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.

  • A grace of the divine is life.
    A grace of life is consciousness. 
    A grace of consciousness is mind.

  • 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.

© 2002-2018 John Douglas Sawtelle