Ne’er take a wife till thou hast a house (& a fire) to put her in.

Love well, whip well.

Hunger never saw bad bread.

Beware of the young Doctor & the old Barber.

The poor have little, beggars none, the rich too much, enough not one.

After 3 days men grow weary, of a wench, a guest, & weather rainy.

He that drinks fast, pays slow.

The heart of a fool is in his mouth, but the mouth of a wise man is in his heart.

Men & Melons are hard to know.

He’s the best physician that knows the worthlessness of the most medicines.

Keep your mouth wet, feet dry.

Where bread is wanting, all’s to be sold.

Old Maids lead Apes there, where the old Batchelors are turn’d to Apes.

He that has neither fools, whores nor beggars among his kindred, is the son of a thunder-gust.

He that lives upon Hope, dies farting.

Never praise your Cyder, Horse, or Bedfellow.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong, and homely.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

There’s many witty men whose brains can’t fill their bellies.

Pain wastes the Body, Pleasures the Understanding.

There’s more old Drunkards than old Doctors.

She that paints her Face, thinks of her Tail.

Poverty wants some things, Luxury many things, Avarice all things.

A Lie stands on 1 leg, Truth on 2.

Great wits jump (says the Poet) and hit his Head against the Post.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the Philosophers-Stone.

Why does the blind man’s wife paint herself?

Force shits upon Reason’s Back.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

He that would live in peace & at ease, Must not speak all he knows, nor judge all he sees.

Would you persuade, speak of Interest, not of Reason.

Teach your child to hold his tongue, he’ll learn fast enough to speak.

He that is rich need not live sparingly, and he that can live sparingly need not be rich.

He does not possess Wealth, it possesses him.

Onions can make ev’n Heirs and Widows weep.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

The greatest monarch on the proudest throne, is oblig’d to sit upon his own arse.

Poor Dick, eats like a well man, and drinks like a sick.

Well done is better than well said.

He that pursues two Hares at once, does not catch one and lets t’other go.

Great talkers should be cropt, for they’ve no need of ears.

Who has deceiv’d thee so oft as thy self?

Write with the learned, pronounce with the vulgar.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.

Wish not so much to live long as to live well.

Reading makes a full Man, Meditation a profound Man, discourse a clear Man.

Thou can’st not joke an Enemy into a Friend; but thou may’st a Friend into an Enemy.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them!

Tis a strange forest that has no rotten wood in’t.
And a strange Kindred that all are good in’t.

Observe all men; thy self most.

-Richard Suanders.

Some are pretty “corny” in this day and age I guess, (the seemingly simplistic and “preachy” form of the proverb, or aphorism, itself is inherently hard to swallow for we moderns I think, is anyone bothering to coin new ones?) but c’mon: “He that lives upon Hope, dies farting.” That’s pure gold.

If you are into nuggets such as these, and those above are not enough to slake your thirst for Poor Richard’s varied wisdom, see:

600 proverbs from 1734-1747 by Benjamin Franklin. (more here, here, here, and here.)

For more on the almanac see:

here, here, here, here, here, here,  and for some insight into Franklin’s use of “chiasmus” see here.

Before you go, let me leave you with this:

“An empty bag cannot stand upright.”

True indeed.

In that celebrities are a wide-spread and shared point of associative reference I wonder how much they color our perception of the strangers all around us? Take the example pictured in the thumbnail above: Paul Giamatti.

During the period when the movie Sideways was moving through our culture like wildfire did the common perception of him physically combine with attributes of his character intellectually and emotionally, to form a kind of reference point for short, balding, goateed men everywhere? Which is to say during that period did our minds involuntarily find that strangers around us, of similar physical proportion, were a bit more endearing? Perhaps even a bit more amusing or likable? Did short, balding, goateed strangers everywhere, unfounded though it might be, grow slightly more well rounded and “fleshed-out”  in in the eyes of we judges?

An obvious example might be Michael Jackson impersonators. I have to assume that since his trial on charges of pedophilia, and the resulting shift of public opinion,  their interactions with strangers must have become more complex and their business less lucrative. Agreed? So why shouldn’t it be the same for more subtle variations?

For example:

Did horse-faced women walking the streets suddenly become a bit more attractive during sarah Jessica Parker’s ballyhooed stint on Sex and the City?

Did obese tackily-dressed grease-balls in the office-place become somewhat less laughable and simultaneously more imposing after the cast of The Soprano’s became popular?

Did severe-looking suited shrews seem even more hideous and shrew-like after Ann Coulter’s ascendance?

Did poindexters with glasses and bowl-cuts seem suddenly more attractive to the devious among the opposite sex after Bill Gates became the single richest man on the planet?

Did vacuous, squinty-eyed, good-ol-boys and bald, permanently scowling, humorless suits suddenly seem even less affective and trustworthy after Bush and Cheney’s second term began?

I’m not sure, that’s why I ask. But it does seem likely, even leaving aside my poor examples here, that celebrities which occupy easily recognizable physical archetypes must inform our judgement when it comes to the strangers around us, and let’s face it, really, everyone is a stranger.

What say ye?

All of the images from the book are digitized and on display in large scale at the McGill Library Page: Il Bestario Barocco. Some further information is available here. Hope you enjoyed.

Boots

Flower Monster

Bass Boy

Solitude

Pancake Goblin

Skate Boy

Dentist

Love Monster

Hand Girl

If you’ve got any comments or question for Brett feel free to leave them below, perhaps he’ll come down from his lair, drop by the site, and answer them in person, and if not I’ll do my best. 

