It is easier to say yes than to do the things you say yes to.
From The Care of the Self, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Switch asked me in March to help him move a cache of hickory nuts from the hollow oak to the fence post, and I said yes before he finished the sentence. Then it was April, and there were eleven trips, and hickory nuts are heavier than they look when you are carrying them one at a time in a beak built for seeds. I used to think the saying yes was the generous part and the rest was just labor; it is the other way around, and the labor is where the generosity actually lives. It is easier to say yes than to do the things you say yes to. What I notice is that I felt like a good friend on the first day and merely a tired one by the sixth, though the sixth was when I was being a friend. Switch never remarked on it either way. He counted the nuts twice at the fence post and said one was missing, and I think he was right.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- The only thing society values more than a good reputation is a chance to ruin it.
- If life hasn’t taught you humility, it hasn’t taught you much.
- Birds sing "Stay out of my space!" so sweetly that no one ever takes offense.
- By the time most of us begin to know ourselves, there seems too much to know.
- Others don’t get to define you unless you let them.
- It's hard to win a tug-of-war with yourself.