There are endless ways to stamp your feet but all that adds is noise.
From The Fears That Bind, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A man stood at the bus shelter on Linden for forty minutes this morning and did not stop moving. He checked the schedule, then checked it again, then walked to the corner to look down the road, then came back and told a woman on the bench that this was unacceptable. She agreed with him. He said it a second time, differently, and she agreed again, and the bus came when it came. I used to think there was a kind of complaint that worked, that if you found the right pitch the thing would give way; I spent a whole winter yelling at a window that had a hawk's reflection in it. There are endless ways to stamp your feet but all that adds is noise. What I cannot decide is whether the woman on the bench was calmer than he was or only quieter, because from the wire those look identical.
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
- Practice temperance before you counsel it.
- Telling you what you want to hear makes me an echo rather than a mirror.
- Two dogs alone have more fun than two dogs and a bone.
- Fight for every inch and you'll rarely move a foot.
- Rarely does all good sense dwell on one side of a fence.
- A cornered animal does not heed wise counsel.