Aphorisms from Austin O’Malley’s Keystones of Thought, 1914:

• Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
• Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself.
• Humility is the sister of humor.
• Think what you have to say, and then don’t say it.
• Men that believe only what they understand can write their creed on a postage-stamp.
• A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef.
• The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.
• Comedy smiles from a neutral intellect; humor laughs from a favoring intellect.
• An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.
• The picturesque is the romantic seen.
• The worst miser is the learned man that will not write.
• To laugh at yourself is real life, never acting.
• Put your purse in your head and you will not be robbed.
• A critic at best is only a football coach.
• A gentleman seldom meets rude persons.
• It is yesterday that makes to-morrow so sad.

“A little learning striving to explain a great subject is like an attempt to light up a cathedral with a single taper, which does no more than to show for an instant one foolish face.”