My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my grandmother. Known to favor sayings such as “Don’t believe what you hear and only half of what you read,” Grandmother Brown had a big influence on my life as well as my love for words.

Late in 2019, a series of pithy proverbs — those bursts of truth in 20 words or so — debuted on the blog. After six months they came together in a post entitled More to Consider.* Four years later I’m still at it. Let’s look at I love the pithy proverb — Volume 8 to see what made it to the More to Consider segment over the past six months.

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Living with the unpredictability of life

I’ve been focused a great deal this year on living with the limitations and unpredictability that come our way every day. Several of the pithy proverbs speak to this idea/ideal, beginning with one from poet John O’Donohue, followed by a second from poet Mary Oliver.

I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.

John O’Donohue

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Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

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Books are a gateway to wonder and awe

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I latch onto pithy proverbs about books at every chance I get. I was delighted to read a quote from President Dwight Eisenhower delivered to the graduates at Dartmouth University in a commencement address in June 1953. In fact, over the past six months I’ve featured book-related quotes and proverbs from two U.S. presidents, one founding father … and Groucho. That would make quite a Mount Rushmore tableau!

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

Abraham Lincoln

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The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.

Benjamin Franklin

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Groucho Marx

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Kindness is so very important in life

I’ve loved this saying by the writer Robyn Ryle the very first moment I saw it.

What more do you need to know about a person than how they treat their dog when they believe no one else is watching?

Robyn Ryle

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And this quote has become something of a mantra for me in my third stage of life.

Try to be nice, always be kind.

Dr. Who (written by Steven Moffat)

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Thinking about what matters

Our goal in life is not to become more spiritual, but to become human.

Richard Rohr

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I wrote a full essay on More to Come around this simple quote:

Sin is simply the failure to bother to love.

James F. Keenan, S.J.

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Sometimes our spiritual goals are skewed, as Father Richard Rohr suggests.

We prefer heavenly transactions to our own transformation.

Richard Rohr

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By our love, the divine may be reached and held; by our thinking, never.

Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing

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And the kitchen sink (i.e., what’s left)

Your rights end at the end of your nose; that’s where somebody else’s nose begins.

Anonymous

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Those who say one thing and do another are at least acknowledging that right and wrong exist, as noted in the following:

Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

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Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor Frankl

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This one goes well with Grandmother’s saying at the top of this post:

Don’t believe everything you think.

Scott McGill, Ecotone Ine.

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I’ll leave you with my personal pithy proverb, which is life rule #1:

Be grateful. Be thankful. Be compassionate. Every day.

More to come…

DJB

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*To capture some of my favorite sayings I created a feature on More to Come that I labeled “More to Consider.” I update these quick bursts of truth every couple of weeks. After the initial More to Consider post pulling together the first group highlighted, I brought out Volume 2: A plethora of pithy proverbs followed with Volume 3: A profusion of pithy proverbs and Volume 4: A plentitude of pithy proverbs. I finally turned to the Super Bowl system (minus the pretentious Roman numerals) with I love the pithy proverb — Volume 5, Volume 6, and Volume 7.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash