Beyond Words

[Nick]

At work they give us employee calendar booklets, and on each page they have written an inspiritional saying or something along those lines. So I decided to give my take on each one of them with a translation or opinion.

“It’s nice to be important, and it’s important to be nice.” – Unknown
Kiss enough ass and people might eventually kiss yours.

“Everyone can afford to give away a smile.” – Unknown
As long as everyone keeps smiling, we won’t have to face reality.

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.” – Martin Luther King, JR.
Reality is the final word.

“Happy pearl divers go over-board for work.” – Unknown
Men continue sacrificing their lives so that women can be women.

“If you haven’t got all the things you want, be grateful for things you don’t have that you don’t want.” – Unknown
If you ever become envious of others possessions, pluck out your eyes so that you can’t see them. (Jesus)

“When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Look to see if there is ground at the end of your rope before you venture to the end of it.

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas Edison
How close or far one is to success when they give up is of no matter, only the fact that they gave up is.

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you stroke my ego, I’ll stroke yours.

“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” – E. Joseph Cossman
Perfume is poisonous if swallowed.

“Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way.” – Booker T. Washington
Greater excellence is to make something uncommon, common.

“Just when you think you’ve graduated from the school of experience, someone thinks up a new course.” – Mary H. Waldrip
Build your house on rock instead of sand.

“The most flammable kind of wood is the chip on the shoulder.” – E. Joseph Cossman
And what an amazing fire it is to behold.

“Goals are dreams with deadlines.” – Diana Scharf Hunt
Goals end, dreams last forever.

“Children are like wet cement. Whatever falls on them makes an impression.” – Haim Ginott
If only it was wisdom that befell them most.

“All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” – Abraham Lincoln
All that I am or ever hope to be I owe to God.

“Once you have them by the funny bone, their hearts and minds will follow.” – Robert Wieder
People will gladly throw themselves into the pits of hell as long as they can laugh along the way down.

“Don’t find fault, find a remedy.” – Henry Ford
Rather, understand the fault, so that the right remedy can be found.

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton
In other words, if in order to be happy I need to make others sad, then so be it.

“Clothiers give good customers on-the-cuff treatment.” – Unknown
Clothiers give good spenders on-the-cuff treatment.

“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.” – Bill Cosby
If so then I feel like everyone’s father.

“Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Freedom is a consequence of faith in the Truth, not itself.

“Success is when your name is in everything but the phone book.” – Unknown
Successful at what being the question.

“Talkative tailors yarn on till the end of twine.” – Unknown
The only way to speak with potency is to speak your words few and far between.

“The past always looks better than it was because it isn’t here.” – Finley Peter Dunne
The past, as well as the future, exist only in the present.

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” – Unknown
Then tact must also be the knack of making points about the superficial.

“The true test of a first-rate mind is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Then nearly everyone I have ever come across must have a first-rate mind.

“I have yet to be bored by someone paying me a compliment.” – Otto Van Isch
Diogenes smacked himself across the face every time he was complimented, for he knew he had done something evil.

“The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.” – G.K. Chesterton
In other words, the thing I hate most about an argument is that it forces me to face my ignorance.

“A smile is a passport that will take you anywhere you want to go.” – Unknown
Because nobody likes an honest man.

“How important is it for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes, and she-roes.” – Maya Angelou
How much more important it is to become a hero yourself.

“Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” – Unknown
Hope receives more undue credit than anything else in this world.

“Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the point on it you can.” – Danny Kaye
Only one who chooses his colors wisely can turn their canvas into a masterpiece.

“I wish we could put up some of the Christmas spirit in jars and open a jar of it every month.” – Harlan Miller
My nightmare.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” – Confucius
Then who would clean out my septic tank?

[Perishable]

I find most of these to be simply hilarious...

[Kevin Solway]

Excellent. There's a hundred times more interesting ideas in your responses than in the original quotes.

