Waiting for someone else to change gives you a reason not to.
From Lonely in a Crowd, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The woman on the corner bench has been feeding the pigeons out of the same paper bag for three winters, and this morning she said again that she would stop when her sister apologized. I used to think that sort of thing was patience. For years I admired it, the way a man will hold a position in weather because somebody owes him a word first. Then Switch spent the whole afternoon refusing to come down from the maple until the jay left, and the jay had no plans, and the light went anyway. Waiting for someone else to change gives you a reason not to. What I cannot work out is whether she knows that, and keeps the bag full on purpose.
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
- Animals know when to sniff and when to bristle.
- The world is full of love and lonely people.
- You can rob a person's dignity, but you can't spend it on yourself.
- Dogs possess a skill lacking in their masters, the ability to overlook human shortcomings.
- Dog is man's best friend, which says more for dog than man.
- As there is one sun, there is one river that courses all our veins.