Sometime ago I was moved to pass on some favorite folk wisdom on how to navigate life – much of it easier to give than to take, of course. I also couldn’t help noticing that the various prescriptions contradicted each other.

This reminded me of a favorite philosophy professor whose Introduction to Ethics course was both wonderful and frustrating. Each week, pacing and smoking, he’d brilliantly elucidate a philosopher from Aristotle and Epictetus to Kant and Nietzsche persuading us we’d learned the secret of life until on the final day he’d critique their system, reducing it to a pile of rubble.

With no guarantees, here is some more advice on how to live from various sages who may contradict each other and whose notions may not stand up to scrutiny. And by the way, all seekers with a sense of humor should read the wonderful biography by Sarah Bakewell of the father of the personal essay and liberal humanism, Michel de Montaigne. It is called “How to Live.”

Those who saw the Bill Moyers 1988 interviews with Joseph Campbell, “The Power of Myth,” will recall his view that the world’s mythologies were, in part, instructions on how to live, often in the form of initiation rites. And especially his admonition that the secret to a life well-lived is to “follow your bliss.” That is, find what excites you, fulfills you, elevates you, and do it.

If bliss is too much to hope for in life, there’s always the conclusion of “Candide” to fall back on. The protagonist has discovered that his mentor Dr. Pangloss is incorrect. All is not for the best, and this is not the best of all possible worlds. Exile, earthquake, torture, loss, misery have persuaded him that wisdom is settling for small-scale serenity by avoiding the strife of a wider world and cultivating his own garden.

In a related vein, Pascal said man’s troubles stem from the inability to sit still in his own room, paraphrased by Eliot as a prayer: “teach us to sit still.” In our frenetic time, this sounds like a warning against the derangement to be found in the fast lane. This is a familiar plaint, from Wordsworth’s warning against laying waste your powers by “getting and spending” to Thoreau’s about “lives of quiet desperation” “incessant anxiety,” and “hurry and waste.” He said of our nation in his day, “It lives too fast.”

My grandmother was fond of quoting, “This too will pass,” which sounds Biblical, but I am amused to discover is really from Persian antiquity. Does this saying mean simply that time heals all wounds, or that much in life that is beyond our control? Though possibly a counsel of stoicism or passivity, sometimes hunkering down to wait out the latest disaster may not be a bad idea.

A lot of wise sayings are both obvious and alarming. “Expect the unexpected.” “If it’s too good to be true, it isn’t true.” Or, from Martin Amis, “Money cushions the fall.”

Sometimes oversimplification may not be an error. Consider all the elaborate fads concerning nutrition, diet, and fitness –yoga or pilates, paleo or Mediterranean. Doesn’t it pretty much boil down to “Eat Less, Exercise More?

Carl Sandburg is alleged to be the source of famous advice to lawyers, but useful to ordinary civilians too. “If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If both are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”

An almost identical bit of advice is repeated by gamblers. “If the cards are with you, bet. If the cards are against you, fold. If the deck is stacked against you, kick over the table.”
One has seen similar behavior in everyone from politicians to bosses, spouses, and children.

There is also this permanently useful advice that isn’t confined to games of chance: “If you’re playing poker and can’t tell who at the table is the sucker, it’s you.”

Apropos of which, knowing what’s for real is a perennial topic of wise sayings. And why not? Misinformation is the root of more evil than ever, thanks to the internet.

“You could look it up,” really is a secret of life. Rather than repeat the conventional wisdom, checking it out is prudent. But that brings us to another wise saying you probably heard from your mother. I did. “Consider the source.” All information is not created equal.

The question of what ideas, “facts,” or opinions to trust brings us inevitably to the Law of Parsimony, also known as Occam’s Razor. That is – the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. It is a reminder useful to those known to fall for conspiracy theories. Aren’t they almost always too convoluted and byzantine to be plausible?

In your experience are a bunch of people capable of hatching an intricate plot, keeping it secre,t and executing it successfully? Rarely. The notion of Occam’s razor was once memorably expressed by a physician doing rounds in a teaching hospital.

Asked to diagnose a patient, interns offered up several exotic possible ills, showing off their scholarship. The attending suggested that when you see a bunch of hoofprints, the first hypothesis should be a horse, not a zebra, unless you’re in Africa.

For our own economic well-being, we should all keep in mind another useful bit of proverbial wisdom. In Robert Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh, Mistress,” Luna has been turned into a latter-day Australia, that is, a penal colony from which there is no escape or parole. The libertarian citizens eventually declare their independence from Earth, and their flag is emblazoned with the moon’s motto, whose truth they have learned the hard way: TANSTAAFL.

What’s that mean? “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” This may be the most useful of all wise sayings. Anytime you get a call from a telemarketer, an email from a Nigerian prince, an opportunity to invest from the latest Madoff, a promise of pie in the sky form a politician, or heavenly bliss from an evangelist passing the plate, write on the blackboard 100 times TANSTAAFL.