Note: Keeping a written record of wise sayings or other worthy excerpts is an ancient practice. In English, these written collections are traditionally called “commonplace books” and keeping a personal commonplace book used to be a widespread practice. I was introduced to the concept in 2004 in a lecture at the University of South Carolina by David Shields during the first year of my English PhD studies.
This page is my personal commonplace book. Before putting it here, I kept it as a note on my phone for almost a decade.
“Ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
I forget where I first heard this. It’s a well-known variation on the theme of there being no reward without risk.
“A calm sea never made a skilled mariner.”
My friend Scott Bradford used this in conversation on Jan 30, 2015.
“The world is brutal to the dummy.”
My friend Scott Bradford also used this in conversation on Jan 30, 2015. He batted at a very high percentage that day.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”
This humorous modification of a traditional proverb works nicely for me. It’s a way of deferring a difficult problem for a more appropriate time in the future while acknowledging that it will still be difficult, and we’ll probably screw it up then.
“Slow and steady does the job.”
As my life has gone on, this old saw has continued to age like fine wine. Persistent, sustainable effort is the key to long-term success.
“Eventis stultorum magister.” or “Consequences are the teacher of fools.”
Learning to avoid mistakes from the precept and example of others is better than learning the hard way yourself.
“Silence is the voice of complicity.”
This one has long appealed to the activist and the truthseeking parts of me. I encountered it on a bumper sticker which I then kept on my office door at Carolina in the middle 00’s.
“Farmer’s work is from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.”
A traditional mid-western proverb that I heard at the lunch table as a kid from my dad’s cousin during one of our summer visits to the old farm in Iowa. Farming is very hard work, but keeping house as a farmer’s wife was not easier. Leo and Marie were two of my favorite people growing up, and to this day I can think of no finer wheat rolls than those Marie would make for a houseful of people.
“Choose your battles.”
Conservation of effort is an important contributor to sustainable success. There are many things I would like to be good at, many things I would like to accomplish. Better to focus on the most important and achieve them than to invest in too many of them and not. This is a lesson I’m bad at learning.
“Old dogs, old tricks.”
The old man’s response to the statement, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ It highlights the value of life experience even in the face of a changing world, and it does so in a pugnacious way that I like.
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“If it looks like shit, if it smells like shit, it’s shit.”
My lifetime has seen a significant breakdown in trust towards authority. The sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church from the early 2000s have been followed by similar scandals in the Evangelical world and elsewhere. Cosby, Weinstein, the #MeToo movement, and other such cases have collectively reinforced the message that position and reputation are not to be trusted. If something appears suspect, it probably is.
“You get what you pay for.”
The truest of truisms, in my experience.
“What goes around, comes around.”
A variation on the biblical Proverb that what you sow, you will also reap.
“When an elder dies, a library burns.”
My father was 54 when I was born. The family reunions we attended on his side were peopled with the elderly. My whole life I have been around and learned from old people, and how I often I have wished after their passing that I had done a better job recording what they knew and experienced during their lives.
“A man isn’t old until regrets take the place of dreams.”
I have had high aspirations for myself my entire adult life and mostly fallen short of them. Yet hope for a better, more accomplished, more fit, more worthy future has always remained. As I age, that window is closing. At some point, it will have closed and I will have only the past to look back upon. Not what I might be, but what I was.
“The goal is not to dream, but to come out of a dream. To say, ‘This is.'”
I am an idealist and a truth seeker. I dream of a golden age. But it is not enough for me to dream of it. I want the reality–whatever it is. I forget where I first heard or thought this one.
“We are the product of our environment.”
A truism I began to learn and understand only in adulthood. However, it most resonated with me before my children hit their teenage years. Once my children became teens, I began to realize how much of who they were had always been with them from the beginning and in some respects how little difference my parenting choices made in shaping their direction. This statement still resonates strongly, and I believe it to be true. But it’s only part of the truth.
“Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no ‘try.'”
Yoda to Luke during The Empire Strikes Back. I consider these the wisest words to ever come out of the Star Wars franchise. They are analogous to Sean Connery’s words to Nick Cage in The Rock about losers and winners and prom queens.
“Bite off more than you can chew, then chew like hell.”
“No pain, no gain. Embrace pain.”
“Pain is the sweet taste of victory.”
“If it hurts, you know it counts.”
“It’s not how you feel that matters; it’s how you measure up.”
“No pressure, no diamonds.”
“The hotter the fire, the harder the steel.”
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
“If you ace all the tests, you’re in the wrong class.”
“Fear of failure breeds failure.”
“The edge of your performance is the point where you fail. Push till you fail, regroup, then push again.”
“Community is rooted in hard work, in contributions to the whole. Laziness breeds deceit and isolation.”
“We can rest in California.”
–what the Donner party should have said after July 4th.
“Immediate gratification is followed by regret.”
“I will do good work, at a profit if I can, at a loss if I must, but always good work.”
“It’s easy to be determined and have grit about things you like to do.”
“There is a malevolent intelligence at work in the world.”
“Just because something is understandable doesn’t mean that it’s good.”
“A life without risk is not well lived.”
“This too shall pass.”
“I’m not concerned about the many years of my nonexistence before birth. Why then should I be concerned about the many years of my nonexistence that will follow death?”
-Adam Frank, What if Heaven is Not for Real?
“Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost more than you wanted to pay.”
-Holly, citing a camp preacher
“Sow to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.”
-The Bible
“If God exists, the path to Him lies through suffering.”
-Me
“It is far better to dance alone than not to dance.”
-Me
“Execution precedes planning.”
“Easy to gain, hard to lose.”
A response generated by ChatGPT on Dec 6, 2022 to the prompt “Write a pithy aphorism capturing the difficulty of weight loss in modern society. The original response appended “- the modern struggle of weight loss.” to the end.
“The allure of instant gratification is the biggest obstacle to achieving lasting weight loss in our fast-paced world.”
Another response by ChatGPT to the same prompt.
“You encourage what you allow.”
-Corey Hayes, May 5, 2020
Of Motherhood: “The days are long, and the years are short.”
Mother’s Day observation, Riverside Community Church, May 10, 2020
“It is essential to have men think for me and not just carry out orders.”
George Washington (need to verify exact reference)
“Those who play with the Devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his word.”
-Buckminster Fuller, as quoted in a splash screen to the video game XCOM: Enemy Within.
“Private disorder leads to public ruin.”
-Dr. Caren Silvester in a lecture on Shakespeare’s Richard II, Oct 7, 1998.
“Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God.”
-Crassus to Caesar in the movie Spartacus (1960) at about the 2:05:45 mark.
“If there were no gods at all, I’d revere them. If there were no Rome, I’d dream of her.”
-Crassus to Caesar in the movie Spartacus (1960) at about the 2:05:55 mark.
“If Heaven exists only in my heart and mind, better there than nowhere at all.”
-Me, Dec. 6, 2022