He has a brain, but he doesn’t have a head on his shoulders.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man who fixes the boats at the end of Delaney's dock spent all of April building a winch out of bicycle parts, and it works, and it is beautiful, and I have watched three people explain to him that his rent was due in March. For years I thought cleverness was one thing and only came in different amounts, so that a man with a great deal of it would naturally have enough left over for Tuesday. He has a brain, but he doesn't have a head on his shoulders. Switch, who buries more nuts than he will ever find and knows it, sat on the piling and watched the winch go up and down with real admiration. I do not know whether the two things live in separate rooms or whether one crowds the other out. The winch lifted a hull clean off the water this afternoon and nobody paid him for it.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation.
- The old road has lots of twists and turns but few surprises.
- Better to stumble on the right path than stride forward on the wrong one.
- No matter where you look for it, the sun only rises in the east.
- A know-it-all doesn’t and doesn’t know that he doesn’t.
- We have learned so much about how to make a better world, but not learned enough.