Grade: Elementary

#1860. 180 Journal Topics

Reading/Writing, level: Elementary
Posted Fri Jul 21 08:00:46 PDT 2000 by kook/4/MI (emu@ameritech.net).
USA

As requested here are the Journal Topics. I did not create these!! I got them from
some wonderful soul on the Internet somewhere. But I am happy to share :)

kook


1."Like a ten-speed bike, most of us have gears we do not use." -- Charles Schulz
2."Everyone must row with the oars he has." -- English proverb
3."When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion." -- Ethiopian proverb
4."Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body." -- Joseph Addison
5."You can't win unless you know how to lose." -- Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
6."You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Indira Gandhi
7."He that is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else." -- Benjamin Franklin
8."Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly." -- Langston Hughes
9."Don't worry about knowing people; just make yourself worth knowing." -- Unknown
10."If you have much, give your wealth.
If you have little, give your heart." -- Arab proverb
11."An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes." -- Cato the Elder
12."There is a great distance between said and done." -- Puerto Rican proverb
13."Beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing." -- Aesop
14."Make friends before you need them." -- Unknown
15."Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." -- Chinese proverb
16."The way to be nothing is to do nothing." -- Nathaniel Howe
17."If you were another person, would you like to be a friend of yours?" -- Unknown
18."To speak kindly does not hurt the tongue." -- proverb
19."Man was made at the end of the week's work when God was tired." -- Mark Twain
20."Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it." -- Henry Ford
21."Don't judge a book by its cover." -- English proverb
22."The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail and not his tongue." -- Unknown
23."You will never have a friend if you must have one without faults." -- Unknown
24."If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." -- Unknown
25."You can encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated." -- Maya Angelou
26."We haven't failed. We now know a thousand things that won't work, so we are much closer to finding what will." --
Thomas Edison
27."We must be authors of the history of our age." -- Madeleine Albright
28."You can't unscramble eggs." -- John Pierpont Morgan
29."A book is like a garden carried in a pocket." -- Chinese proverb
30."No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate
reasons for having passed through it." -- George Washington Carver
31."We may all have come on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
32."Choose your socks by their color and your friends by their character. Choosing your socks by their character makes no
sense. Choosing your friends by their color is unthinkable."-- Unknown
33."Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration." -- Thomas Edison
34."Each life is like a letter of the alphabet. Alone it can be meaningless. Or it can be part of a great meaning." -- Unknown
35."Your children need your presence more than your presents." -- Jesse Jackson
36."A friend who lies for you may also lie against you." -- Unknown
37."The price of your hat isn't the measure of your brain." -- African-American Saying
38."The wastebasket is a writer's best friend." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
39."We are wiser than we know." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
40."Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world." --
Eleanor Roosevelt
41."People don't get along because they fear each other. People fear each other because they don't know each other. They
don't know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
42."You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
And you are the guy
Who'll decide where you go." -- Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
43."Sloth, like rust, consumes faster than labor wears, while the used key is always bright." -- Benjamin Franklin
44."He that flings dirt at another dirties himself most." -- Thomas Fuller
45."Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." -- John Watson
46."The trouble with life isn't that there is no answer, it's that there are so many answers." -- Ruth Benedict, anthropologist
47."The sleeping fox catches no poultry." -- Benjamin Franklin
48."A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in the experience." -- Elbert Hubbard
49."One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -- Elbert
Hubbard
50."Statistically 100 percent of the shots you don't take don't go in." -- Wayne Gretsky
51."If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays
the best interest." -- Benjamin Franklin
52."Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.. . ." -- Samuel Butler
53."You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do." -- Henry Ford
54."This thing we call 'failure' is not the falling down but the staying down." -- Mary Pickford
55."If you're going to do good work, the work has to scare you." -- Andre Previn
56."We must be careful what we say. No bird resumes its egg." -- Emily Dickinson
57."Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." -- Vernon Saunders Law
58."For all of us today, the battle is in our hands. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad
highways to lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. We must keep going." -- Martin Luther King Jr.
