birthday poems for cousins

There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960



The winds and waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators. ~Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire



I not only bow to the inevitable; I am fortified by it. ~Thornton Wilder



As we struggle to make sense of things, life looks on in repose. ~Author Unknown



Many hands make light work. ~John Heywood



Masha: "I am in mourning for my life."



Why do children want to grow up? Because they experience their lives as constrained by immaturity and perceive adulthood as a condition of greater freedom and opportunity. But what is there today, in America, that very poor and very rich adolescents want to do but cannot do? Not much: they can "do" drugs, "have" sex, "make" babies, and "get" money (from their parents, crime, or the State). For such adolescents, adulthood becomes synonymous with responsibility rather than liberty. Is it any surprise that they remain adolescents? ~Thomas Szasz



Anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac. ~Author Unknown



You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax - tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. ~Pearl Williams



Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all. ~Voltaire



As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce. ~Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations



Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. ~Author Unknown



The neurotic feels as though trapped in a gas-filled room where at any moment someone, probably himself, will strike a match. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966



Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It's not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it's when you've had everything to do, and you've done it. ~Lord Acton



Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor. ~Truman Capote



Leave sooner, drive slower, live longer. ~Author Unknown



Sometimes I do a little mental skipping, just to shake things up in my mind. ~Jessi Lane Adams



Forget love - I'd rather fall in chocolate! ~Sandra J. Dykes



There is no saint without a past, and no sinner without a future. ~Shri Haidakhan Babaji



Man embraces in his makeup all the natural orders; he's a squid, a mollusk, a sucker and a buzzard; sometimes he's a cerebrate. ~Martin H. Fischer