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My Philosophy Of Life Can Be Summed Up In Four Words: It Can't Be Helped.

-Will Cuppy

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My Philosophy Of Life

Will Cuppy

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My Philosophy Of Life Can Be Summed Up In Four Words: It Can't Be Helped.

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Life Philosophy

More From Will Cuppy

Humor Springs From Rage, Hay Fever, Overdue Rent And Miscellaneous Hell.

I Hear So Many Things About Who I Am Supposed To Be I Hardly Know What To Believe. I Am Willing To Tell All, But What Is It? Doubtless All These Myths And Legends Will Be Straightened Out Eventually, But It May Take Years.

[footnote:] The Dotterel Weighs Only Four Ounces. It Has Long Been A Scientific Riddle How So Much Wrong-headedness Can Manage To Exist In So Small A Space. Still, There's The Least Gnatcatcher.

Most People, It Seems, Think That Robinson Crusoe When He Landed On His Island Had Nothing To Keep Him From Starvation Or Anything Else. As A Matter Of Fact He Had Twelve Raft Loads Of Supplies That He Took Off The Wrecked Ship. He Had As Much Food And Furniture As If He Had Had A Delicatessen Store And Fifth Avenue Outside His Hut.

[footnote:] To Give The Beaver His Due, He Does Things Because He Has To Do Them, Not Because He Believes That Hard Work Per Se Will Somehow Make Him A Better Beaver -- The Beaver May Be Dumb, But He Is Not That Dumb! The Beaver Was Made To Gnaw, And Gnaw He Does. There You Have Him In A Nutshell.

A Few Cobras In Your Home Will Soon Clear It Of Rats And Mice. Of Course, You Will Still Have The Cobras.

The Zebra Is Striped All Over So That The Lion Can See Him And Eat Him. Some People Say He Is Striped So That The Lion Can Not See Him. These People Believe That The Stripes Of The Zebra Simulate The Bars Of Sunlight Falling Through The Tall Jungle Grasses And That Therefore The Zebra Is Invisible And That The Earth Is Flat.

Galvani Was Mistaken About The Amount Of Electricity In Frogs, But He Had Some Good Ideas, Too, For The Galvanometer Is Named In His Honor, And You Don't Have Galvanometers Named After You Merely For Making A Mistake About A Frog.

During His Fifteen Years In Italy, Hannibal Never Had Enough Elephants To Suit Him. Most Of The Original Group Succumbed To The Climate, And He Was Always Begging Carthage For More, But The People At Home Were Stingy. They Would Ask If He Thought They Were Made Of Elephants And What Had He Done With The Elephants They Sent Before.

Ah, Well! We Live And Learn, Or, Anyway, We Live.

It's Easy To See The Faults In People, I Know; And It's Harder To See The Good. Especially When The Good Isn't There.

Aristotle Taught That The Brain Exists Merely To Cool The Blood And Is Not Involved In The Process Of Thinking. This Is True Only Of Certain Persons.

The Male Is Colored Much More Gorgeously Than The Female So That He Can Be Shot And Made Into Feather Embroidery.

We Have No Common Vipers In The United States, But We Have Worse.

If A Cat Does Something, We Call It Instinct; If We Do The Same Thing, For The Same Reason, We Call It Intelligence.

Some People Lose All Respect For The Lion Unless He Devours Them Instantly. There Is No Pleasing Some People.

If You Annoy The Hog-nosed Snake Enough, He Will Roll Over On His Back And Play Dead. If You Turn Him Right-side Up, He Will Roll Over To Prove That He Is Dead... While He Is Playing Dead, You Can Go Straight Up To Him And Step On His Head Or Smash Him With A Big Club.

The Chameleon's Face Reminded Aristotle Of A Baboon. Aristotle Wasn't Much Of A Looker Himself.

Let's Not Be Too Quick To Blame The Human Race For Everything. A Great Many Species Of Animals Became Extinct Before Man Ever Appeared On Earth.

I Am Billed As A Humorist, But Of Course I Am A Tragedian At Heart.

Just When You're Beginning To Think Pretty Well Of People, You Run Across Somebody Who Puts Sugar On Sliced Tomatoes.

Other Countries May Boast Of This And That, But Nobody Can Touch The United States For Poisonous Snakes. We Have About Twenty Species, Most Of Them Deadly, And Europe Has Only Five Or Six, None Of Them Much Good. We Have Fifteen Kinds Of Rattlesnakes Alone And Nobody Else Has Even One. [footnote: There Is A Species In Central And South America, But It Probably Came From Here.]

The Trouble With The Dictionary Is That You Have To Know How A Word Is Spelled Before You Can Look It Up To See How It Is Spelled.

Henry Viii Had So Many Wives Because His Dynastic Sense Was Very Strong Whenever He Saw A Maid Of Honour.

Much Still Remains To Be Learned About His Sex Life Because The Hummingbird Is Quicker Than The Eye.

Male Penguins Are Unfaithful Up To An Advanced Age, A Phenomenon Sometimes Attributed To The Sea Air.

Never Call Anyone A Baboon Unless You Are Sure Of Your Facts.

Aristotle Described The Crow As Chaste. In Some Departments Of Knowledge, Aristotle Was Too Innocent For His Own Good.

I Borrow To Pay My Honest Debts And Not To Squander Foolishly. What's More, I Confine My Borrowing To Those Who Can Well Afford It. I Don't Go Around Sponging On Widows And Orphans Unless They Have Plenty.

Widows And Orphans

Alexander Iii Of Macedon Is Known As Alexander The Great Because He Killed More People Of More Different Kinds Than Any Other Man Of His Time.

