TARDINESS
Better late than never, but never late is better!
Better three hours too soon than one minute too late.
—Shakespeare
TAXES
A tax collector has what it takes to take what you’ve got.
—Farmer’s Almanac
Our founding fathers objected to taxation without representation. They should see it today with representation.
It seems a little ridiculous now, but this country was originally founded as a protest against taxation.
Tax his cow,
tax his goat,
Tax his pants,
tax his coat,
Tax his crops,
tax his work,
Tax his tie,
tax his shirt,
Tax his chew,
tax his smoke,
Teach him taxes
are no joke.
Tax his tractor,
tax his mule,
Teach him taxes
are a rule.
Tax his oil,
tax his gas,
Tax his notes,
tax his cash,
Tax him good
and let him know—
After taxes
he has no dough.
If he hollers,
tax him more.
Tax him till
he’s good and sore
Tax his coffin
tax his grave,
Tax the sod
in which he lays.
Put these words
upon his tomb:
“Taxes drove me
to my doom.”
And after he’s gone
he can’t relax,
They’ll still be after
inheritance tax.
TEACHING
Give me a fish and I eat for a day. Teach me to fish and I eat for life.
—Chinese proverb
There is nothing more inspiring than having a mind unfold before you. Let people teach who have a calling. It is never just a job.
—Abraham Kaplan
The object of teaching is to enable those taught to get along without a teacher.
In every man there is something of which I may learn of him, and in that he is my teacher.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence ends.
—Henry Brooks Adams
A teacher in a Denver Sunday school convention wrote on the convention evaluation sheet, “I’ve been learning far more than I can put into practice. Should I continue coming?”
The church is not a gallery for the exhibition of eminent Christians, but a school for the education of imperfect ones.
—Henry Ward Beecher
Those who can do, do.
Those who can’t do, teach.
Those who can’t teach, teach others to teach.
A witty student spoke of the dull and uninteresting teaching of his school teacher. “Why,” he exclaimed, “it took Sir William Ramsay sixteen years to discover helium; the Curies thirty years to find radium; and yet in five minutes she produces tedium.”
A Yale University president some years ago gave this advice to a former president of Ohio State University: “Always be kind to your A and B students. Someday one of them will return to your campus as a good professor. And also be kind to your C students. Someday one of them will return and build you a two-million-dollar science laboratory.”
—Bits & Pieces
I am not willing that this discussion should close without mention of the value of a true teacher. Give me a log, with only a simple bench, Mark Hopkins (president of Williams College) on one end and I on the other, and you may have all the buildings, apparatus, and libraries without him.
—William Bartlett
Thomas Carlyle once received a letter from a young man with these words: “Mr. Carlyle, I wish to be a teacher. Will you tell me the secret of successful teaching?” Carlyle wrote back, “Be what you would have your pupils be. All other teaching is unblessed mockery.”
TEAMWORK
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
—Henry Ford
A group becomes a team when each member is sure enough of himself and his contribution to praise the skills of the others.
—Norman G. Shidle
TEENAGERS
Teen Code
Don’t let your parents down.
They brought you up.
Be humble enough to obey.
You might give orders some day.
Choose companions with care.
You become what they are.
Guard your thoughts.
What you think, you are.
Choose only a date who
would make a good mate.
Be master of your habits,
or they will master you.
Don’t be a showoff when you drive.
Drive with safety and arrive.
Don’t let the crowd pressure you.
Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything.
Father to teenage son: “Mind if I use the car tonight? I’m taking your mother out and I’d like to impress her!”
Notice to teenagers: If you are tired of being hassled by unreasonable parents, now is the time for action! Leave home and pay your own way while you still know everything.
A Gallup survey asked 48,000 teenagers, “What influences teenagers most?” Their answers were these:
Friends
87%
Home
51%
School
45%
Music
41%
Television
32%
Religion
13%
My wife keeps saying that our teenager eats like a horse. I only wish he did. Oats we can afford.
—Bob Orben