Musings on Literary and Musical Maxims

The noted French author François, duc de la Rochefoucauld(1613-1680) wrote an incisive masterpiece in his book Maxims, published first in 1665 as Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes Morales. A maxim is a short, concise observation about human behavior, vanity, or mores. La Rochefoucauld penned a total of 504 maxims over his literary career—many are simply a couple of sentences long. I have loved this little book ever since I discovered La Rochefoucauld in an undergraduate French literature class at USC, and still occasionally pull it out for a read. Maxim #142 came to mind the other day as I listened to the news:

“As the stamp of great minds is to suggest much in few words, so, contrariwise, little minds have the gift of talking a great deal and saying nothing.”

The original French, for you francophones, goes like this: “Comme c’est le caractère des grands esprits de faire entendre en peu de paroles beaucoup de choses, les petits esprits au contraire ont le don de beaucoup parler, et de ne rien dire.”

Two songs provide contemporary commentary on this classic Gallic maxim: James Brown’s “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing” and Mose Allison’s witty song, “Your Mind is On Vacation” (your mouth is working overtime).

The lyrics for “Talkin’ Loud” start off as follows:

Like a dull knife

Just ain’t cutting

Just talking loud

Then saying nothing

Just saying nothing

Just saying nothing

You can’t tell me

How to run my life down

You can’t tell me

How to keep my business sound

You can’t tell me

What I’m doing wrong

When you keep driving and

Singing that same old money song…

And how about some of the droll lyrics to Mose Allison’s “Your Mind is On Vacation”:

You’re sitting there yakkin’ right in my face

You’re quoting figures, you’re dropping names

You’re telling stories about the dames

You’re always laughin’ when things ain’t funny

You try to sound like you’re big money

If talk was criminal, you’d lead a life of crime

Because your mind is on vacation and your mouth is

Working overtime

With that, I’ll keep this post short and simply suggest that you take a break from the incessant news to listen to these two great songs: