Amnesiac Aphorisrms

I've been going through family papers today. It's always a very interesting and emotional experience-- finding old photographs, old Christmas cards, old letters and manuscripts and goodness knows what else.

One of the things I found was a list of aphorisms, headed "Thought for the Day". Some of them made me laugh out loud, while others were rather bizarre. The funny thing is that they are written in my handwriting, but I don't remember writing them. I know that they date from about ten years ago, since the next page of the jotter contains one of my many stabs at an opening paragraph for The Black Feather, my first novel. (Which I did eventually finish, I'm proud to say-- poor as it was.)

Anyway, here are my aphorisms, just as I discovered them:

Thought for the Day

Life is like a simile.

Why is there no opposite of pregnant?

The conquest of ignorance by knowledge is the worst form of imperialism.

All triumph is just failure with lipstick.

Liberals want to legalise cannabis, then call religion the opium of the people. No logic.

Laws should have teeth but not rabies.

The man who never made a mistake is too damned smart to admit it.

To know you are ordinary makes you extraordinary.

You CAN step in the same river twice. And you're already wet, anyway.

Blasphemy is the b-side of devotion.

One day we will have the technology to delete the eighties.

Youth is wasted on the young. That's why we forbid it to them.

Take your socks off immediately, Margaret. (Note: I have NO Idea what I meant by this.)

A square is only pretending to have four sides. (Ditto.)

Distrust anyone who SAYS a-choo while sneezing.

Nobody who says they are feeling under-par means what they think they mean.

Maybe you will disappear when the man in the mirror walks away. (This might be my favourite.)

Deep in your heart you know it's not going to work, don't you?

Today is a good day for someone else to turn over a good leaf.

If a cliché keeps its nerve it will become a proverb.

Clowns laugh to hide their laughter.

A revolution always ends up exactly where it began.

Naming constellations is monumental cheek.

The living room is where you watch TV.

Play is work, with the extra duty of being happy.