A Merry Chiasmus To All

A chiasmus is two otherwise parallel phrases with the second being a reverse order of the first. A famous illustration is Cicero's “One should eat to live, not live to eat.”

Here for the holidays are some more - some familiar and some not.



It's not the men in my life, but the life in my men.

- Mae West


"Errol Flynn died on a 70-foot boat with a 17-year-old girl. Walter has always wanted to go that way, but he's going to settle for a 17-footer with a 70-year-old.

— Betsy Maxwell Cronkite, wife of Walter Cronkite.


"When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that."

— Gertrude Stein


"The instinct of a man is to pursue everything that flies from him, and to fly from all that pursue him."

— Voltaire


"Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

- Robert Frost


Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

- Leonardo da Vinci


There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.

- G. K. Chesterton


It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

- Mark Twain


Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.

- Anon (I had to bring back our old friend one more time!)


Money sometimes makes fools of important persons, but it may also make important persons of fools.

- Walter Winchell


Half of our mistakes in life arise from feeling where we ought to think, and thinking where we ought to feel.

- John Churton Collins


Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.

- Thomas Huxley



Remember - The waist is a terrible thing to mind. The mind is a terrible thing to waste.









Here's champagne for our real friends, and real pain for our sham friends.