59."Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out of it." -- W.C. Handy
60."To err is human, to forgive is divine." -- Alexander Pope
61."A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." --
Bernard Meltzer
62."Truth may be stretched but cannot be broken.
It always gets above falsehood as oil does above water." -- Miguel de Cervantes
63."Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth
a tiny ripple of hope and, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a
current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." -- Robert F. Kennedy
64."My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it." -- Chuang-tzu
65."Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver, the other gold." -- Anonymous
66."Not failure, but low aim, is crime." -- James Russell Lowell
67."Wherever you are, it is your own friends who make your world." -- William James
68."The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." -- William James
69."The main thing is to care. Care very hard, even if it is only a game you are playing." -- Billie Jean King
70."What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." [set dash Unknown
71."Life is too short to be small." -- Benjamin Disraeli
72."The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning." -- Ivy Baker Priest
73."The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball -- the further I am rolled the
more I gain." -- Susan B. Anthony
74."The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship." -- William Blake
75."[I]t is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling -- and indeed healthy -- to ask why
you have been given so much." -- Condoleeza Rice
76."You have to be true to yourself, but you have to be true to your best self, not to the self that secretly thinks you are better
than other people." -- Stephen Gaskin
77."He who opens a school door, closes a prison." -- Victor Hugo
78."Even monkeys fall out of trees." -- Japanese proverb
79."To the uneducated, an A is just three sticks." -- A. A. Milne
80."Things turn out the best for people who make the best of the way things turn out." -- John Wooden
81."Children act in the village as they have learned at home." -- Swedish proverb
82."The more he cast away, the more he had." -- John Bunyan
83."Eyes of youth have sharp sight but commonly not so deep as those of elder age." -- Elizabeth I
84."Genius without education is like silver in the mine." -- Benjamin Franklin
85."If we were meant to talk more than listen, we would have two mouths and one ear." -- Mark Twain
86."The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls and looking like
hard work." -- Thomas Edison
87."Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works
as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write." -- William Faulkner
88."Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing." -- Robert Benchley
89."Talent is like electricity -- we do not understand electricity. We use it." -- Maya Angelou
90."If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap, than his neighbor, though he build his
house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
91."There's a great power in words, if you don't hitch too many of them together." -- Josh Billings
92."He who will not economize will have to agonize." -- Confucius
93."Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
94."If you haven't got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble." -- Bob Hope
95."The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up." -- Mark Twain
96."A long dispute means both parties are wrong." -- Voltaire
97."Behind every able man, there are always other able men." -- Chinese proverb
98."Talk does not cook rice." -- Chinese proverb
99."The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones." -- W.
Somerset Maugham
100."When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him." -- Franklin D.
Roosevelt
101."Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed." -- Josh Billings
102."Have more than thou showest, speak less than thou knowest. -- William Shakespeare
103."A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds." -- Mother Goose
104."The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being in the right." -- Lord Hailsham
105."Every man is the architect of his own fortune." -- Sallust
106."Some books are to be tasted; others swallowed; and some to be chewed and digested." -- Francis Bacon
107."When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them." -- Confucius
108."Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech that you will ever regret." -- Ambrose Bierce
109."So you see!
There's no end
To the things you might know,
Depending how far beyond Zebra you go." -- Dr. Seuss, On Beyond Zebra
110."Every artist was first an amateur." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
111."A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." -- Lao-Tze
112."If you don't know where you want to go, any road will take you there." -- African-American proverb
113."A thousand friends are few; one enemy is too many." -- Russian proverb
114."Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity." -- Oprah Winfrey
115."Great oaks from little acorns grow." -- Latin proverb
116."One reason I don't drink is that I want to know when I am having a good time." -- Nancy Astor
117."The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise man grows it under his feet." -- James Oppenheim
118."A happy heart is better than a full purse." -- Italian proverb
119."No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of others." -- Charles Dickens
