November '01 Epigrams of the Day

Life: The bounteous ancestor of death.

Reason: (1) The cat's-paw of the instincts; a sun that gives no heat. (2) A faculty that makes man god-like every day in the week except any one of the usual seven. (3) The bowling-alley of the psychic life. (4) The compass on a boat that is not bound anywhere. (5) A fog that obscures the magical vistas in the firmament of the Imagination.

Rumor: (1) The raw material of history. (2) The echo of something that almost happened. (3) The subconscious part of every man's desire (as, for instance, if a man is told that there is a rumor that his best friend is dead he will hurry to verify it). (4) The smoke from an unfought battle. (The first well-founded rumor of which we have any knowledge was that which emanated from Satan after being catapulted into Hell to the effect that the brains of the Upper House had changed its residence - this rumor probably having been put afloat by Satan himself.)

Logic: (1) The mathematics of lying. (2) A Sorceress who can prove to you while you are blindfolded that one and one are two.

Impersonal: (1) To leave one's self behind and advance upon the realm of God. (2) To ascend from the Earth to the Moon, from the Moon to the stars, and from the stars to that undiscovered Self from whose bourne we are often flung back into the gutters of "I will." (3) The serene and impotent Fourth Dimension; the Siberia of Desire; the veritable Mansion in the Skies.

Suppose you drop a few bombs on your prejudices.

Votes for women! And as for European Statesmanship, could women have done any worse?

Heaven is largely a matter of digestion.

When a man applies a torch to my home, the question of the man's nationality, whether he be Slav or German, does not interest me save for purposes of identification.

The test of character is tokened by the way a man treats those less fortunate than he.

Violence, as a corrective for commercial jealousy, is scarcely good economics.

We are in mourning for Bill Kaiser, who is a dead one, and doesn't know it!

The Roycroft Orb To return to the Epigram Guide Webpage.