Tag archives: epigrams
Much of our folklore, including Greek mythology, has to do with explaining the origins of things. For example, why are there so many troubles in the world? Well, it seems they were once all contained in a certain neat, secure box. But some naughty female named Pandora, hardly realizing what she was doing, opened the […]
Life would be very empty, if we had nothing to regret. The most celebrated song of Edith Piaf, France’s most famous singer-songwriter, was “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”). But sadly, she had plenty to regret, dying in 1963 aged only 47, after many years of alcohol and drug abuse. Does the […]
One personal favorite of my epigrams says: “There’s nothing wrong with growing older – but where does it lead?” There are more answers to that than you might think. To my friends in the “antiques” trade, older usually means more valuable. “Antiques,” which used to require an age of at least a century, is now […]
The first place to look for treasure is within yourself. Don’t dismiss me as some kind of inspirational motivator if I start blathering about your internal riches. It’s a simple fact that unused, unexploited, almost unknown resources lie inside every one of us. Sometimes it takes a crisis or catastrophe to reveal our hidden strengths. […]
I’ve long been aware that a potholder I use very frequently was provided, many years ago, free of charge, by a popular local politician, in connection with one of his campaigns for Congress. I couldn’t help being aware of this, since his name, with a brief political message, is emblazoned very prominently on it. He’s […]
The Library of Congress categorizes all published books which are submitted for registration, according to their contents. When my first book, I May Not Be Totally Perfect, but Parts of Me Are Excellent, was published, I had no idea how they would classify it. I had thought I was writing a new kind of one-line […]
Quite apart from our legal system, there are so many laws in Science and Economics and other disciplines that it must have been inevitable for satirical “laws” to appear, usually commenting on the perversity of life as we experience it. Probably the most famous of these “laws” states (in various versions) that “If anything can […]
When I was first privileged to write this column, I was set a 750-word limit. I knew that I could go a few words over or under, and nobody would care. But I decided to make a game out of turning in exactly 750 words each time. What made this relatively do-able was that, unlike […]
Being rejected is a basic human experience, for which most of us need to be better trained than we probably are. If you ask Mr. Google about rejections, he’ll give you many lists of famous and successful people who failed over and over again, but went on, and, through sheer persistence, became the stars and […]
One of my most popular epigrams (which is why I made it the title of one of my books) says: “All I want is a warm bed, and a kind word – and unlimited power.” I suppose we’d all like to be able to control things a little more than we can – starting with […]
When General Sir Charles Napier captured, for the British Empire, the Indian province of Sindh (now a part of Pakistan) in 1844, he reportedly announced this achievement in a one-word telegram. That single word was not English, but, in those days, when every upper-class Englishman received a classical education, the message would have been intelligible […]
In many cultures, there is a tradition linking the idea of a person’s fate with the concept of something being written down. In Jewish society, a favorite New Year greeting is the wish: “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for the coming year.” A Persian poet, who lived about a thousand years […]
Many children’s games involve “counting out” rhymes for choosing one or more of the players for some special role. Everybody probably knows some version of the one that begins, “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” But there is just one other such rhyme of which I retain a possibly fragmentary memory. And although there are probably many […]
One of the epigrams I have written which I get most requests to quote – particularly from authors of “self-help” type books – says: “Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.” But not everyone agrees with this philosophy. One of my favorite poets, A.E. Housman, has […]
Journal columnist Ashleigh Brilliant has published his first book in 20 years and the tenth in his series of original illustrated epigrams, known as Brilliant Thoughts based on his popular Pot-Shots newspaper series. The $25 soft cover volume, I Need More Time – And I Probably Always Will, has 400 of his epigrams in its […]
As far as I know, there is no such thing as impatient dreaming. Sleep takes as long as it takes, and, when you wake, you have to consult your timepiece to be sure how long you’ve been away in that strange other world. But in this waking, conscious world which (for want of a better […]
When I first emigrated to America, from a Europe which was still recovering from World War II, one of my earliest impressions was that the whole society seemed to be built on the principle of wastefulness. I said to myself, “In this country, I could live on what people throw away.” For better or worse, […]
Some time ago, somebody at the Guinness Brewery (headquartered in Dublin, Ireland) had a brainwave. People in pubs were always arguing about the most this, or the longest or tallest that – but there was no handy authoritative way of settling these disputes. Why not publish some kind of reference book, to be available in […]
Maybe you’ve seen this bit of sagacity somewhere before: “YYUR YYUB ICUR YY 4ME” The “translation” is: “Too wise you are. Too wise you be. I see you are too wise for me.” Very clever – but so what? For one thing, if true wisdom is really all it’s cracked up to be, how can […]
It has been said (by me, in one of my Pot-Shots epigrams) that “Sometimes it seems all of life is a waiting room.” One of the “Beat” poets of the 1950s wrote a poem which consisted of nothing but the word “wait,” repeated hundreds of times, covering an entire page – except for the very […]