The Head Of A Pike, Served At Supper, Is Said To Have Caused The Death From Terror Of Theodoric The Goth, Who Imagined The Fish's Features To Be Those Of Symmachus, A Man He Had Just Killed. But For This Story, We Of Today Would Have No Idea What Symmachus Looked Like.

[footnote:] The Female Of Any Species Is Generally Regarded As A Relatively Anabolic Organism, More Passive Than The Male, Who Is Relatively Katabolic And Active. The Fact Remains That One Frequently Runs Across A Rather Katabolic Female.

Aristotle Maintains That The Neck Of The Lion Is Composed Of A Single Bone. Aristotle Knew Nothing At All About Lions, A Circumstance Which Did Not Prevent Him From Writing A Good Deal On The Subject.

Cæsar Might Have Married Her [cleopatra], But He Had A Wife At Home. There's Always Something.

[footnote:] Pliny The Elder Described A Whale Called "balaena Or Whirlpool, Which Is So Long And Broad As To Take Up More In Length And Breadth Than Two Acres Of Ground." This Brings Up Again The Old Question: Are The Classics Doomed? Our Ancestors Believed That Four Years Of This Sort Of Information Would Inevitably Produce A President, Or At Least A Cabinet Member. It Didn't Seem To Work Out That Way.

Pliny The Elder Perished In 79 A.d. When He Refused To Flee From The Great Eruption Of Mt. Vesuvius, Insisting That Everything Would Be All Right. It Wasn't.

Young Normal Tigers Do Not Eat People. If Eaten By A Tiger You May Rest Assured He Was Abnormal.

The Ancient Egyptians Considered It Good Luck To Meet A Swarm Of Bees On The Road. What They Considered Bad Luck I Couldn't Say.

Even As A Child Back In Indiana, Whenever I Took A Butterbelly Off The Hook I Used To Ask Myself, "does This Fish Think?" I Would Even Ask Others, "do You Suppose This Butterbelly Can Think?" And All I Would Get In Reply Was A Look. At The Age Of Eighteen, I Left The State.

An Ant On A Hot Stove-lid Runs Faster Than An Ant On A Cold One. Who Wouldn't?

My Philosophy Of Life Can Be Summed Up In Four Words: It Can't Be Helped.

Life Philosophy

They [the Pilgrims] Believed In Freedom Of Thought For Themselves And For All Other People Who Believed Exactly As They Did.

Freedom Of Thought

Armadillos Make Affectionate Pets, If You Need Affection That Much.

The Moral Of The Story Of The Pilgrims Is That If You Work Hard All Your Life And Behave Yourself Every Minute And Take No Time Out For Fun You Will Break Practically Even, If You Can Borrow Enough Money To Pay Your Taxes.

The Love Bird Is One Hundred Percent Faithful To His Mate-who Is Locked Into The Same Cage.

To The Seeing Eye Life Is Mostly Sparrows.

I'm A Poetry-skipper Myself. I Don't Like To Boast, But I Have Probably Skipped More Poetry Than Any Other Person Of My Age And Weight In This Country - Make It Any Other Two Persons. This Doesn't Mean That I Hate Poetry. I Don't Feel That Strongly About It. It Only Means That Those Who Wish To Communicate With Me By Means Of The Written Word Must Do So In Prose.

It Is Because Of His Brain That He [modern Man] Has Risen Above The Animals. Guess Which Animals He Has Risen Above.

Orangutans Teach Us That Looks Are Not Everything-but Warned Near It.

Frogs Will Eat Red-flannel Worms Fed To Them By Biologists; This Proves A Great Deal About Both Parties Concerned.

I Do Not Travel. I Am Not Much Of An Extrovert, And I'm Not Much Interested In Extroverted Objects. I Do Not Care For The 'ideas' Of Novelists. Novels Are Wonderful, Of Course, But I Prefer Newspapers.

The Dodo Never Had A Chance. He Seems To Have Been Invented For The Sole Purpose Of Becoming Extinct And That Was All He Was Good For.

The Wren-box Problem Is Becoming More Acute Each Year, For Wrens Now Demand Better Housing Conditions And Labor-saving Devices.

[footnote:]each Male Has From 2 To 790 Females With Whom He Discusses Current Events. Of These He Marries From 3 To 17.

Etiquette Means Behaving Yourself A Little Better Than Is Absolutely Essential.

As Darwin Puts It In The Descent Of Man, 'male Snakes, Though Appearing So Sluggish, Are Amorous.' Isn't That Just Like Darwin? It Was One Of His Main Ideas, You Know, That The Males Of Almost All Animals Have Stronger Passions Than The Females. Since Then We've Learned A Thing Or Two. At Any Rate, The Female Snake Is Right There When Spring Arrives In The Woods.

Three Million Alligators Were Killed In Florida Between 1880 And 1900. Goody!

A Hermit Is Simply A Person To Whom Civilization Has Failed To Adjust Itself.

The Sloth Lives His Life Upside Down. He Is Perfectly Comfortable That Way. If The Blood Rushes To His Head, Nothing Happens Because There Is Nothing To Work On.

The Hippopotamus Looks Monogamous- He Looks As If He Would Have To Be.

I Only Know That All Is Lost, And That Nothing Can Help Me Unless I Inherit Money, Strike Oil Or Go To Work.

All Modern Men Are Descended From A Wormlike Creature But It Shows More On Some People.

The Earthworm Plows The Whole World With His Tunnels, Drains And Aerates The Earth… If You Ever Buy Any Land, Be Sure It Has Plenty Of Earthworms Toiling And Moiling All Day So That You Can Sit Down And Relax.

Borrowing Has A Bad Name, But You Would Be Surprised How It Helps In A Pinch.

The Stork Is Voiceless Because There Is Really Nothing To Say.

We All Make Mistakes, But Intelligence Enables Us To Do It On Purpose.

Making Mistakes

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