… [T]here is no need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power and as well as possible, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that the simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire the invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise fail to praise it. … [I]f you succeed in this you will have achieved no small success.”
— Miguel de Cervantes (from the Prologue to Don Quixote)
Tag: …wow.
I mean “wow.” Just … wow.
Blaming others is the suicide of [national] liberty.”
— R’ Jonathan Sacks, zt”l (from https://aish.com/302413231/)
Be not ashamed to learn truth from any source.”
— Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol (1021-1058)
IF YOU CAN’T EXPLAIN IT simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
— Albert Einstein
THE AX EXISTED FOR 1.4 million years before anyone thought to put a handle on it.”
— James Williams
I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT ‘bizarre’ means anymore.”
— Anthony Bourdain
It used to freak me out that I’d never see the back of my own head. Now that I’ve accepted it, I can move on to the house of mirrors.”
— Barbatus the Elder
Pithyism #80
THE OLDER I GET, THE older “old” gets — and the younger “young” seems.
Top 10 Metaphoragings: 2021
AND SO, AS OUR EARTH races to catch up to the orbital location arbitrarily assigned to “New Year’s Day,” let us pause and reflect on the year that’s passed (bloggishly speaking, anyway): My Favorite Jewish Joke – 130 views Far…
Pithyism #Now
NEVER BEFORE, AND NEVER AGAIN: Out of all the aeons, this moment is unique, both to you and to its circumstances. Grok the hell out of it.
Tree of Life’s members will do everything for the 11 dead except show up in their place.”
– Pittsburgh rabbi to Mark Oppenheimer, from the latter’s “The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood”
When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last. … The meaning of the things we revere is overwhelming, and beyond the grasp of our understanding.”
— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel