TV Quote of the Day (‘The Honeymooners,’ As Ralph Tries Out an Anger-Management Technique on Norton)

Ralph Kramden [played by Jackie Gleason][reciting a mantra he’s been given to deal with his anger and nervousness]: “ ‘Pins and needles, needles and pins, it's a happy man that grins.’ Now, what am I mad about?”

Ed Norton [played by Art Carney]: “They raised the rent 15%.”

[Immediately, a dark cloud crosses Ralph’s face.]—The Honeymooners, Season 1, Episode 24, “Please Leave the Premises,” original air date Mar. 10, 1956, teleplay by Marvin Marx and Walter Stone, directed by Frank Satenstein

Quote of the Day (Jean Craighead George, on the ‘Night Secrets’ of Plants in Midsummer)

“Plants, too, have their night secrets. Moonflowers, water lilies, and many of the cacti of the desert bloom in darkness, to be pollinated by moths and night flies. One plant specially equipped for the darkness is the yellow evening primrose [pictured], found among many country roads throughout the land. It opens just at dusk, so swiftly that it can be seen—and heard! Many an evening in my childhood, as the sun sank, I would sit down in a clump of these flowers to watch. Presently I would hear a noise like popping soap bubbles, and as I looked closer, I could see the swelling buds burst open.”— Children's author Jean Craighead George (1919-2012), “A Midsummer Night,” Audubon Magazine, July/August 1961

Quote of the Day (Arnold Bennett, on ‘The Great Cause of Cheering Us All Up’)

“ ‘What a card!’ said one, laughing joyously. ‘He's a rare 'un, no mistake.’

‘Of course, this'll make him more popular than ever,’ said another. ‘We've never had a man to touch him for that.’

‘And yet,’ demanded Councillor Barlow, ‘what's he done? Has he ever done a day's work in his life? What great cause is he identified with?’

‘He's identified,’ said the speaker, ‘with the great cause of cheering us all up.’”—English man of letters Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), The Card: A Story of Adventure in the Five Towns (1911)

Cherish such people in your life, whenever you encounter them. The supply of them is nowhere near as close as the demand.

Quote of the Day (Henry James, on Bewilderment and the Tales We Tell)

"It seems probable that if we were never bewildered there would never be a story to tell about us; we should partake of the superior nature of the all-knowing immortals whose annals are dreadfully dull so long as flurried humans are not, for the positive relief of bored Olympians, mixed up with them." —American man of letters Henry James (1843-1916), Preface to The Princess Casamassima (1886)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ In Which a Certain Classic Movie Is Sent Up)

“I saw it in the window and I just couldn't resist it!" —“Starlet O'Hara” (played by Carol Burnett), wearing a “dress” she created from pulling down a drape, in “Went With the Wind” (a Gone With the Wind parody), in The Carol Burnett Show, Season 10, Episode 8, original air date November 13, 1976, written by Rick Hawkins and Liz Sage, directed by Dave Powers

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Poet Christina Rossetti, on the Summer Songs of the Skylark and Nightingale)

 

“When a mounting skylark sings
  In the sunlit summer morn,
I know that heaven is up on high,
  And on earth are fields of corn.
 
“But when a nightingale sings
  In the moonlit summer even,
I know not if earth is merely earth,
  Only that heaven is heaven.”— English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Sing-Song”—“mounting skylark,” in The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers (2001)

Quote of the Day (H.G. Wells, on Truth and ‘The Forceps of Our Minds’)

“The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.”—English novelist, historian and futurist H.G. Wells (1866-1946), A Modern Utopia (1905)