The Velvet Hammer™ -

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Recent Updates

• Todd's amazing speaker intro: sings, stomps and plays the harmonica
• Mistrial - book review
• Voir Dire...as a social gathering via Spreecast
• Dealing with Death Wednesday - the postscript
• Dealing with Death Wednesday - a tirade

Favorite Quotations

• Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

  — Edgar Allan Poe

• There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart.

  — Jane Austen

• Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.

  — Langston Hughes

• Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

  — Stephen Hawking

• Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

  — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

• If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

  — Virginia Woolf

• True eloquence consists in saying all that is required and only what is required.

  — La Rochefoucauld

• If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

  — Desmond Tutu

• Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

  — Abraham Lincoln

• Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

  — Dr. Suess

• If you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!

  — Margaret Thatcher

• Why slap them on the wrist with a feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.

  — Katharine Hepburn

• The soul never thinks without a picture.

   

  — Aristotle

• If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.

  — Woody Allen

• The thing you fear most has no power. Your fear of it is what has the power. Facing the truth really will set you free.

  — Oprah Winfrey

• No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

  — Aesop

• Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

  — Muhammad Ali

• To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

  — William Shakespeare

• How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

  — Anne Frank

• People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.

  — Dalai Lama

• It is better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hand.

  — Apache proverb

• A thought is an idea in transit.

  — Pythagoras

• There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique.

  — Martha Graham

• Of what use is eloquence? 

  He who engages in fluency of words to control men

  often finds himself hated by them.

  — Confucius

• No generalization is wholly true, not even this one.

  — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

• Fall seven times, stand up eight.

  — Old Japanese proverb

• Mine honor is my life;

  both grow in one;

  Take honor from me,

  and my life is done.  

  — William Shakespeare

• How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

  — Annie Dillard

• It is very easy to break down something. You can take a stone and throw it through that window; that is easy. Try fixing it, and that takes longer. It takes longer to help someone who has been broken. That’s the work you’re doing.

  — Desmond Tutu

• I had rather attempt something great and fail, than to attempt nothing at all and succeed.

  — Robert Schuller

• The time is always right to do what is right.

  — Martin Luther King Jr.

• I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

  — Bill Cosby

• Learn to laugh; it is a discipline to be mastered.  Let go of the everlasting burden of always needing to sound profound.

  — Richard J. Foster

• Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world.  So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.

   

  — Helen Keller

• Imagination is more important than knowledge.  Knowledge is limited.  Imagination encircles the world.

  — Albert Einstein

• The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference.  And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

  — Elie Wiesel

• It is high time that the ideal of success should be replaced by the ideal of service.

  — Albert Einstein

• It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world.

  — Alexander Solzhenitsyn

• To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

  — Simone Weil

• We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

  — Jimmy Carter

• Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

  — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

• The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.

  — Flannery O'Connor

• An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

  — Mahatma Ghandi

• He who keeps his eye on results cannot give himself wholeheartedly to his task, however simple or complex that task may be.

  — Howard Thurman

• The moment that justice must be paid for by the victim of injustice it becomes itself injustice.

  — Benjamin Tucker

• You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefullness, But still, like air, I'll rise.

  — Maya Angelou

• Words are chameleons, which reflect the color of their environment.

  — Judge Learned Hand

• And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.

  — Erica Jong

• I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees. 

  — Ludacris

• The right of trial by jury shall be preserved.

  — 7th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

• Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

  — Gertrude Stein

• It is harder to crack a prejudice than an atom.

  — Albert Einstein

• If thou faint in the day of adversity thy strength is small.  ~ Proverbs 24:10

  — Proverbs 24:10

• Remember that lost time does not return.

  — Thomas á Kempis

• To straighten the crooked you must first do a harder thing – straighten yourself.

  — Buddha

Favorite Blogs

• Alysha Greig's Blog
• Cristina Greig's Blog
• Noelle Greig's Blog