Never punch a gift horse in the mouth.
The grass is always greener if you paint it green.
This one isn’t corny. It’s actually quite profound. I just heard it today.
“Other people are not failed attempts at being you.”
Words of wisdom from the National Lampoon:
A wise man marries his second wife first.
(I don’t see why that wouldn’t work for the ladies, too.)
“What, me worry?”
Alfred E. Neuman
Similar to my brother’s motto: It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
“It’s better to look good than to be good.” I came up with this (admittedly sarcastic) saying when I took notice of who was getting promoted at work. I learned perception is more important than anything else.
My wife tends to search for things to worry about. Me, on the other hand, I frequently quote Matthew 6:34 - “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
" 'Tis better to light a single candle, than curse the dark" is another one.
Similar (now that I am getting older): If I feel the need to pee during the night, just get out of bed and go. Ignoring it and fighting it and trying to go back to sleep will never work anyway.
That Peanuts strip was where I first heard the aphorism. Took me several years to appreciate the wisdom, though.
I wept because I had no shoes til I met a man who had no class.
“What other people think of you is none of your business.”
“Hatred is like eating a little bit of poison every day, hoping the other person dies.”
“It’s better to be happy than to be right.”
“If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.” (I.e., don’t give up on following your passions just because you’ll never be good enough for stardom.)
“Life is suffering, but suffering’s avoidable.” (Buddhist precept. Preferably sung under the breath to the tune of “B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name-O”.)
“The price of purity is purists.” (That one’s from the essayist Calvin Trillin. I.e., the tradeoff we make for having things that are done really well and knowledgeably is putting up with the kind of obsessive PITA people who really care about doing things really well and knowledgeably.)
“Ye wouldna worry sae much what ither people thought of ye if ye kenned how seldom they do.” (The fake Scottish accent is an important part of this aphorism.)
I believe it was Neil Gaiman who made the following observation in one of the Sandman books:
“‘Change’ is how you know time is happening.”
Or as I saw in a Ziggy cartoon (not sure who originated it): “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.”
“There’s always pain: either the pain of change or the pain of staying the same; your choice”
“I got my wish.” ~ Hobbes
My interpretation: be happy with what you have.
While we’re talking about Calvin…one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read:
Been there, done that, ate the t-shirt.
I don’t know about that. I mean, privacy and all that, of course, but there are plenty of scenarios in which it’s in your interest to know what others think of you. War and commerce, for starters.
Yeah, that’s a real good one. I heard it in reference to holding a grudge. Forgive, but don’t forget.