The problem with positive thinking is that somebody else defines positive.
From Leaving No Stone Unthrown, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A woman on the bench by the library read a book with a sun on the cover and underlined things in it with a pen. I watched over her shoulder from the dogwood for most of an hour, which is rude, and I did it anyway. For years I thought the trouble with that sort of book was the cheerfulness, that it asked too much brightness out of a gray afternoon. Watching her, I decided I had the complaint wrong. The problem with positive thinking is that somebody else defines positive; the man who wrote the sun on the cover had never met her, did not know what she had lost in March, and still got to say which of her thoughts were the good ones. She underlined a sentence, sat with it, then crossed the underline out.
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
- We expect life to treat us all the same though we each ask for something different.
- Not every light lights the way home.
- Those who are lost try hardest to get others to follow.
- Most men want what most men want.
- An angry leader commands your attention but not your respect.
- A single branch on every tree reaches closest to the sky.