For Saturday, March 16: The art of wisdom

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. William James

Ah. Today's quote is a hidden gem. But I think I would add to it, no offense to Mr. James. The art of being wise is also knowing what to address. There is a fine balance between knowing what to overlook and what to address. And there is wisdom in knowing how to do either; how to behave and how to speak (those two things cover a lot of ground). Wisdom includes timing and timing is everything. Address or overlook in the right time frame and things go well. Address or overlook in the wrong time frame and things will go poorly. Wisdom requires patience, to overlook or address. Wisdom requires speaking carefully, with grace, and with truth.
When have you seen wisdom work well? When have you wished you exercised wisdom?

Comments

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

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