Quotes and sayings to treasure

I spend a lot of time reading mysteries, and though I justify it to myself as training for the mystery-writing career I want to have, another part of me, that Puritanical work ethic part, thinks that it's frittering away time when I should be working. Sometimes, as now, it's a way of putting something between me and an assignment I'm not sure about. But every once in a while, tucked away in a mystery, I find a nugget of wisdom, a saying that's really so good I have to treasure it. I found this one in Aunt Dimity and the Deep Blue Sea, which I just finished on this lazy Saturday afternoon: "Fill each day with acts of grace, but keep a rock handy just in case." I also found in this very British novel a recipe for "Sticky Lemon Cake," which sounds to me a lot like Uncle Bob's mother's lemon cake. But I'll copy it and send it to Megan, who likes lemon desserts.
That got me to thinking about sayings I've found and treasure. One from a Deborah Crombie mystery is from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer: "Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen." It's a marvelously soothing, comforting prayer, and I am particularly struck by the phrase "shield the joyous"--from what? the inevitable disappointment?
I once heard this in a program at my church and carefully wrote it down: "From silly devotions and sour-faced saints, dear Lord deliver us!"
On a much more secular note, there's a Dorothy Parker quote that my friend Jim Lee reeled off to me after someone accused me of behaving badly and without professional grace, when, I thought, they were the ones who had "done me wrong." Dorothy with her infinite insight, wrote, "If the things they say of you be false/Never trouble to deny/ But if the things they say of you be true/Weep and storm and swear they lie."
My mother was noted for her "clipping service." She'd clip all kinds of articles and send them to my brother and me--I suspect we read some, discarded most. But I find myself doing the same thing--clipping suggested activities for my oldest granddaughters, recipes for Megan (particularly lemon), an interview with an author whose book I know someone enjoyed, something about triathlons for Jamie. Sometimes I'm tempted to clip really good liberal political columns for Christian, but I try to restrain myself--and these days he doesn't have time to read them anyway. But here's a saying I'm saving for when Colin, my oldest, turns 40--which is slightly less than two years away. It's a French proverb that says, "Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age."
Today there was an editorial in the paper, by a lay contributor, on hearing loss, how people react to it, how it affects your life. I saw myself--denial, ability to hear but not understand what I was hearing, turning up the TV, etc. The average person waits seven years after initially noticing hearing loss to do anything about it--and I bet I about fit that. The article also stresses that hearing aids never make you hear as you once did, and I want to cut it out for my kids, so they'll understand why I take them out, why I get frustrated, why, even with my "ears" in, I can't always understand them. They probably wouldn't read it.
When I retire, I may open a non-profit clipping service.