So, I’m sure you’ve heard a bunch of sayings like such… Not sure what you’d call them…
These are just a couple off the top of my head:
“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”
“It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it”
Any more?
“It’s not the men in my life, it’s the life in my men.”
That sort of thing? The general term for this is chiasmus. Wikipedia defines that as “…the figure of speech in which two or more clauses are related to each other through a reversal of structures in order to make a larger point; that is, the clauses display inverted parallelism.”
For more examples, start here.
There’s the country song classic:
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy…”
I’ll tell you what you missed when the ocean met the sky.
Always being right is important.
Being important is not always being right.
To learn my teachings, I must first teach you how to learn.
He who questions training only trains himself at asking questions.
When you can balance a tack hammer on your head, you will head off your foes with a balanced attack.
But until you learn to master your rage…
Maybe someone should make a superhero character who prattles on like this.
cmyk, I’ve never heard that “frontal lobotomy” country song - I think Dorothy Parker coined that phrase.
Bonus points, ftg, for the Mystery Men reference. Love that movie.
JFK said in his Inaugural Address, and was later quoted by Obama, for the proposition that “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” I like that.
An old saying among pilots, “I’d rather be down here wishing I was up there, than up there wishing I was down here.”
…
People who fail to plan plan to fail.
It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” - Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
“Nice to see you, to see you nice,” - Forsyth, The Generation Game
I’m glad I’m not the only one who immediately thought of this!
The things you own, end up owning you.
-Tyler Durden.
I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.
(yes, not really what the OP was asking, I just like the quote)
There are old pilots, and bold pilots, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Good from far but far from good.
A very stupid platitude: It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.
This one sticks out because it’s annoying;
Working hard or hardly working?
A better twist on it, from Office Space:
*Bob Porter: Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately.
Peter Gibbons: Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been missing it, Bob.
*
I got this saying on a magnet out of a gumball machine when I was about 7. Still have it.
As a matter of fact, it took a bit of therapy to help me get over that little saying.