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Put on your boogie shoes – Metro US

Put on your boogie shoes

A while back I did a column on “wise things said by people who aren’t me.”

Given the success of this piece (someone mentioned that they’d read it), I now present: Wise Words, Instalment No. 2.

First up, playwright and style-slave of the Victorian age, Oscar Wilde, who, on his deathbed in the home of a friend, famously announced, “Charles, either these curtains go, or I do.”

Wilde also said, “Fashion is merely a form of ugliness so unbearable that we are compelled to alter it every six months.”

I would disagree with this entirely if it weren’t for gladiator shoes and the 1980s. Also, the only way I’m going to make it onto anyone’s best-dressed list is if Home Workers Monthly runs a “ratty bathrobe issue.”

Next, it was historian and Harvard Prof. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich who said: “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”

They do, however, get invited to dinner parties and asked to join book clubs.
Life’s a trade-off, eh?

From an Old Chinese pro-verb: “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”

Cursing the electric company, however, is entirely OK.

Legendary actor W.C. Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”

Words to live by. Particularly if you’re: a) a person trying to get a date, or b) a national political party trying to get a majority.

Next, from an anonymous source: “No one in all society is so underrated, disregarded and underpaid as the plucky humour columnist.” I just can’t imagine who said this. It’s got a ring of truth though, doesn’t it?

Lastly, wise words from Fredrick Nietzsche. Nietzs-che was born in Germany in the mid-1800s and undertook a career as a philogist. He abandoned this, possibly upon realizing that no one knew what the heck a philogist was. He then became a philosopher, somehow thinking this would be a more profitable career choice. Some guys can’t win.

As a philosopher, Nietzsche offered such insights as, “Existence is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.” To which we can only respond, “Um … what?” He also said, “It is my ambition to say in 10 sentences what others say in a whole book.” Clearly, this is a man who didn’t get the concept of “royalties.”

However, I forgive Nietzsche everything for saying, “We should consider every day lost in which we have not danced at least once.”

It doesn’t get any wiser than that.