We once had a whole thread of such quotes, but I can't recall the name of it.

[Perishable]

There's a hundred times more interesting ideas in your responses than in the original quotes

Agreed.

[Nick]

Here's my critique and analysis of some of the sayings in our new 2008 employee calendar booklet.

“Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head figures it out” – Michael Burke
So do bad instincts.

“In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
I guess they weren’t really friends.

“The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.” – Jacqueline Schiff
If one’s temper is so short, I fear there may be no time for a walk.

“If your actions inspire others to dream more, do more, learn more, and become more, you are a leader.” – John Quincy Adams
For there to be leaders there must be followers, and if that’s what leaders make out of people, they certainly don’t inspire them to be much.

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – George Carlin
One who’s discovered the true nature of life has no need to measure it, for he knows it to be immeasurable.

“Some people think it’s holding on that makes one strong. Sometimes it’s letting go.” – Sylvia Robinson
The strongest never hold on, and therefore have no reason to let go.

“True success is overcoming the fear of being unsuccessful.” – Paul Sweeney
Even better is overcoming the joy of being successful.

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” – Arnold H. Glasow
The truest of friends also get in your way if you aren’t going up.

“I’d rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be successful at something I hate.” – George Burns
How can one fail by his own standards doing something he enjoys or finds worthwhile?

“Always do what you say you are going to do. It is the glue and fiber that binds successful relationships.” – Jeffry A. Timmons
I don’t think there would be too many people surviving today, let alone relationships, if everyone did that.

“Those who trust us, educate us.” – T.S. Eliot
Rather, those who educate us do so because they wish to trust us.

“Recall it as often as you wish, a happy memory never wears out.” – Libbie Fudim
The problem with using memory to escape suffering is that over time it tends to reflect one’s desires as opposed to what actually happened.

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older.” – Abraham Sutzkever
This may be true, but you will not grow a lick wiser either.

“A father carries pictures where his money used to be.” – Unknown
That’s because the people in the pictures spent it all.

“Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition.” – Alexander Smith
If that’s true, with everyone having a seemingly overblown view of their selves, then imagine how distorted their view is of the one they love.

“People are always making rules for themselves, and always finding loopholes.” – William Rotsler
That’s the problem with desire.

“Love is a friendship set to music.” – E. Joseph Cossman
Love is a friendship gone sadistic.

“Action is the foundational key to success.” – Pablo Picasso
Success by what standard being the question.

“The man with a new idea is a crank until the new idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain
This obsession with success makes one wonder how much we need to look forward to new ideas.

“It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the things we have to do that makes life blessed. – Goethe
If being forced to do things is a blessing, then damn me to hell right now.

“New Years Day is every man’s birthday.” – Charles Lamb
What about the new day, the new hour, or the new minute? Let us reap the rewards of our rebirth in every moment!

[sue hindmarsh]

Nick – You’re work has inspired me to join in your "critique and analysis" of sayings.

"How beautiful what one does not understand can be!" – Colette

“Beautiful”? - Only if you have the mentality of a lump of wood. And all that saying does is justify one remaining as a lump of wood.

“Women, unlike most men, are able to accept mystery, accept whatever comes to them – even if it’s not logical.” – Cher

Another example of: lump of wood mentality. What makes this one even more despising of life is that it doesn’t only justify remaining a lump of wood; it goes a step further by celebrating the fact.

"Children reinvent your world for you." – Susan Sarandon

More evidence of the parasitic nature of mothers. No wonder humans are rare creatures – most children have been so traumatized by mother’s love they grow up as spineless as a jellyfish.

"If everybody became a poet the world would be much better. We would all read each other." – Nikki Giovanni

Poets are ‘poets’, and not ‘philosophers’ due to them being satisfied with their intuitively-discovered half-truths and not going any deeper to discover through reason the cold hard whole truths of the philosopher. Better that people first become philosophers - for the poetry of the philosopher is truly timeless and universal.

