I’m seriously contemplating writing a book with a title along the lines of “Aphorisms, Platitudes and Cliches–How to Live Your Entire Life Without a Single Original Thought.” I asked a friend recently how work was going and he said it was “going to hell in a handbasket.” My boss constantly wants to get the “ball out of our court” so we don’t get “stuck behind the eight ball” in the “eleventh hour” and be left “holding the bag.” My father was famous for mixing cliches, which at least made them fun. His best, in response to something catching on quickly, was “Man, that snowballed like a house on fire!”

So, anyway, a buddy of mine recently broke up with his girlfriend, which led to ruminations over beers. At one point he sighed and said “Well, I guess it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” I restrained from reminding him that he has “loved and lost” about two dozen times since I’ve met him and instead asked him if he knew where that cliche had come from. He didn’t.  I figure most people probably don’t know, so I’ve decided to post the poem it was originally borrowed from.

I envy not in any moods
The captive void of noble rage,
The linnet born within the cage,
That never knew the summer woods;

In envy not the beast that takes
His license in the field of time,
Unfetter’d by the sense of crime,
To whom a conscience never wakes;

Nor, what may count itself as blest,
The heart that never plighted troth
But stagnates in the weeds of sloth:
Nor any want-begotten rest.

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘T is better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.

–Alfred Lord Tennyson