Signposts on the Wisdom Trail

I start the year with some things I know because life and a few geniuses taught me.

-  Peggy Noonan

They're things often at the back of my mind.

An Italian grandmother was stirring the sauce on the stove as I, age about 10, and my friend, her granddaughter, fantasized about how a local family must be rich, millionaires, they just bought a big car. "Don't count other people's money," the grandmother said. You don't know all the facts and it's none of your business.

"Don't catalog other people's sins." That came from somebody then, and the spirit was, "You want a catalogue, go to Sears."

It never left me when I read Samuel Johnson's dictum "Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed." Don't imagine you're telling them big things they don't already know, or sense.

I once read that Abraham Lincoln said if you asked most people to put all their troubles in an open sack and place it down next to their neighbors' sacks and then everyone was told to pick one up and keep it, most people would hesitate barely a moment before they picked up their own sack and took it home. Everyone thinks they have it worse than everyone else but they don't, and anyway their own troubles are at least familiar, and tolerable, and theirs.

Public figures often want to be understood. This is a mistake. People don't want to understand you,they're ornery. Do your job, that will explain you.

The only truth to tell a young couple about to get married: God is real and babies are everything. The only advice for a college graduate: Honest work makes the world go round, bring your talents to market.

The important thing to tell a student entering college or high school: Read.