It's often been written that the shortest distance to the truth is a story. I've also found proverbs and wisdom literature to be helpful in this regard as well. What I mean by this is not the use of allegory or methaphor as in a story, parable, fable, myth, etc., but a straightforward observation that points out important truths which help to focus the mind and will on important matters so one might live more fully and deeply.

As with allegory and metaphor, we can theologize about aphorisms, but the best ones stand on their own and provoke serious without requiring a philosophy or theology to illucidate or contextualize. Not that it hurts if that happens, however . . .

I'd like this thread to be a sharing of such wisdom sayings--your own, or those you've read that speak to you. Here's a start.

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If you're going to be alive anyway, you might as well strive to live as fully as possible.

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Can't "find yourself." Just open your eyes. There you are . . . looking.

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You can do whatever you want, but you will pay consequences for your choices. What are your consequences telling you?

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Suffering (mental, emotional) exists in the gap between what you want and what you don't have. Narrow the gap and you will reduce your suffering.
- A basic Buddhist insight -

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Every second all is new
when preconceptions are no more.

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From Chapter 23, "The Imitation of Christ"
- reflections on death -

VERY soon your life here will end; consider, then, what may be in
store for you elsewhere. Today we live; tomorrow we die and are
quickly forgotten. Oh, the dullness and hardness of a heart which
looks only to the present instead of preparing for that which is to
come!

What good is it to live a long life when we amend that life so little?
Indeed, a long life does not always benefit us, but on the contrary,
frequently adds to our guilt. Would that in this world we had lived
well throughout one single day. Many count up the years they have
spent in religion but find their lives made little holier. If it is so
terrifying to die, it is nevertheless possible that to live longer is
more dangerous. Blessed is he who keeps the moment of death ever
before his eyes and prepares for it every day.

How happy and prudent is he who tries now in life to be what he wants
to be found in death.

The present is very precious; these are the days of salvation; now is
the acceptable time. How sad that you do not spend the time in which
you might purchase everlasting life in a better way. The time will
come when you will want just one day, just one hour in which to make
amends, and do you know whether you will obtain it?

Ah, foolish one, why do you plan to live long when you are not sure of
living even a day? How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched
away! How often have you heard of persons being killed by drownings,
by fatal falls from high places, of persons dying at meals, at play,
in fires, by the sword, in pestilence, or at the hands of robbers!
Death is the end of everyone and the life of person quickly passes away
like a shadow.

Who will remember you when you are dead? Who will pray for you? Do
now, beloved, what you can, because you do not know when you will die,
nor what your fate will be after death. Gather for yourself the riches
of immortality while you have time. Think of nothing but your
salvation. Care only for the things of God. Make friends for yourself
now by honoring the saints of God, by imitating their actions, so that
when you depart this life they may receive you into everlasting
dwellings.

You can't have everything. Where would you keep it? - Steven Wright

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. � John W. Gardner

The perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities, we will then be a happy and a virtuous people. � Mark Twain

Live your life as though there really is a God who loves you,
for love is the best way to live, no matter what,
and believing in a God of love can help you to love better.

If death is the end with nothing beyond,
then you have lost nothing by living a life of love.
If life does continue beyond the grave,
then you will go on as you have in this life, loving as before.

So there is nothing lost by believing in a God of love,
and in the end, it could well make all the difference in this world
and the next.

- Apologies to Pascal for elaborating on his "Wager"

re: your elaboration of the "wager"

One would think that same would be noncontroversial, wouldn't one?

"There is that of God in everyone."

shanti

Nice, shanti!

- - -

Something bothering you?
See what you can do about it within ethical bounds and let go of the rest.
Simply drop it!
Turn it over to the care of God.
It does you no good to trouble yourself about what you cannot change.

- - -

Never do for others what they can and should do for themselves
(unless you choose to do so as an act of love or generosity.)
To do more can deprive the other of an opportunity to learn responsibility
And can make them needlessly dependent on you.
Surely there are other ways you can find significance in this world?

- - -

If you cannot love someone, at least do them no harm.
What would this mean?
Do not do to others what you would not have done unto you.

Henry David Thoreau, the renowned HSP (Highly Secluded Person), offers many words of wisdom:

That man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

From Reagan on Life

Reagan�s favorite joke:

Worried that their son was too optimistic, the parents of a little boy took him to a psychiatrist. Trying to dampen the boy�s spirits, the psychiatrist showed him into a room piled high with nothing but horse manure. Yet instead of displaying distaste, the little boy clambered to the top of the pile, dropped to all fours, and began digging.

�What do you think you�re doing?� the psychiatrist asked.

�With all this manure,� the little boy replied, beaming, �there must be a pony in here somewhere.�

---

�A lot of people have a mistaken conception of free will,� Rev. Lorenzo Albacete, a priest I got to know during the Reagan years, once told me. �They think exercising free will means choosing their own reality. Try hard enough, and you can make yourself rich or famous or beautiful � that kind of thing. Well, man, I�m sorry. But it just ain�t so. Nobody gets to choose his parents. Nobody gets to choose whether he�s good looking or ugly or whether he�s intelligent or stupid. We all have to take reality as it comes to us � presidents, popes, all of us.

�The question is what you choose to do with reality. Reagan never permitted his misfortunes to interfere with his development as a human person. Instead he used them. All his life Reagan exercised his free will by choosing to seek the good in reality as it came to him.

�The pony in the dung heap?� Father Albacete said. �That�s it. That�s the entire anthropology of human existence. You become a complete person by digging for the pony in the midst of all the crap life throws at you.�

True love cannot exist until we see the other as other, rather than a projection from our need.

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If you can't do any good, then at least do no harm.

Hey Phil and all--

Just a couple of my favorites from the 17th century.

From the Holy Sonnets: By John Donne

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?


Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new...

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you entrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

*

No man is an island, entire of itself

*

George Herbert for "Prayer" (1)

Church bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

*

Milton from "Areopagitica"

As therefore the state of man is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian.

Bacon "On Truth"

...but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage point of truth (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), "and to see the errors, wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below."

It is a disastrous discovery, as Emerson says somewhere, that we exist. I mean, it is disastrous when instead of merely attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose, with a certain type of mind and a certain type of eyes. It is disastrous because, if you are not very careful, the color of the rose gets attributed to our optic nerves and its scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose left. � C.S. Lewis [Thanks to MM for his Bulverism link.]

"If"

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

By Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).