120."When you clench your fist, no one can put anything in your hand." -- Alex Haley
121."A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap." -- Spanish proverb
122."Appearances may be deceiving." -- Aesop
123."Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest." -- Malabar proverb
124."Home is where one starts from." -- T.S. Eliot
125."I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." -- Persian proverb
126."I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book."
-- Groucho Marx
127."Life can be understood only backwards, but it must be lived forwards." -- Soren Kierkegaard
128."Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice." -- Alice Childress
129."Many hands make light work." -- English proverb
130."Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!" -- Sir Walter Scott
131."Mercy to the criminal may be cruelty to the people." -- Arab proverb
132."My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit.
He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition." -- Indira Gandhi
133."No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." -- Eleanor Roosevelt
134."What goes around comes around." -- African-American Saying
135."What its children become, that will the community become." -- Suzanne La Follette
136."Consider the postage stamp: Its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there." -- Josh Billings
137."What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
138."Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood." -- Leonardo da Vinci
139."Time heals all wounds." -- Geoffrey Chaucer
140."Two heads are better than one." -- John Heywood
141."When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. When I got to be
21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." -- Mark Twain
142."The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in." (Note: For students to understand this one, teachers
might need to explain to students a little about the history of town commons, common lands set aside for the common
use and enjoyment of all.) -- Thomas Jefferson
143."Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember." -- Oscar Levant
144."To hate fatigues." -- Jean Rostand
145."Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship." -- Benjamin Franklin
146."The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead." -- Aristotle
147."There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering." -- Theodore
Roosevelt
148."Our real enemies are the people who make us feel so good that we are slowly, but inexorably, pulled down into the
quicksand of smugness and self-satisfaction." -- Sydney Harris
149."If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the
music which he hears, however measured or far away." -- Henry David Thoreau
150."My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate -- that's my
philosophy." -- Thornton Wilder
151."The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything." -- Edward Phelps
152."One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning." -- James Russell Lowell
153."The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands." -- Benjamin Franklin
154."Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure." -- Thomas A. Edison
155."Avoid flatterers, for they are thieves in disguise." -- William Penn
156."Fortunes made in no time are like shirts made in no time; it's ten to one if they hang long together." -- Douglas Jerrold
157."Friendship is one mind in two bodies." -- Mencius
158."Genius is an African who dreams up snow." -- Vladimir Nabokov
159."Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them." -- Thomas Fuller
160."While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will
dissipate the remains of it." -- Samuel Johnson
161."Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." -- Voltaire
162."The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." -- Samuel Johnson
163."No man is hurt but by himself." -- Diogenes
164."Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead." -- Scottish proverb
165."The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of the wise man is in his heart." -- Benjamin Franklin
166."Nothing makes one feel so strong as a call for help." -- George MacDonald
167."It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them." -- Mark Twain
168."A misty morning does not signify a cloudy day." -- ancient proverb
169."Some of us are like wheelbarrows -- only useful when pushed and very easily upset." -- Jack Herbert
170."Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." -- Albert Einstein
171."Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society." -- William Makepeace Thackeray
172."Most of the things worth doing in the world had been declared impossible before they were done." -- Louis D. Brandeis
173."As long as I can conceive something better than myself, I cannot be easy unless I am striving to bring it into existence or
clearing the way for it." -- George Bernard Shaw
174."While the mind is in doubt, it is driven this way and that by a slight impulse." -- Terence
175."It is better to wear out than to rust out." -- Richard Cumberland
176."When I'm not thanked at all, I'm thanked enough." -- Henry Fielding
177."To inherit property is not to be born -- it is to be still-born, rather. -- Henry David Thoreau
178."The injury we do and the one we suffer are not weighed in the same scale." -- Aesop
179."The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary." -- May Smith
180."Perfection never exists in reality, but only in our dreams." -- Dr. Rudolf Dreikurs