Old Saws
by Clyde N. Wilson
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Reaching the pensioned-off age tempts one to bore those younger by bloviating about life’s lessons. I always expected that as one grew older many things would become clearer and more certain. In fact the opposite is true. The older I am the fewer things I am sure about, and I suspect this is not an uncommon reaction.
However, there are a few old saws, sayings, maxims, Bible teachings, proverbs, clichés, that experience has convinced me are indeed truly true.
Less is more.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If its is running OK, leave it alone. Don’t tinker with it on the presumption you can make it better. You are just inviting trouble. However, the opposite is also true: A stitch in time saves nine.
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Or a college student out of a lazy dunce.
Virtue is its own reward. It has to be because it has no other reward.
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, and know when to walk away. However, knowing the “when” is damned tricky.
Another way to put this is: Timing is everything. Actually, timing is not everything, but it is of major importance in almost everything.
You can accomplish almost anything as long as you let other people take credit for it. (“The harvest truly is bounteous, but the labourers are few” Matthew 9:38.)
There is no tellin’ which way luck or a half-broke horse will run. A saying of the antebellum Southern literary character “Simon Suggs.”
Blood will tell. If this bit of wisdom and the preceding one are true, sadly it suggests that heredity and luck are the primary determinants of the quality of a life. Environment and effort can only work with what they are given.
Power corrupts. Actually, Lord Acton’s maxim could be more precisely stated: The pursuit and enjoyment of power corrupts. There are people who are not corrupted by power: George Washington and R.E. Lee, for example.
(Of course there are some old saws that once were true but are no longer: A penny saved is a penny earned. Not when the bankers can make the value of a penny more elastic than a rubber band whenever they wish.)
The South will rise again.
Always judge the thing itself and don’t be misled by the name. (This is my own little contribution.)
The law is made for man and not man for the law.
Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).
No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us (1 John 4:12).
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1 Comment by robert m. peters on 19 November 2007:
Dr. Wilson,
Your words:
“Reaching the pensioned-off age tempts one to bore those younger by bloviating about life’s lessons. I always expected that as one grew older many things would become clearer and more certain. In fact the opposite is true. The older I am the fewer things I am sure about, and I suspect this is not an uncommon reaction.”
In a life which has long since passed, I was the director of one of these state-funded residential schools which dot our Southern landscape. One day, I noted on my calendar that I had an appointment with a senior female student (very intelligent, most gifted and bound for the Ivy League rather than our Kudzu League). At the appointed time, she came in, took the seat which I offered her, looked me in the eye and said, quite emphatically, “Dr. Peters, you’re ignorant!” Without blinking but with various thoughts churning in my head, which was no little taken aback by the unanticipated utterance of the nose-ringed, blue-haired creature sitting in front of me, I responded as if the Holy Spirit had taken over my being, “Miss ________, you are quite right, quite right indeed. After nearly fifty years of life (at that time), over ten years of higher education in various states and on two continents and after administering several of these “elite” schools, I have concluded that the sum of life, in both experience and training, is to teach one how truly ignorant one really is, and therewith comes a modicum of humility as well. However, Miss _________, when I was your age, at seventeen, I was much too arrogant and self-centered to understand how ignorant I really was!”
I remember my words, all these years, almost verbatim. I do not remember the rest of the conversation at all. Nor do I believe that my words hit home with her at all. I am convinced that God sent the unwitting urchinness to me for His purposes, namely to bring me back to the Sermon on the Mount and to the words “Blessed are the poor in spirit ….” I also noted, with a bit of smug satisfaction, which was probably not part of God’s intended lesson, that, in reference to the young lady, no man (blue-haired, nose-ringed creature) is worthless, he can at least be used as a bad example. (I think that Bertolt Brecht gets credit for that statement.)
So, I, too. acknowledge that as I watch the leaves of life’s autumn fall, things are not as clear and as certain as I thought they would be, having learned that a few years back from the “little lady” who came to my office.
2 Comment by robert reavis on 19 November 2007:
Dr. Wilson,
“The older I am the fewer things I am sure about, and I suspect this is not an uncommon reaction.”
