We confuse the fabric a person wears with the fiber he is made of.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A man came to the bank of the creek this morning in a coat worth more than the bench he sat on, and he sat on it for two hours doing nothing but watching the water go by. I had him placed before he sat down. For years I did this the other way around and thought I was being generous about it: the shabby ones were the honest ones, the fine ones were hollow, and I was proud of the reversal as though reversing a mistake were not still making it. We confuse the fabric a person wears with the fiber he is made of. Switch came down the trunk and asked what the man was waiting for and I said I did not know, and that was the first true thing I had thought about him. He left without ever taking anything out of his pockets.
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
- The problem with being intelligent is that you have all that intelligence to use against yourself.
- 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.