[divine focus]

"Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination." - Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics

"We carry within us the wonders we seek without us." - Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." - Voltaire, Epitres

"He who binds himself to a joy doth the winged life destroy/
But he who kisses the joy as it flies lives in Eternity's sunrise" - William Blake

"The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time" - William Butler Yeats, In Memory of Eva Gore Booth and Con Markiewicz

[divine focus]

"A sense of humor is a sense of proportion." - Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
[Your own proportions.]

[sue hindmarsh]

Divine, you've forgotten to include your "critique and analysis" of the sayings.

[brokenhead]

Better that people first become philosophers - for the poetry of the philosopher is truly timeless and universal.

As long as it rhymes...

[Alex Jacob]

"It is great folly to wish only to be wise."

"In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors."

"Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason."

___________________________________________

La Rochefoucauld:

"With a few exceptions La Rochefoucauld's maxims represent the matured result of the reflection of a man deeply versed in the business and pleasures of the world, and possessed of an extraordinarily fine and acute intellect, on the conduct and motives which have guided himself and his fellows. There is as little trace in them of personal spite as of forfanleric de lice. But the astonishing excellence of the literary medium in which they are conveyed is even more remarkable than the general soundness of their ethical import. In uniting the four qualities of brevity, clarity, fulness of meaning and point, La Rochefoucauld has no rival. His Maximes are never mere epigrams; they are never platitudes; they are never dark sayings. He has packed them so full of meaning that it would be impossible to pack them closer, yet there is no undue compression; he has sharpened their point to the utmost, yet there is no loss of substance. The comparison which occurs most frequently, and which is perhaps on the whole the most just, is that of a bronze medallion, and it applies to the matter no less than to the form. Nothing is left unfinished, yet none of the workmanship is finical. The sentiment, far from being merely hard, as the sentimentalists pretend, has a vein of melancholy poetry running through it which calls to mind the traditions of La Rochefoucauld's devotion to the romances of chivalry. The maxims are never shallow; each is the text for a whole sermon of application and corollary which any one of thought and experience can write. Add to all this that the language in which they are written is French, still at almost its greatest strength, and chastened but as yet not emasculated by the reforming influence of the 18th century, and it is not necessary to say more. To the literary critic no less than to the man of the world La Rochefoucauld ranks among the scanty number of pocket-books to be read and re-read with ever new admiration, instruction and delight. La Rochefoucauld's theories about human nature are based on such topics as self-interest and self-love, passions and emotions, vanity, relationships, love, conversation, insincerity, and trickery. His writings are very concise, straightforward, and candid."
______________________________________________

Maxims of La Rochefoucauld [You have to scroll down quite a ways...]

[sue hindmarsh]

Alex, Nick's idea of this thread wasn't just to post sayings. Take note of Nick's first post and you will see that you are also to add your "critique and analysis".

Examples:
"It is great folly to wish only to be wise."

Obviously spoken by an ignorant person - and therefore complete rubbish.

"In all professions we affect a part and an appearance to seem what we wish to be. Thus the world is merely composed of actors."

People only need to "affect a part and an appearance" whilst they remain ignorant of their true nature. Once known, freedom is the normal state of being.

"Youth is a continual intoxication; it is the fever of reason."

The youthful mind passionately striving to live by the highest reasoning is a model rarely seen these days. Now 'youth' represents the lowest of the low: gossip, sentimentality, and spontaneity - and is so extremely popular that there is hardly a person left on the planet that hasn't given their lives completely over to it.

[divine focus]

Divine, you've forgotten to include your "critique and analysis" of the sayings.

The quotes speak for themselves.

"If it were not thus, the roaring of the suns would deafen the universe." - Gene Wolfe on Celestial Silence, The Urth of the New Sun

[Faust]

Examples:
"It is great folly to wish only to be wise."

Obviously spoken by an ignorant person - and therefore complete rubbish.

?

