Category: Maxims, Mottoes, Epitaphs, etc.

Arguments Don’t Have Testicles!

Prepared lines come in handy in many of life's situations.  They are useful for getting points across in a memorable way and they  make for effective on-the-spot rebuttals. 

A mind well-stocked with prepared lines is a mind less likely to suffer l'esprit d'escalier. 

Suppose a feminist argues that men have no right to an opinion about the morality of abortion.  Without a moment's hesitation, retort: Arguments don't have testicles!

Other applications are easily imagined.

We ought to be able to extend the idea to race.  Suppose a left-wing black takes umbrage at a Bill O'Reilly-type pointing out of the causes of the problems in the black 'community.'  Say:  In my neck of the 'hood, arguments they ain't got no skin color.  Hell, they ain't got no skin!

Misheard Maxims

I asked the Gypsy Scholar for more dueling maxims and he gave me a misheard maxim instead:

Absinthe makes the heart go founder

which inspires me to coin:

Abstinence is no mark of a rounder.

We 'need' to compile a list of misheard  lyrics such as 'There's a bathroom on the right,' for "There's a bad moon on the rise," and  'Scuse me while I kiss the guy' for "Scuse me while I kiss the sky."

Dueling Injunctions

"Dont' hide your light under a bushel." "Don't cast your pearls before swine."

"Haste makes waste." "He who hesitates is lost."

Others escape me at the moment.

UPDATE (7 September). Jeff Hodges and Kid Nemesis come to my aid.  Jeff contributes:

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."
"Out of sight, out of mind."

Jeff adds, "According to some, the latter was translated into German to mean "blind and crazy"! That might be a joke, but I did hear a professional translator render "white male gaze" into German as "white male homosexuals."

Well, "Out of sight, out of mind" is rendered exactly by the German proverb Aus den Augen, aus den Sinn.  Someone who didn't know German well could easily translated the latter as "blind and crazy" thinking that the German sentence means "out of eyes and out of mind."

Kid Nemesis  writes, "Not really injunctions, but. . .  

'Distance makes the heart grow fonder' vs 'Out of sight, out of mind.'"

'Absence,' not 'distance.'  But KN makes a good point: my second example and Jeff's are not injunctions.  My post should have been titled, 'Dueling Maxims.' An injunction is an act of ordering or commanding or enjoining or admonishing or else the content of an act of ordering or commanding or enjoining or admonishing.  Injunctions are broadly imperative as opposed to declarative.  A maxim may or may not be imperative.

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Edith Bone (1889-1975)

On Myself

Here lies the body of Edith Bone.
All her life she lived alone,
Until Death added the final S
And put an end to her loneliness.

(The Faber Book of Epigrams and Epitaphs, ed. Grigson, 1977, p. 221)

I am reminded of Eleanor Rigby.

Dr. Edith Bone was another of those who early on looked to Communism for a solution, but by the end of her life had seen through its false promises.  In 1956 she was was released from a Hungarian jail after seven years of political imprisonment.

Biography here.

A Modest Epitaph

Here lies Professor X. As he is buried here, his name is buried in the scholarly apparatus of the enduring, though rarely consulted, annals of scholarship. Indeed, he has already become a forgotten footnote to a debate itself teetering on the brink of oblivion. And yet it can be said that he made a contribution, however minor, to the transmission of high culture during a time of decline. More importantly, he had the wisdom to appreciate that his playing of this role was enough.

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Sinatra’s Epitaph

Sinatra grave

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The epitaph on Frank Sinatra's tombstone reads, "The best is yet to come." That may well be, but it won't be booze and broads, glitz and glamour, and the satisfaction of worldly ambitions that were frustrated this side of the grave. So the believer must sincerely ask himself: would I really want eternal life?

At funerals one hears pious claptrap about the dearly departed going off to be with the Lord. In many
cases, this provokes a smile. Why should one who has spent his whole life on the make be eager to meet his Maker? Why the sudden interest in the Lord when, in the bloom of life, one gave him no thought? If you have loved the things of this world as if they were ultimate realities, then perhaps you ought to hope that death is annihilation.