Okay, so I promised you some interesting quotes from the hidden depths of my bloated file cabinet. And yes, I am late in fulfilling that promise.

But if you knew the state of my filing system—not great—and the number of lengthy quotation books on my shelves (actually it's five), you'd understand the delay.

After some sifting, I came up with a few distinct categories. Choose your favorite or explore them all.

(The remarks in brackets are bits of inserted snark from Yours Truly.)

Relationships:

•"Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them." Ogden Nash

•"The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be a deaf man to a blind woman." T. Allsop

•"People want to know how much you care before they care how much you know." James F. Hind [Note to politicians: Pretending to care doesn't count.]

Cats

•"I don't mind a cat in its place. But its place is not in the middle of my back at 4 A.M." Maynard Good Stoddard

•"If only cats grew into kittens." R.D. Stern [Cute quip, but could I tolerate their kitten-hood in my dotage?!!]

•"A cat can purr its way out of anything." Donna McCroham [I've known a few humans with this knack, too.]

Character

•"There are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices." Louis L'Amour

•"Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing." David Letterman

•"What we must decide is how we are valuable rather than how valuable we are." Edgar Z. Friedenberg

Positive Thinking

•"A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort." Herm Albright

•"I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will." Clint Eastwood

•"Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it." Sam Ewing

•"Intellect annuls fate." Emerson

Humor [The longest entry, since it's the one everybody will skip to. You know you did that!]

•"When in doubt, duck." Malcolm S. Forbes

•"There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore looking like an idiot." Steven Wright

•"The man who is a pessimist before 48, knows too much. If he is an optimist after 48, he knows too little." Mark Twain

•"Whenever things sound easy, it turns out there's one part you didn't hear." Donald E. Westlake

•"The truth will ouch." Arnold H. Glasow

•"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up and does not stop until you get into the office." Robert Frost

•"Nothing is so embarrassing as watching someone do something that you said couldn't be done." Sam Ewing

•"It's hard to believe there was a time when clothing and music were handed down to the next generation." Doug Larson

Got any favorites to add to the list? Original quotes welcome.