This was a good year for epigrammists. Politics and the economy were going up, down and sideways. Plenty of the best and worst of human nature was in evidence. Out with the old and in with the new might be coming true. We can only hope. I've completed my second book of epigrams and am well into my third. Here are a few December thoughts for this holiday season of joy and perhaps, more modest expenditures.

"It’s the sure things that turn out really badly."

"Just because your closest friends are those to whom you can tell everything doesn’t mean that you should."

"A downward career generates its own momentum."

"Go to successful people for advice, because they don’t think in terms of failure. "

"Alchemy didn’t disappear, it was transmuted into economics."

"Little thoughts crowd out the big ones."

"When you are deep in thought is not a good time to be washing the best china."

"At a low point in your life you decide to make some serious changes -- and that moment turns out to be a high point in your life."

"The less civilized people are, the more damage they can do with their fists -- and the more civilized, the more damage they can do with their words."

"It’s not often that a novel novel appears."

"There were so many things on my mind that my brain had to start taking numbers."