Hall's Aphorisms

No. 1 Ladies and Men's Aphorisms and After Thoughts

In his boundless love the great I Am left behind the safe ninety-and-nine to search for the very last lost little lamb.

Lunge forward with all your heart and lungs to progress mentally, spiritually and physically. The lungs pump air in and out and process it; the heart circulates life giving and sustaining oxygen—an amazing, miraculous example of team work. Let's always team up gladly and effectively with others to move society onward and upward in the same breath-taking way.

May our prayers, as pray-ers, be so humble, sincere and earnest that they pass above the ceiling to the rooftop and beyond.

I endured and it occurred, according to His word.

If you're too afraid to ask, you're really asking for it.

Don't let inhibitions limit propitious ambitions.

Cast the first stone, get bashed by the last.

Hard remonstrances, soft words.

For superior exercise, space the fridge and the TV far apart.

Want to know how superb a progress-blocking tradition is? Attack it. For a block-headed example (astounding insensitivity to what we are foisting on precious little children by tenaciously clinging to a totally obsolete non-system of spelling, shamefully, categorically criminally, blocking simple, easy, speedy acquisition of English literacy) click here.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Noble Sauvage (Noble Savage). Poetic praise of the uncouth, unrefined, primitive inhabitants of earth, extolling them as simple, plain, unsophisticated, uncorrupted souls rather than the unruly, with no rules, bêtes noires (black beasts) that they can be. Patience, long suffering, and charity on the part of the "couth" required here.

Finders keepers... The kind-minded are inclined to find, befriend, assist and uplift society's so-called losers.

Having a right to do something doesn't make it right.

Self-serving assets of egoists: Minds and hands that quickly grasp whatever; eyes for the biggest slice of pie.

Egoistic motto: An eye for an eye? I'll have an eye only for I until I die.

The most vital voyage of discovery: Not a search for new landscapes but for new eyes.

Bumbles and stumbles can forestall tumbles.

Never say you're a poor speaker and then prove it.

Jeepers creepers, do you have to help those bleep [darned] bleep [creepy] bleep [cheapskates]? Gosh all fish hooks, wish you'd stop hangin' with those bleepy [gooks]!

Poets open new windows to life and the world.

I don't dream up jokes; I merely report the doings of politicians and governments.

Don't blame your missteps on your footwear.

He who throws mud loses ground.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words like yours (yurs) are for the birds.

He undoubtedly isn't holier than thou though wholly, totally, certifiedly, hands down, more stuck up and stuck on himself than thou, thee, thine, you all, and ye.

Take no guff—gruff, huffy or scruffy—but rough and tough it out, slough it off, snuff it out or stuff it, restraining rebuffs, stifling cuffs, and remaining amiable and restrained.

When young I wanted to be in the thick of things. Thick was something I never mastered, though; especially thick with chics. Thick-headed appears to be my thing.

Once one glance from her shivered my timbers. Vivid recollections still leave me all aquiver.

Just relax and that molar will be right out. Relax? When I'll be paying forever a billing out of sight?

For countless centuries power belonged to brawn; then came machines and women in jeans with their feminine skills, charm, and wiles. Now, of course, the force is with them and will so remain while men, once cocks of the walk, are now masters of nothing but schlock. Oh, what a crock of a thought!

Reward work well done. Chances are more and better will get done.

Do not yack or yuck to others about your dumb luck.

Fantasies on the luck of the draw draw expectant doodles of oodles of caboodle on paper thinner than thin air.

It's easier to make a buck than a difference.

Smile the while you bid your savings fond adieu. They will never be coming back to you.

Vacation. Nothing to do and all day to do it.

Every master painter was first a dabbler.

Don't confuse a bleary memory with a clear conscience.

What we need is not fact finding but fact facing.

In the fall birds start feeling flighty. At nightfall teens start feeling sprightly.

Where we stand isn't as important as where we land.

Better to ask directions twice than lose your way in a trice.

They say they want to get in the swim, but won't put one toe in the water to test the temperature.

There it is. There you have it. There it goes. There she blows!

There goes that blowhard. Well on his way to blowing it!

When the going gets rough and tough, the tough get going.

How you master your fate is more important than what its fickle finger may finger for you.

Education isn't the filling of a bucket but the sparking of a clinker into a flame.

Do nothing to impede a bad deed when you could and you'll look as good as dead wood.

Now or never. It's up to you. Even a blind man can see that!

Listen impartially to both sides of the story before taking sides.

If you have nothing to say, fritter it away only on those who already know it all.

By always giving in to others we'll end up with nothing good to give.

The best way to get a friend is to amend our faults, be somebody, and befriend someone, get some buddies.

Clothes make or break the man. Investiture: clothing, anything that covers. Symbolically, the confering of authority. Visible tokens: scepter, crown, robes, sword, badge, headgear, coteries of aids, flunkies and security guards, limosines, flags and banners. Hyperbolic symbolism: threads bear intrinsic power. Shed the threads, shed the image and exercising of authority. Shed invulnerability. Mormons and others have ascribed protective power to garments, from sin, mishaps, injury, death. Mormon "temple garments," despite testimonies to the contrary, do not stop bullets or shrapnel, as this combat veteran has noted.

Don't duck it. Dunk it!

Only a dullard who can't swim tests the depth of the water by jumping in.

"Quack, quack quack." Say again. "Quaaaack!" No way! Quacks can't dodge or duck it! Half-cracked quacks get whacked.

Meet the marriage meter. When the two of you first met it was preset to maximize positive possibilities. Later, perhaps, the meter repeated, "Meet'er at least half way! It's entirely meet that you meet him the same way, until the collective conclusion's complete that figuratively speaking he's dead meat.

What does the indicator register now on a scale ranging from tedious to delirious? Are efforts to establish a happy medium capricious or serious? Are there wild swings from one extreme to the other? Are attempts to calibrate dissidences and differences tabulated on a fine or a coarse, a mature or an immature, an agreeably or an acridly codified sensitivity grid? Are the partners dead set on achieving sensible equality, set dead on or off center, or ensconced somewhere in between A quotidian but critical cautionary behest to men: Never come between her and her chocolate.

"Be faithful, be faithful!" A fine sentiment expressed by this hymn... But to what? Whims? Family and social pressures? Soft sells? Hard sells? For Pete's or someone else's sake? Analyze. Research. Consult. Seek. Pray. Have faith, hope, charity. Have good sense. Sense what's right. Never having truly sought (Seek and ye shall find), how can you assert out of the blue, that this and that are true, infantilistically parroting, for example, the mantra, "I know the church is true"?

A couple of Spanish ones employed to end letters:

s.s.s. (su seguro servidor) Your faithful servant
q.b.s.m. (que besa su mano) who kisses your hand
q.b.s.p. (que besa sus pies) who kisses your feet

Don't fret! You'll get somewhere yet.

Cogitated by Wendell H. Hall
(Do as he says...)