The late Mark Van Doren commented in his autobiography that “the wise man is often a sad man who can only say that things were this way or that.” I appreciate your words of wisdom — all of them, even when there is not a damn thing we can do except admire.
3 Comment by Grumpy Old Man on 19 November 2007:
I like:
“Be ye therefore wise as serpents and gentle as doves.”
On the other hand:
“Never give a sucker an even break.”
4 Comment by GJ Tryon on 19 November 2007:
Cf Robert Frost: “They would not find me changed from him they knew- / Only more sure of all I thought was true.” To the poet, life’s adventures and adversities will only serve to test and confirm the heart’s truest intuitions.
5 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 20 November 2007:
Alas, I am no poet.
6 Comment by James Kabala on 20 November 2007:
Acton actually said that “Power tends to corrupt,” so he knew that it did not always do so.
7 Comment by Steve Berg on 20 November 2007:
I am old enough so that the memory is not what it once was, but sadly not old enough to be appropriately pensioned off. As I recall, what Lord Acton said was: “Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and great men are almost always bad men.”
8 Comment by wuthering Heights on 21 November 2007:
It’s a world of apparent opposites, now that we have separated from the animal kingdom sufficiently to be aware of being aware.
ON the other hand…so that both are taught in the schools, if we were created that way (aware of being aware from the git-go) well then, – it’s a world of apparent opposities.
Any way you go Dr. Wilson it’s seamless? The advantage, yes, is to the observer – but he often primarily projects who he is at what he sees? -
Somtimes synthesis is possible – the dialectic – thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis. Sometimes it’s not possible and it’s Either this Or that… a binary choice. So leave well enough alone… Or, when it’s synthesis he who hesitates is lost? “help” I kid. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Caution’s the way. err…
It’s a world of apparent opposites. In my case I can’t wait till tomorrow ’cause it gets clearer everyday. [humor]
anyone as wise as a serpent and as gentle as a dove would never (probably) give a sucker an even break. it only hurts the sucker!? and then no good deed goes unpunished. … And so we’re in iraq…?
Life, love it or leave it?! Now it’s time to leave iraq. no?!
9 Comment by Frank on 22 November 2007:
Here’s a good quote to add to the list: “Truth always goes her way alone. If the masses join in, f they fall in step behind her, it’s a sign that she must have sold herself out.”
– Jean Raspail. Camp of the Saints.
10 Comment by wuthering Heights on 22 November 2007:
Truth usually goes her way alone… there is always at least an exception to the rule which proves it.
Lesson for America if she’s smart:
“So I return rebuked to MY content,
And gain by ills thrice more than I have spent.” -W.S.
she’s smart the polls show – so truth is not alone…nor as alone as falsehood is – upon and around the throne, Frank.
No? got a sub-text?
_________________
11 Comment by Frank on 22 November 2007:
Rebuilding and romanticizing the past would be nice.
Perhaps as moderns begin to see what their progress is giving them, they’ll embrace nature and tradition. However, as things are it looks like such will be too little, too late – at least for America. You can’t make a silk purse out of rotten silk, or I should say the craftsman won’t bother making a purse out of silk he thinks is rotten. (subtext: a myth of a common and unique origin as well as one of native culture* or at least religion are needed.)
That’s a nice twist, but the masses are the ones buying the falsehoods. If the King caters to a falsehood, he loses his head.
Or do you mean the King (managerial elites) believes in useful ideologies and shallow justifications for his power? Well, even if he does, the masses aren’t any better unless uncertainty is preferred. People don’t want truth – they want hope, simple explanations, and easy solutions.
*I mean the Chronicles definition of culture that includes a religious foundation and extends it as a living tradition.
