Life’s a ball if you know how to bounce it.
From Before We Were Young, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A tennis ball came over the Hollis fence this afternoon and nobody came after it. It sat in the wet leaves by the downspout and the boy who threw it had already gone inside, so the dog spent twenty minutes nosing it uphill and letting it roll back down. For years I thought the trick was to get the thing to stop somewhere useful. The dog never once tried that. Life's a ball if you know how to bounce it, I wrote on the wire, and then sat there wondering whether I meant it or whether I had just liked the sound of a dog chasing something that kept getting away from him on purpose. Switch says the ball is still out there. It rained after dark and I have not gone to look.
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
- Oh, for a family like a flock of noisy birds nesting in a nearby wood!
- There are few heavy hearts that an hour building sand castles won't make lighter.
- Life is suffering, especially when you fall out of your chair laughing at it.
- Children should be seen and not herded.
- The children of dreamers dream.
- Family life is a test by campfire.