Proverbs' power can touch the heart and stir the soul

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It takes awhile for me to notice things.

The billboards have been gone for months, but I didn't start missing them until this week.

I looked for them on Route 128, then on the Mass Pike and was suprised when I didn't find any.

Then I noticed that the pithy little sayings that used to dot the Southeast Expressway were gone, too.

So I drove around the city, through Roxbury and Mattapan and Hyde Park and Roslindale, and I saw billboards galore, but not a single one bore an inspirational message.

For a while these thought-provoking billboards were all over the place:

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another."

"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned."

It actually got so that billboards didn't look quite so ugly anymore because occasionally, right next to some unsightly one, there was a plain poster with a few useful words that could change your day.

But Ackerley, AK Media-MA, the people who own most of the billboards in Massachusetts, did some math and figured what it was costing them to inspire the masses.

They put the guy who was crazy enough to think there might be something more important than the bottom line "on leave."

Now it's back to business as usual with just 11 of its 2,564 very lucrative billboards left to provide uplifting words for commuters.

So, as a public service, I give you not a billboard, but a far more humble presentation of some concise and meaningful sayings that have inspired me.

Most are unattributed, which means I can't remember who said them.

But it doesn't matter, does it? The proverbs' purpose is not to impress but to touch the heart.

"Courage is being the only one to know you're afraid."

"Failure is the path of least persistence."

"A hammer sometimes misses its mark - a bouquet, never."

"Hardening of the heart ages people more quickly than hardening of the arteries."

"One dog barks at nothing; all the dogs bark with him."

"Some people complain because God puts thorns on roses, while others praise God for putting roses among thorns."

"Be kind to unkind people. They need it the most."

"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." - Will Rogers

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the sermon on the mount." - Omar Bradley

"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby."

"We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual beings trying to be human." - Jacquelyn Small

"A friendship will be young after the lapse of a half a century; a passion is old at the end of three months" - Madame Swetchine.

"People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges." - Joseph Fort Newton

"Example is a language all men can read."

"A good reply to an atheist is to give him an excellent dinner and then ask if he believes there is a cook."

"If we could forget our troubles as easily as we forget our blessings, how different things would be."

"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist." - Indira Gandhi

"Trust in Allah, but tie your camel." - Arabian proverb