Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:    
                  Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard

                                                                                                       -W.H. Auden  

My Favorite Epigrams & Such

Please excuse my impertinence at herewith emulating an action of our illustrious president, George Washington. President Washington’s document emulated a Jesuit document, little knowing the priests in turn had plagiarized an Italian document first published in 1558.

• Don’t answer questions you’re not asked.

• Goofy questions and goofy truths are goofy.

• There are no experts.

• Nature abhors straight lines.

• There are no secrets.

• Who you are is always on display.

• A young man with three days growth of beard is hot.
  An old man with three days growth of beard is
  just an old man with three days growth of beard.

• Knowledge is always incomplete; act on what you know.

• Assume people are good.

• Evil is vain; it must expose itself.

• Jealously destroys. Everyone.

• Falling in love is easy.

• We often are in the company of our betters.

• The intent is not the same as the deed.

• It is impossible to shit gracefully.

• Anything can happen once;
  the second occurrence exposes a pattern.

• No one reads page two.

• Do not use not.

• Avoid big “but”s.

• Always dot your “I”s.

• Vitalism is real.

• Every construct carries the seed of its demise.

• Knowledge requires models, and only models.

• Models are networks of events.

• All models are incomplete.

• Learning is simply constructing models.

• The more complex a model, the more likely it’s inaccurate.

• Memory is likely a real-time reconstruction of models.

• Reasoning is more like music than logic.

• Invention precedes discovery.

• Never test blood; you’ll lose.

• Better never than late.

• Time is simply:
  a sequence of events,
  a mathematical construct,
  a sense.

• Most academics just ride-the-pony.

• The arts distinguish human beings from all other forms of life.

• Fat chicks have fat tits.

• Orgies are flat, necessitating a choreographer.

• Professionals love the work or the lifestyle, never both.

• Trees climb high mostly for the wind. not the sun.

• To imagine something doesn’t make it real.

• Humans require a transcendent authority.

• Chance defines God.

• High school girls perfect seeking attention from boys;
  boys just seek attention.

• I don’t shower, I womb.

• All promises beg to be broken.

• Proficiency requires four years’ field experience;
  only repetition follows.

• Faith precedes reasoning.

• Beauty spawns awe.

• Elegance envelops simplicity, clarity and truth.

• Some elderly express wisdom;
  all elderly express an odor.

• Good scotch, good music, good art
  and good books change us.

• Reading begets reading and pondering.
  Pondering begets pondering and writing.
  Writing begets writing and insight.
  Insight begets humanity.

• There is no substitute for intelligence.

• If you can’t go first class, stay home.

• History is simply inevitable events
  sired by extraordinary persons.

• We always find what we’re looking for.

• A young man’s charm is pleasing;
  An old man’s charm is tiresome.

• All projects will change.

• Any project losing its principal will fail.

• Knowledge stimulates wonder.

• Emergence always takes place at the edge;
  between chaos and order.

• We all achieve as we’re able,
  be it as fodder or king.

• Suffer neither fools nor celebrities.

• Liberty and Equality are always at odds.

• The business of America is business.

• All mathematics is geometric. 

• Reading is a pleasure unto itself.

• Everyone in California is on.

• Public sector staff answer the voice mail. 
  Private sector staff answer the phone.

• Nature avoids constants.

• Humor works, ridicule doesn’t.

• Chance favors the prepared.

• All men live lives of quiet desperation.

• Don’t complain, don’t explain.

• Ideas are singular.

• Committees impose compromise.

• A camel is simply a horse refined by a committee. 

• The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

• If you sleep with dogs, you’ll have fleas.

• Sloppy thinking generates uncertainty.

• Happy families are all alike;
  every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

• You never have to remember the truth.       

• Listen to those whom you doubt;
  that you may know your doubt.

• The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.

• The way that you wander is the way that you choose,
  The day that you tarry is the day that you lose.

• There are more things in heaven and earth
  than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

• Constructive criticism is not.

• Science is simply the art of precise measurement.

• God does not partake of our petty squabbles.

• Neither a lender nor a borrower be.

• Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

• There’s always more to the story.
  

© 2002-2017 John Douglas Sawtelle