“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci (Adopted by Steve Jobs)
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The Lion and the Fox went hunting together. They came upon an Ass that they killed for a feast.
But, the Lion desired to have a nap first, and to take the feast after resting. “Here is our dinner,” the Lion said to the Fox, “Watch it while I go and have a nap. And, woe to you if you touch it!”
In the absence of the Lion, and after staring at the meal to come, the Fox could not withstand the temptation. Finally, he succumbed and ate the brains of the Ass.
When the Lion came back, he roared, “But, where are his brains?”
The Fox replied, “For certain, your Majesty, this Ass had no brains or he would not have fallen into your trap.”
Moral of the Story: Wit has always an answer ready.
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Introduction – The Essential Aesop – Epilogue
Related Article: Being Naive – No. 42. The Wolf and the Goat – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series; Loving the Deal – Business of Aesop™ No. 85 – The Lion in Love; Sugar, Darling, You Look Marvelous.” The Business of Aesop™ No. 54 – The Fox and the Crow; Flattery – No. 54. The Fox and the Crow – The Essential Aesop™- Back to Basics Abridgment Series; Donald Trump; Or, The Mean Insult v. The Tactical Insult [#GRZ_108]
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Why We Loved It: Aesop’s lesson here can be taken two ways: to recognize the wit of an excuse from others, and to have the wit of an excuse to others.
Wit is often a form a rhetoric, as it negotiates an issue from attention by wrapping it in a sort of clever happiness. Wit beguiles. No one is immune from the tactic. And, here, Aesop uses his majestic Lion matched against the beguiling Fox, and the Fox appears to win.
Aesop chooses his cast of characters very carefully. Aesop chooses the Ass as the subject of the missing brains, which allows the clever Fox to have plausible deniability, diffused by an implied compliment to the usually majestic Lion’s choice of the trap.
The Fox moves the Lion’s attention away from the Fox as culprit, by pointing the Lion back to somewhere the Lion wants to go: the Lion’s need for validation in the choice of trap, a trick similar to the one the Fox used before with Mistress Crow. This is coupled with the Ass’s plausible failure of having brains—after all, Ass’s are not commonly known as intelligent.
Thusly, the Fox attacks two weak spots: the Lion’s own need for validation, and the plausible fact of missing brains. Clever Fox. We understand the technique only works on the fooled, but Aesop’s use of the Lion as the beguiled subject tells us that it can happen to the best of us.
“Great wits are sure to madness near allied/And thin partitions do their bounds divide.” ~ John Dryden
“Impropriety is the soul of wit.” ~ Somerset Maugham
“Wit is cultured insolence.” ~ Aristotle
“The man who sees the consistency in things is a wit; the man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist.” ~ G. K. Chesterton
“Wit lies in the likeness of things that are different, and in the difference of things that are alike.” ~ Madame de StaĂ«l (1766–1817)
“There’s no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature.” ~ Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816)
“Surround yourself with auxiliary wits. Things turn out well for the powerful when they are surrounded by people of great understanding who can get them out of the tight situations where their ignorance has placed them, and take their place in battling difficulty. It is singular greatness to use wise people. This is a new way of mastering others, in what matters most in life: skillfully make servants of those whom nature made superior. Choose a subject, and let those around you serve up quintessential knowledge. If you can’t make knowledge your servant, make it your friend.” ~ Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“After wisdom comes wit.” ~ Evan Esar (ed. a play on meaning and words by definitional sequence)
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© 2013 Arnold Zegarelli and Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn. Arnold Zegarelli can be contacted through Facebook.
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