After a discussion I had this morning here are a few points to consider and kick around, in no particular order:

American culture, meaning the culture, not the government, of the United States of America, was nurtured under puritanical principles, which we have yet, in our 230 years of existence, to shake off. Today’s so called “culture wars” are just another in the long line of skirmishes in which one group of people, lets call them “those who wish to move forward and evolve” attempts to throw off the suffocating and muscle numbing yoke of the old guard, let’s call them “those that wish to take globs of warm amber into their lungs and become fossilized forever in the continually outmoded past of human experience.”

American culture is one fed on repression. Our notions and experiences of sex, the most universal and natural of human experiences, are warped, from our puritanical upbringing, in ways no other culture (save perhaps the Japanese) could even begin to comprehend. For us everything must be hidden and secret. For us everything must be dirty and guilty. For us pleasures of the flesh can never be trusted and so never completely enjoyed. We are a land of philosophical eunuchs, even the best of us, when it comes to human sexuality. We skulk around feeling guilty, averting our eyes when we are supposed to, masturbating in secret places with the memories of what we’ve seen. The worst of us would have vagina’s sewn up with consecrated threads, only to be cut on a wedding night, with saintly scissors; penises lopped off, only to be attached again for the purpose of overpopulation. Every man, woman, and yes- child, knows the deceitful unworkability of this. But we are cowed by those with the loudest mouths. We nod and pretend. We must deny everything and sublimate our yearnings into lies and violence.

Other cultures, with the good fortune to have existed for thousands of years, in one place, look at us and shake their heads. “How can they be so childish?” they must wonder. “How can they be so full of shit?!” And I wonder as well. How?

How, in the year 2006, can so many of us still be so ignorant of the obvious? Heads can be cut off on 80 foot screens, bowels torn from bellies to slap against thighs, bullets can enter bodies from 10 different angles, but the word “fuck” can not be permitted on the airwaves. A breast can never be glimpsed. A fully nude body must be accompanied with a warning which tells us: “This is very naughty and bad for you!” The peoples who descend from ancient Romans, who walk the same avenues as their ruined forefathers, look at us and laugh as they slap one another on the asses without benefit of a lawyer’s council.

We despise the old. We cringe at their wrinkles and bellow behind their slow motions. We put them in cheap rooms to die while doing every ineffective thing we can to fend off age in ourselves. Knives slip between our skin and bones to artificially tighten, firm-up, enlarge, and slim down. We inject poison into our faces to remove our hard-won wrinkles. We dress in children’s clothes and pretend at child-like freedom. We buy a never ending succession of “toys” we don’t need. In short we make vulgar monsters of ourselves. Everyone sees this but no one admits to the ugliness of it all.

We see the fake breasts creasing and bulging on the sides, we see the faces pulled back into masks, we see the wigs shift, we watch the artificially plumped lips move, we see the huge heads, like baubles, of those who had the fat vacuumed from them, we watch the starving women making excuses and we pretend this is beauty. We pretend we are fooled and celebrate it on every magazine cover and television screen. We pretend the glow of youth dwells on a knife edge, in a needle, in a cream, in a wish.

We blame and repent and pass judgement, never for a second doing the only thing required of adults: taking responsibility. We sue, and we go on talk shows, and we tell all, and we accuse, and we weep, and we “self-help,” and we take our medicine, and stuff our fat faces, and stuff our pockets, and we congratulate ourselves, and we pamper ourselves, and we turn our culture into a infantile embarrassment fit not for men and women but for children whose development is forever arrested.

“We must do it for the children!” What better sentiment for a culture that endlessly caresses and fondles and probes the tight anus of youth!  Our culture, from our music to our “literature” to our entertainments is all unsophisticated and childlike. Every market salivates over the youth dollar and every decision must take the children into account. Nothing legal seems to exist anymore for the benefit of adults. We idolize vapid celebrities. We make millionaires of game playing man-children. We elect intellectually stunted buffoons because they remind us of ourselves, because they are “average” and visibly flawed, as though that were a selling point. The stories of our leaders are always coming of age stories in which mistakes must be made in order to be learned from, but each leader is temporary, and each lesson must be learned anew.

We worship youth both in our rhetoric and in our degradation. But not for the actual youth of our population, to them we are happy to leave cesspit of waste and debt and ecological ruin. “The children” we so adore are ourselves. Our young country is full adolescents, awkward and uncertain, always looking to their invisible father figure in the sky for approval, always fueled by a bottomless undercurrent of fear at facing any reality.

Some of us defer to our invisible father figure in the sky whenever we are made uncomfortable, whenever we are unsure, whenever we would rather not be responsible. We honor him in public, always, saying the things that must be said, but in private we are compelled to push the boundaries and see just what we can get away with. We are rebellious in all matters where his “law” does not serve our purpose, but relent when caught. After all the power to invoke daddy’s name is the greatest power of the weakling child.

These among our number will always stand at daddy’s pant leg. It is only his perceived power that allows them to cover their ears and shake their head chanting “la la la la I can’t hear you la la la…” when things like science and facts and logic threaten. It is the weakling child’s last defense when those among us who want change and progress and betterment attempt to speak up.

It is my feeling that American culture, as it stands today, is very nearly a kink in the evolution of human culture on the whole. (We are by no means the only kink, but a kink in the smooth flow none the less.) It’s dominance is troublesome when elsewhere in the world there are more mature cultures who by turns seem willing to celebrate life, to enjoy themselves, to love, and most of all to learn. If those among us who want further enlightenment here on earth do not eventually shake loose of the yoke which keeps America backward and fearful, if we don’t grow up and punch the schoolyard bully square in the mouth as it were, then we are part of the problem and not at all the shining light which we’ve always assumed ourselves to be.

In any event we have some serious fucking issues.

Discuss.