I think he means you can't just wish to be wise, you have to actually try.

[Alex Jacob]

I had taken note of that, Sue, and it was only in the spirit of public service that I brought up Rochefoucauld.

[Nick]

Examples:
"It is great folly to wish only to be wise."

Obviously spoken by an ignorant person - and therefore complete rubbish.

?

I think he means you can't just wish to be wise, you have to actually try.

I don't think so. If that were the case it would probably be worded like this. "It is a great folly to only wish to be wise." As opposed to having the only after the wish.

[Steven Coyle]

All maxims contain in their general sense their own relative nature.

Which points to a more fundamental truth.

All maxims are reflective of the fundamental person, within the individual.

Which is to say, the closer to a more universal essence - the closer to the soul.

[sue hindmarsh]

Steven,

As you can see from Nick and my translations and opinions of many sayings, most sayings have nothing to do with the fostering of truth. This isn't surprising, because most people haven't even a foggy idea that truth exists. Mediocrity rules, and that is the nature of most sayings.

Placed in a context, sayings can be useful in making a point clearer. But very rarely can a saying stand alone and make it's point unambiguously. One that comes to mind is: "Love God with all your heart, and with all your mind." The point being made should be very clear to anyone, for example, who calls themselves a Christian. But obviously not, for even though the saying cannot have any other interpretation, Christian's still ignore it by loving husbands, wives, children, lovers, cats, dogs, cars, jobs, music, friends, houses, places,...

-----

Steven - would you describe what "universal essence" is being expressed in this saying posted by Divine, "If it were not thus, the roaring of the suns would deafen the universe."

[sue hindmarsh]

Steven,

Could you also translate and give me your opinion of your saying:

"All maxims are reflective of the fundamental person, within the individual."

(What does it mean?)

[Steven Coyle]

Sue,

Would you describe what "universal essence" is being expressed in this saying posted by Divine, "If it were not thus, the roaring of the suns would deafen the universe." - (Gene Wolfe on Celestial Silence, The Urth of the New Sun)

(Hmm, I say.)

He's comparing a silent deferment, to the restrainment of a "roaring sun" caught in a celestial balancing act.

As to maximize affect, he's simply in agreement with his own avatar.

As to what "universal element (essence)" is being expressed...

"Self-restraint does often commune with thine own grievance."

Could you also translate and give me your opinion of your saying: "All maxims are reflective of the fundamental person, within the individual."

"All maxims contain the seed of a person's true character. As maxims are the nearest testament to their own truth."

[Plexus]

Why do I get a bad taste in my mouth after reading posts on Genius. What are some of the reasons for this?

Btw, what are maxims?

[Carl G]

I like to post before engaging brain. What can I say, works for me.

[sue hindmarsh]

Plexus wrote:

Why do I get a bad taste in my mouth after reading posts on Genius. What are some of the reasons for this?

If you read the introduction to this forum, you'll see that this site is dedicated to encouraging the development of individuality.

If you are interested in developing in that way yourself, you are perhaps experiencing the "bad taste" due to the excessive amount of posts on this forum that encourage and foster herd-mentality by celebrating and praising conventional values. I'm sure those post won't drag you down into that mire - especially if your mind is completely focussed on your goal of becoming an individual.

[Unidian]

Or it could be because of stuff like what you just wrote, Sue.

Denying everyone in the world "individuality" except those who think like you is not only comically ironic and oblivious, it also tastes like rust. The oxidization of one's dogmatically-frozen neural pathways, to be precise.

[divine focus]

"Thus, the key to enlightenment lies in a secret that very few people have ever known, but which J knew as well. The way you will experience and feel about yourself is not determined by how other people look at and think about you. The way that you wiill experience and feel about youerself is actually determined by how you look at and think about them. Ultimately, this determines your identity. You will identify yourself either as a body or as perfect spirit, as either divided or whole, depending on how you see others." - Gary Renard, Your Immortal Reality