Saws (cont.)
Better late than before anybody had invited you.
Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
Saw, n. A trite popular saying, or proverb…. So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following examples of old saws fitted with new teeth.
A penny saved is a penny to squander.
A man is known by the company he organizes.
A bad workman quarrels with the man who calls him that.
Satire, n. An obsolete kind of literary composition in which the vices and follies of the authorʼs enemies were expounded with imperfect tenderness. In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic.
Sauce, n. The one infallible sign of civilization and enlightenment…. For every sauce invented and accepted a vice is renounced and forgiven.
Sabbath, n. A weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Rumor, n. A favorite weapon of the assassins of character.
Russian, n. A person with a Caucasian body and a Mongolian soul.
Romance, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writerʼs thought is tethered to probability, as a domestic horse to the hitching-post, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination – free, lawless, immune to bit and rein. Your novelist is a poor creature, as Carlyle might say – a mere reporter. He may invent his characters and plot, but he must not imagine anything taking place that might not occur, albeit his entire narrative is candidly a lie. … There are great novels, for great writers have “laid waste their powers” to write them, but it remains true that far and away the most fascinating fiction that we have is “The Thousand and One Nights.”
Robber, n. A candid man of affairs.
Rope, n. An obsolescent appliance for reminding assassins that they too are mortal. It is put about the neck and remains in place oneʼs whole life long.
Riot, n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.
Road, n. A strip of land along which one may pass from where it is too tiresome to be to where it is futile to go.
Right, n. Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do oneʼs neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.
Rime, n. Agreeing sounds in the terminals of verse, mostly bad. The verses themselves, as distinguished from prose, mostly dull. Usually (and wickedly) spelled “rhyme.”
Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
Reverence, n. The spiritual attitude of a man to a god and a dog to a man.
hamiltonbeck 