12 Comment by Chance Gardner on 23 November 2007:
Frank you’re over-thinking it insufficiently…
i hear you. probably so does w.h.
the people are instinctually moral like the organs in our own and their own bodies…which actually compete slightly but mostly cooperate… for the good of the whole body in the microcosm and the good therefore of the common weal in the larger context. this doesn’t come out of thin air – it’s how it is. (albeit it can be manipulated for the worse.)
since we lost the corporate fidelity of the classical world and went christian too – toward that which is transcendental so that we ‘might’ transcend or improve upon classical limits which may not be absolute in themselves as limits – the people too are in that regard rudderless…not before the prevailing winds but thanks to culture before the invisible god, holy spirit, christ. Absent that – which it isn’t completely absent – they yet instinct/intuit/feel what’s moral. they’re saying even WE (the people) know we fell behind you as our leaders Because – you lied – it’s not right what you’ve/we’ve subsequently done [in iraq]
had it not been Done though and absent this experience of it – the people would have rallied subsequently if convinced of it [by leaders] to condemn those who didn’t do it, if their inaction resulted in a catastrophy of its own. (maybe another ’staged’ 9/11?)
i think steve – w.h. is saying the bad think like – never give a sucker (that’s how they view, sadly, their charges, the people) an even break – which isn’t so bad a thing to perceive and act upon because if you do [give a sucker an even break] it only usually hurts the sucker – and then no good deed goes unpunished… & that worse scenario may get set up. … why the cynical founding fathers of america who knew that said look – govt. is Evil (an automatic conspiracy since the advantage is to the observer and the tax collector) unless in some rare instances helpful … so if it rules the least it rules best. -can we set something like that up? … or for christ’s sake could anarchy be worse? that’s probably worse.
So rulers usually see whatever they do (regarding the people/the suckers) as 6 of one half-dozen of another. Thus bush running as the ‘live and let live candidate’ only to suddenly [like instant coffee] become – ‘the democratic savior of the world el’presidente.’
maybe i misunderstand w.h. – or yourself – i don’t know. so w.h. seems to be saying… now in this weird process of ‘democracy’ or demo-crazy… it’s time to get out of iraq and let the chips fall where they may – at least that IS the moral thing to do, and at least the people know it too.
13 Comment by Kevin Gutzman on 24 November 2007:
Dear Dr. Wilson,
You say, “Always judge the thing itself and don’t be misled by the name. (This is my own little contribution.)” Confucius in the Analects said, “First, call things by their true names.”
Regards,
Kevin Gutzman
14 Comment by Frank on 24 November 2007:
W.H. and Chance Gardner,
First off I must put my original quote in context: It was made by a fictional popular commentator within Camp of the Saints. So its original intent was that: was Dr. Wilson as popular as Sean Hannity, Dr. Wilson would know Dr. Wilson had traded honesty and principle for fame and fortune. This is not meant as an absolute…
—
Chance Gardner,
Thank you for the reply, and I enjoyed the witty quip: “you’re over-thinking it insufficiently…”
The people naturally have some good in them, but they’re mostly bad. Some are better than others, and they all need guidance in tradition and government. Out of anarchy would arise order, if only that of war lords who could readily prove to idealistic libertarians just how evil man’s nature can be, freed from the constraints of tradition and government. Over time, maybe something like the West would be born out of the rule of force: a pinnacle of the new civilisation, only to commit suicide and start anew.
What you said about teaching a sucker a lesson sounds potentially good, but hopefully not mixed with sophistry. That is to say: a man enslaved by his gambling or drug abuse is not necessarily learning (or a productive member of society). His enslaver ought to be punished, and severely.
The same is true of the village idiot being impoverished by usury. The cold hearted libertarian might argue this is social darwinism, that laisser-faire is the best possible economic system, or that the village idiot is not of the concern of other free individuals.
However, what he is ignoring is that 1. such things are unChristian (I will gladly defend this if needed) and religion is important to a society 2. concern for others within society is important and 3. a citizenry that pursues corrupt pleasures is not only less happy but weakens the society.
And once society collapses, our (fictional) satanic little libertarian will get what he deserves good and hard. I should add that I suspect most libertarians mean well and are even good Christians, but philosophically their ideology is as poisonous as socialism. The proper reaction to big government is ideal government not minimal government.
15 Comment by Sean on 28 November 2007:
Well said, Clyde.
16 Pingback by Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture | Your Home for Traditional Conservatism » Unsolved Mysteries on 19 December 2007:
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