Tuesday, July 05, 2011

The Scrambled Egg Principle

It has been justly observed, that discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed to its utmost vehemence by contrariety of taste, oftener than of principles
--Johnson, Rambler 99

I had a girlfriend once who liked her eggs scrambled hard. I liked mine scrambled loose. Instead of saying that we liked our eggs cooked differently, she insisted that she scrambled eggs correctly; I scrambled them wrong. From this I derived the Scrambled Egg Principle: Do not elevate differences of taste into differences of principle. I see that, as usual, Johnson has anticipated me.

5 comments:

That gentleman's lady said...

Scrambled eggs are scrambled eggs.... as long as they taste good, I'm happy!

karensomethingorother said...

my sister always used to stick her chin out as a kid and say: EVERYONE'S DIFFERENT. End of argument.

bright.dark.girl said...

That's inspiring.

CMH said...

Johnson drove a Rambler?

Richard Epstein said...

As did Thomas Nashe.