A fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him. (anon. via Sowell)
Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.
Neologism: A Merton
A merton is a person who doesn't distinguish between studying a subject and writing a book about it.
Cf. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. III, 136: "Thought of writing a book on Columbia under Spain . . ..") In his short life Merton published some 60 books, some of them good, some of them but attempts to work his way into a subject.
Happy Wife, Happy Life
I borrow this fine line from Dennis Prager. (I just now heard him say something that I would put as follows: a Jew can no more lose his Jewishness by the assimilation consequent upon bearing a name such as 'Dennis' than a Chomsky can preserve his Jewishness by bearing the name 'Noam.')
But I digress. The MavPhil obverse of 'Happy wife, happy life' is Wife's a bitch, life's a bitch.
The Useless Rehearsal of the Useful
Avoid not only useless thoughts, but also the useless rehearsing of useful thoughts.
Heute Rot, Morgen Tot
Archaic variant: Heute roth, morgen todt.
Poetically translated by your humble correspondent:
Today ruddy, tomorrow rotting.
Or is it better like this?
Ruddy today, rotting tomorrow.
Literally:
Red today, dead tomorrow.
Better red than dead? Or better dead than red?
Docendo Discimus
Teaching, we learn.
As it stands, a maxim, and true as far as it goes. But in need of qualification which, when added, makes it a maxim no longer. Brevity is essential to the maxim as it is to the aphorism and the epigram.
Closer to the truth is the following. Teaching, we learn; but only up to a point beyond which studying without having to teach is much to be preferred if the goal is an advance in understanding and erudition.
I never knew logic so well as after having taught it for a couple of years. But then the maxim lost its truth.
A is A: Monism Refuted
This from The Collected Poems and Epigrams of J. V. Cunningham, Swallow Press, 1971, p. 118, epigram #47:
This Monist who reduced the swarm
Of being to a single form,
Emptying the universe for fun,
Required two A's to think them one.
Notes
1. The title is Cunningham's own.
2. Poetic license extends to use-mention confusion.
3. It was over at Patrick Kurp's place that I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Cunningham.
4. Note the poetically pleasing addition by the author of his name to the title of his collection.
5. My copy of Cunningham's collection, a well-made hard bound, acquired via Amazon, is a Mount Mary College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) library discard. There is no evidence that it is a second copy. How naive of me to think that libraries ought to be permanent repositories of high culture. But the folly of reliably liberal librarians redounds to the benefit of the bookman.
Printer’s Ink
Don't confuse printer's ink with the embalming fluid of Truth Herself.
Will Rogers
"Never miss a good chance to shut up." More cowboy wisdom here.
Care of Soul and Body
Care for your soul as if you will die tomorrow; care for your body as if it will last indefinitely.
(The thought is borrowed from Evagrios Pontikos.)
First the Saturday People . . .
. . . then the Sunday people.
Knowledge, Belief, Action: Three Maxims
1. Don't claim to know what you merely believe even on good evidence.
2. Don't claim to believe what you are not prepared to act upon.
3. Don't let insufficient evidence prevent you from believing what you are better off believing in the long run than not believing in the long run.
No Entity Without Identity
If you lack identity, you are a nonentity. Quine's slogan ought to be emblazoned over every polling place in the land, and tattooed onto the forearm of every dumbass liberal by a method both Kafkaesque and painful.
The quotation below is genuine. I just checked. One can find it at the top of p. 116, first full paragraph, of Word and Object (MIT Press, 1960, eighth printing, February 1973). I slogged through the whole of it in 1974. Quine is no Aquinas. At his door one receives, not bread, but a stone.
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Overheard at the Philosophers’ Chess Club
White: To you, sir, I have but two words to say, 'check and mate!'
Black: Those are three words.
Overheard at the Arboretum
Life's a beech.