These books just won’t leave me alone. This passage, from one of the books I read earlier this fall, is just a great way to go about life:

Living with my mother is like living with Winnie the Pooh. She has many adventures, getting herself into and out of trouble guilelessly, and all of these adventures are accompanied by a few lines of gentle philosophy. There’s a little bit more to learn every time you get your head stuck in a pot if you’re my mother.

(from All my Puny Sorrows).

My favorite line from Winnie the Pooh remains:

Eeyore started at himself in the river.

Pathetic, he thought.

“Oh, for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us Gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given. ” (Lattimore)

“Look you now, how ready mortals are to blame the gods. It is from us, they say, that evils come, but they even of themselves, through their own blind folly, have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.” (Murray)

“See now, how men lay blame upon us gods for what is after all nothing but their own folly.”

“This is absurd, that mortals blame the gods! They say we cause their suffering, but they themselves increase it by folly.” (Wilson)

1:32-34