(Previously published July 28, 2010)

"New estimates from the White House on Friday predict that the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends." — news item, page 2; Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 7-24-10

ANYWAY — the book I'm reviewing is entitled "The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time (In Two Lines or Less)," by John Shanahan, and here are a few examples more:

• "Two and two the mathematician continues to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five." — James Whistler ((1834-1903)

• "Show me a liar, and I'll show you a thief." — George Herbert (1593-1633)

• "Beware the flatterer: He feeds you with an empty spoon." — C. De Gregio

• "Nothing is truer in a sense than a funeral oration. It tells precisely what the dead man should have been." — Gustave Vapereau (1909-42)

• "No man is rich enough to buy back his past." — Oscar Wilde

• "The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped." — Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

• "The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." — Sophocles (496-406 BC)

• "Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor." — John Collins (1848-1908)

• "We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." — George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

• "Rich man down and poor man up — they are still not even." — Yiddish proverb

• "How many people become abstract as a way of appearing profound." — Jos. Jaubert (1754-1824)

• "That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false." — Paul Valery

• "A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." — Euripedes (485-406 BC)

• "Who lies for you will lie against you." — Bosnian proverb

• "That man, who flees from truth, should have invented the mirror, is the greatest of historical miracles." — Christian Hebbel (1813-63)

• "The true way to be deceived is to think oneself more clever than others." — Francois Du de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

• "Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love the truth." — Joseph Joubert

• "If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup." — Turkish proverb

• "There are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and post-humously." — Thomas Sowell

• "A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him." — Nicholas Boileau-Despereaux [and finally]

• "Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few." — George Berkeley (1685-1753)

• "With someone who holds nothing but trumps, it is impossible to play cards." — Hebbel

• "Trust everyone, but cut the cards." — Finley Dunne (1865-1936)