What's the wisest thing anyone's ever said to you?

In My Humble Opinion
21

From a friend who was watching me at the coffee time after a choir rehearsal. My two young (as in preschool) kids were hanging all over me when I was trying to talk and eat my cake. My son tried, for the fourth time, to climb up in my lap…he’d been up and down three times in three minutes and I was exasperated that he wanted to give me one more hug. So I picked him off my lap and set him on the floor to play with his sister. My friend, whose boys were in their teens, turned to me and said, “Don’t ever turn your child away when they want a hug. The day will come all too soon where you will be desperate for one and they won’t let you hug them.”

She’s the same friend that scolded me after a concert to “Always wear lipstick during a performance”. And she was right…I was the only one not wearing lipstick, or even makeup, and I didn’t look professional at all. Boy, now that I think of it, she was always yelling at me! LOL

The other piece of advice I always try to remember is that “The child that needs the love most is the one that “deserves” it the least”.

Oh, and my minister told me once “Don’t refuse help out of pride when it is offered, because you are denying someone else the chance to do a good deed.” That one was particularly hard to remember the year the church gave me a huge carload of food for Thanksgiving, in the mistaken belief that we were in desperate straits. I was terribly embarrassed…we were poor, but not starving that year. Even though I could have set all the food aside for the future, I decided to pass their good deed on to someone who really WAS starving that year. So their misplaced good deed enabled me to do one for someone else.

22

When I was thirty a woman whom I wasn’t close to suddenly said to me, “Learn to love women and they will teach you how to love yourself.”

What?

She could see something which I couldn’t and it turned out to be an excellent piece of advice once I’d bumped my head up against the wall a few more times.

And this, again from a person who was a casual acquaintance: “Try to remember that you are writing your life without an eraser.”

Maybe it’s easier to take advice from people who aren’t so close to us?

23

Dunno if it’s the “wisest”, but one of my favorites…

Some years ago I lived for a few months in a youth hostel in Europe. I had a job at a local hotel, and something had happened at the job that I was upset and worried about. The details don’t matter; the basic fact was that I was going to have to go have a potentially difficult conversation with my boss.

Anyways, I’d made friends with a French guy named Philippe, who was also living in the hostel for a while. We were sitting on the bunk beds in the dorm talking, and I was going on for some minutes about my tough work situation, how nervous I was to talk to my boss, etc. He listened in silence while I fretted, till finally I said, “So what should I do, Philippe?!”

He thought for a moment, stuck out his chin, gave one of those Gallic shrugs, put his hand on my shoulder, and - in the most French of French accents - says to me, “…Courage!” And that was that.

And he was right: yes, it was a difficult situation, but I’d just have to screw up my courage and do it. Simple as that. Not worth fretting and fussing over. Somehow, though, that simple quality of courage had eluded me under all the worry and analysis. At the time it struck me as such simple, elegant, French, and (though I hate to throw the word around) manly advice. Ever since, if I’ve got something tough to do, I just try to hear Philippe saying “Courage!” and just go forth and do it.

(Of course, in retrospect, it may be that Philippe’s English wasn’t good enough to say much more, that he’d had difficulty following me, or that he was simple bored at hearing my moaning on. But hey, I still got some good advice out of it either way! :slight_smile: )

24

After talking to a friend about some crap I went through with a past friend, he said, “you really don’t deserve that experience.” Made me realize I put up with stuff I didn’t have to.

25

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

  • If you can’t be brave, fake it.

  • If you would be pissed if someone did that to your friend, you should be pissed if someone did that to you (relationships).

Two read, one heard from my own mouth while advising a friend and then realizing I needed to take my own advice.

26

From dad

God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason!

Always use an imperial spanner on an imperial nut.

27

Never make a man your priority when he only makes you an option.

28

From my best friend’s (single) mom, when I was floundering my sophomore year in college,

“Winners do what they have to do; losers do what they want to do.”

Of course it’s a balance, but I knew what she meant, and it’s stuck with me for over a decade now…

29

A sergeant of mine when I was in tech school, when we were complaining about some thing we had all been mandated to take part in:

“You have the free will to make any choice you like, no matter what anybody else says. You just have to deal with the rewards or consequences for those choices.”

Actually got this from a movie, but it’s always true:

“Pain just means you’re still alive.”

And two pieces of advice I like to give, depending on the situation:

“Lean into it.” When times are hard, sometimes you just have to press on until it’s done.

“Just roll with it.” Kind of the inverse of the above: When things happen that are beyond your control, you just have to be flexible enough to take it in stride and keep moving. No point in letting it grind you down by getting wrapped around the wheel about it.

30

From my Grandfather:

“If a person accuses you of something that is completely outside your character, something you would never think - much less do - in a million years, then they are telling you something about their own character.”

also: “Charming is a verb. Charming is what Con-men do for a living. If a man is charming you, RUN!”

From my Dad: (on the subject of surviving West Point, but it’s pretty good applied to life in general)

“Never miss a chance to: Take a pee, get some sleep, or keep your mouth shut.”

An old boss:

"The secret to life is knowing what to do next, the secret to happiness is doing it.

31

A former bf, on our first night together:

There’s nothing wrong with you that isn’t correctable.

32

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

My great-aunt was fond of that statement. I always liked it too. Don’t woolgather.

From an old, dear friend regarding some tragic events lately (after much tea and sympathy) told me:

“Honey, it will either work out, or it won’t. Either way, you’ll be fine.”

33

From my grandmother:

“Good looking people get their friends for free.”

34

When I was just starting a new job another newbie gave me some great advice that has served me well. He said “If someone is trying to teach you something, even if you already know how to do it, just listen. When they see you doing it right they’ll think you’re a fast learner, they’ll feel good about being such a great teacher, and they just might have a tip about what you’re doing that’s worth knowing.” Damn good advice.

35

Don’t believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.

36

Mine’s similar (though I don’t remember who actually said it):

“The only thing you have to do is die.”

It was quite freeing, really.

37

This is the total sermon, word for word, from an 11:00 High Mass in a Catholic Church in 1956.

“If you are busy doing good, you do not have time to do bad.”

38

“Of what importance is it what time you get up in the morning if you sleepwalk all day?”

“A nut has a sweet kernel but a date a worthless stone.”

39

The underlined part is what’s important. The factory manager, furious because my immediate boss had chewed me a new one (including threats to have me fired) for following his own instructions on work he didn’t want to do: “If you want the job done your way, you have to do it yourself; if you give it to someone else, that means accepting they will not do it your way. When I delegate, I delegate!” Then she walked into his office and proceeded to ream him about half a dozen new ones.
A coworker at the same factory: “whatever work I happen to be doing, I do it to the best of my ability, not because it’s important work or whatever, but because it’s me doing it and I. Do. Good. Work.”

40

I have two.

From my mum:

“Sometimes honey, you just have to stand there and hurt”.

Might sounds a bit depressing, but it’s helped me through a lot of things. Sometimes you just have to live through the pain.

And from my grandad, when I was a painfully self-conscious teen:

“What the hell makes you think anyone else is even interested in you? Most people are far too wrapped up in themselves to even notice anyone else.”

Yeah, my family were practicing tough love before it was even heard of as a concept!