Friday, August 31, 2007

Adios, Montevideo: 41 Wisdoms to Live by

When we are no longer dead, we begin to be alive.
We never forgive those who make us blush.

The greater the wisdom, the older the fool.
Time will show you French fries in a handful of dust.
Prosperity delights in sudden reverses.
The family is one of nature’s enduring errors.

Where fear is, only the fearful succeed.
Anger blows out the lamp of the spine.
Ambition and folly also went to school.
If you wait ‘til the weather is right, you will never wash your car.
For the friendship of two, the patience of one is required.
Because liberty is precious, it must be rationed.
Mistakes are our teachers—they help us to unfurl.
The company loves misery.

We are the government, Big Oil and I.
Hasten slowly and you will never arrive.
The most impotent law is always the most forceful.
Every day is lost in which you dance once.

The civilized savage makes the best civilian.
No one can write the life of a man but those who have beaten him.
Advice is like a snowplow—the more insistent, the taller the snow.
A personal library implies a degree of ignorance.
Never be so obscure as to become a reviewer.

Half a lie is not the same as half the truth.
More than those who seek happiness miss it, those who have it disregard it.

A man convinced against his will had better take a yellow pill.
The greatest obstacle to summer is to linger in winter.

When you blame others, you give up your power to rage.
We are what we delete.
Impeccable manners is the chief cause of caustic remarks.
Comedy and tragedy are identical cousins.

If you are nice to people, they will eventually seek revenge.
An enemy’s fire is the first to burn.

Unhappiness is part of a healthy emotional profile.
You’re only as happy as your saddest child.
Rhyme is the first sign of an uneven mind.
One may live in a palace of shame, or one may live in a funeral home.

The cleverest liars tell the truth.
Bullies are never reborn; they’re simply emulated.
In matters of the heart, there are no economy cars.
To the old, the old is news.

5 Comments:

At 5:21 AM, Blogger The Uncrowned said...

"Half a lie is not the same as half the truth"...that line touched me the most, an excellent poem...you poem is wise enough to make others learn how to abide by the primary principles to lead our lives...

 
At 12:31 PM, Blogger Nothing Clever said...

I liked your poem because it was the anti-wisdom. I thought it had some beautifully written lines.

 
At 7:30 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Uneven Mind [for you]

There is no effort in it.
And when I do it,
I don’t care, which is precisely
why I stare as if there was nothing there.
I just do it, effortlessly, and I
just kind of do it through things,
building stares to nowhere
as if building was nothing,
and without a care.

 
At 12:57 PM, Blogger bridgefog said...

Lovely antithesis to conventions. I have no snowplow. I have only deletions of my own.

Bridgefog

 
At 3:38 PM, Blogger Jim Ellis said...

Hey this is just a great poem. Blake, Stafford, and Porchia most immediately come to mind, but there's nothing derivative here.
Wonderful poem.
Jim Ellis
Auburn, NY

 

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