Great Throughts Treasury

"Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth."

"Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain."

"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed."

"Next to hot chicken soup, a tattoo of an anchor on your chest, and penicillin, I consider a honeymoon one of the most overrated events in the world."

"Never order food in excess of your body weight."

"No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick."

"No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday."

"Not only can it think, but it can reason and compromise," said the Creator."

"Oh, quit being such a Pollyanna."

"Of the little less than a million eligibles roaming around, 5 percent don't know their sign and don't even care. Another 5 percent are tied to their mothers by a food fixation. That leaves only 20 percent who are searching for a girl who will pick up their clothes, run their baths, burn her fingers shelling their three-minute eggs, run their errands, bear them a child every year, look like a fashion model, tend their needs when they are sick, and hold down a full-time job outside the home to make payments on their boat."

"On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings."

"One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and say. 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.""

"One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone."

"Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time."

"One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child's name and how old he or she is."

"Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I'm taking with me when I go."

"One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip."

"People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman."

"Shopping is a woman thing. It's a contact sport like football. Women enjoy the scrimmage, the noisy crowds, the danger of being trampled to death, and the ecstasy of the purchase."

"Skiing: I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill"

"Somberly, God said, "I didn't put it there.”"

"Phrases and their actual meanings: My teacher has never liked me. Expect a phone call before lunch from the teacher informing you that your child has been launching hot dogs by compressing them inside a small Thermos and then removing the lid quickly."

"People shop for a bathing suit with more care than they do a husband or wife. The rules are the same. Look for something you'll feel comfortable wearing. Allow for room to grow."

"Raising a family wasn't something I put on my resumé, but I have to ask myself, would I apply for the same job again?"

"Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the "Titanic" who waved off the dessert cart."

"Sex is only a three-letter word so how can it be dirty?"

"Sexually active coat hangers are at their peak when they are in a small closet. We once lived in an apartment with a closet so small it couldn't support a rod... just two nails. Within a week (the shortest gestation in the history of coat hangers) we had thirty-seven of those little suckers."

"She's as funny as a toothache"

"Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead."

"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."

"Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago."

"Some say our national pastime is baseball. Not me. It's gossip."

"Sometimes I can't figure designers out. It's as if they flunked human anatomy."

"Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people's children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it."

"The age of your children is a key factor in how quickly you are served in a restaurant. We once had a waiter in Canada who said, Could I get you your check? and we answered, How about the menu first?"

"The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way.""

"The angel circled the model of a mother very slowly. "It's too soft," she sighed."

"That's on the standard model?" asked the angel. God nodded."

"The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together."

"The art of never making a mistake is crucial to motherhood. To be effective and to gain the respect she needs to function, a other must have her children believe she has never engaged in sex, never made a bad decision, never caused her own mother a moment's anxiety, and was never a child."

"The bad times I can handle. It's the good times that drive me crazy. When is the other shoe going to drop?"

"The grass is always greener on the other side."

"There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, "Yes, I've got dreams, of course, I've got dreams." Then they put the box away and bring it out once in a while to look in it, and yep, they're still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, "How good or how bad am I?" That's where courage comes in."

"The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with ONLY a loaf of bread are three billion to one."

"The grass is always greener over the septic tank."

"The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again."

"The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I've ever seen that I didn't have to clean."

"The words of young Ted Kennedy, Jr., who lost his leg to cancer. People are taught we should look perfect, he said. I wondered who would ever go out with a kid with one leg."

"There is a rumor that seven states are considering overpruning as a cause for divorce, second only to incompatibility and adultery. I hope our state is one of them. No judge would dare deny me freedom after he heard the story of my privet hedge."

"There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. And how do you know laughter if there is no pain to compare it with?"