A highlight at each Rotary meeting is 'the thought for the day' presented by the members in turn. Here is a collection of some of these 'thoughts' presented in recent times at meetings of the Rotary Club of Kew. Some of these thoughts are profound, some funny, some both. They are never, or hardly ever, original.
‘I say no to alcohol, it just doesn't listen.’
‘A friend in need is a pest indeed.’
‘Marriage is one of the chief causes of divorce.’
‘When everything comes your way, you're probably in the wrong lane.’
‘Born free, taxed to death.’
‘If you keep your feet firmly on the ground, you'll have trouble putting on your pants.’
‘It's not hard to meet expenses, they are everywhere.’
‘A printer consists of 3 main parts: the case, the jammed paper tray and the blinking red light.’
‘The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was the genius.’
‘The trouble with being punctual is that no one is there to appreciate it.’
‘I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder!’
‘The cigarette does the smoking, you are just the sucker.’
‘Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.’
‘The road to success.... Is always under construction.’
‘In order to get a Loan, you first need to prove that you don't need it.’
‘Yesterday is history, tomorrow is mystery, today is a gift, that's why we call it the present.’
‘I have kleptomania,
But when it gets bad,
I take something for it.’
‘Suicidal twin kills sister by mistake!’
‘My short-term memory is not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my short-term memory's not as sharp as it used to be.’
‘In just two days from now, tomorrow will be yesterday.’
‘The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.’
‘I may be schizophrenic; but at least I have each other.’
‘I am a Nobody.
Nobody is Perfect.
Therefore I am Perfect.’
‘I LOVE COOKING WITH WINE
Sometimes I even put it in the food.’
‘Money isn't everything,
But it sure keeps the kids in touch.’
‘Corduroy pillows are making headlines!’ 
'There are three things that never come back:
A spent arrow; the spoken word; and the lost opportunity.'
'I was called Rembrandt Hope in my boxing days because I spent so much time on the canvas.’ Bob Hope
'Love is an ideal thing; Marriage a real thing;
A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.'
'Politicians are all the same all over. They promise to build bridges even where there is no river.’ Nikita Kruschev
‘The power to command frequently causes failure to think’ Barbara Tuchman
'A neurotic is a man who builds a castle in the air;
A psychotic is the man who lives in it;
A psychiatrist is the man who collects the rent.'
Lord Webb-Johnson
'It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness' Chinese Proverb
'Money cannot buy friends, but you get a better class of enemy.' Spike Milligan
‘Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.’
‘Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more.’
‘The best inheritance parents can give their children is a few minutes of their time each day.’
’The successful person is one who gets up one more time than he/she goes down.’
‘Avenge yourself; live long enough to be a problem to your children’
‘When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.’ Prince Philip
‘I always eat peas with honey, I’ve done it all my life.
They do taste rather funny, but it keeps them on my knife.
‘I used to be Snow White but I failed. May West
‘Life will afford you a great many opportunities to say nothing. Seize all of them.’ John Clarke
‘A Bartender is a Pharmacist with a limited inventory.
‘Having sex is like playing Bridge; if you don’t have a good partner you’d better have a good hand’.
‘Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it. M. Gandhi
‘When testing the depth of water it is unwise to use both feet’.
‘Proper Prior Preparation Precedes Profitable Productivity’.
‘It doesn’t work to leap a 10’ chasm in two 10’ jumps’.
‘The greater our knowledge increases, the more our ignorance unfolds’. J F Kennedy
‘A true friend stabs you in the front.’ Oscar Wilde
‘I’m a firm believer that when you’re dead, naming a street after you doesn’t help your metabolism.’ Woody Allen
‘Love is an ideal thing; Marriage is a real thing; A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished’. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 1749- 1832
‘Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others, cannot keep it from themselves’
‘It is well that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning’. Henry Ford
‘There is a destiny that shapes our ends rough, hew them as we will.’ William Shakespeare
‘Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.’ Henry Van Dyke
‘Impotence is natures way of saying no hard feelings.’
‘Don’t try to keep up with the Jones, drag them down to our level.’
‘Never mistake motion for action.’ Ernest Hemingway:
‘We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give’
‘It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another'.
Nelson Mandela
‘When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.’
‘Progress is like a wheelbarrow. If you don’t keep pushing it, it stops’
‘As we know, there are known knowns, there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’ Donald Rumsfeld, former US Defense Secretary
‘You can’t direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails.
‘99% of lawyers give the other 1% a bad name’.
‘Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity’.
George Bernard Shaw
‘Marriage is a relationship in which one person is always right, and the other is the husband’
‘Perseverance is the hard work you do after the hard work you have just done’.
‘People don’t cease to play because they grow old, rather they grow old because they cease to play’. George Bernard Shaw adapted
‘Happiness is good health and a short memory’. Ingrid Bergman
‘He who loses money, loses much; He who loses a friend, loses much more; He who loses faith, loses all. Eleanor Roosevelt
‘A verbal contract is not worth the paper it’s written on’
‘We see nothing truly until we understand it’
‘Love endures forever’
‘Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional’.
‘A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing’
George Bernard Shaw
‘No man can become a great leader of men unless he has the milk of human kindness in his own heart, and leads by suggestion and kindness rather than by force.’ Napoleon Hill
‘A friend is one of the nicest things you can have and one of the best things you can be.’ Douglas Pagels
‘There is really no such thing as bad weather, only different types of good weather.’ John Ruskin
‘Knowledge is forever, but ignorance is bliss. It’s a tough choice.’
‘Get your facts first and then you can distort them as much as you please.’ Mark Twain
‘A man who plans for nothing gets what he planned for’.
‘Man fools himself. He prays for a long life, and yet he fears old age’. A Chinese Proverb
‘He who works for nothing is always busy’.
‘The simplest way to learn speed reading is to get an unexpected letter from the taxation office’
‘If shared problems lessen the burden, how come we get so upset in a traffic jam?’
‘Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get’
‘A clear conscience is usually a sign of a poor memory.’
‘Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.’ Winston Churchill
‘Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.’ Charlotte Whitton
‘Vacations may put you in the pink but probably leave you in the red.’
‘If you look like your passport photograph then in all probably you need the journey.’
‘Aging seems to be the only available way to live a long time.’
‘You can’t change the past, but you can easily ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future.’
‘He who will only give and not receive enslaves the person who he would relieve.’
The Guy to Watch
‘You watch the guy who drives ahead and the guy who drives behind.
You watch to the left, and you watch to the right, And drive with a calm clear mind.
But the guy you really have to watch On the highway, you will find Is the guy behind the guy ahead And ahead of the guy behind.’
‘Blessed are they who run around in circles, for they shall be known as ‘Big Wheels’.
‘Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.’
Time does not alter men (and women), it merely unmasks them. Hal Porter (1911-1984)
Anyone who lives within their means has a distinct lack of imagination. Oscar Wilde
If at first you don’t succeed; give in.
If you bungle raising your children I don’t think whatever else you do will matter very much. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
Old is when your sweetie says, ’Let’s go upstairs and make love’. And you answer, ‘Pick one. I can’t do both.’
More thoughts here