracing descent from someone who didn't.

Genealogy: Tracing yourself back to better people.

Genealogy: Where you confuse the dead and irritate the living.

Documentation: the worst part of genealogy.

Documentation: the hardest part of genealogy.

Family history: a quilt work of lives.

Kinship: it`s all relative!

RELATIVES: people who come to dinner who aren't friends.

Puritanism: the fear that someone somewhere is happy.

Research: What I'm doing, when I don't know what I'm doing.