"Always give your real reason for not doing something."

For example, a friend wants you to join a fiction book group, but you just don't like reading novels. Don't say, "I'm sorry, I don't have a car on Thursday nights" -- your friend may figure out how to get you a ride, or perhaps offer to switch the group meeting to a different night. In which case, you either end up doing something you don't want or coming off as a jerk for not giving your real reason in the first place.

Here's mine: https://johnfaucett.com/articles/2025/12-31-aphorisms

I haven't looked but I'd imagine they are not so unique and others have come up with similar things before. Personally, I did like this one though:

"The question is the only animal which gives birth to itself."

All easy buttons are traps disguised as easy buttons.

on Victorian brutality

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

A few of Lacan's,

The Other does not exist.

Desire is the desire of the Other.

We are all mad here.

The universe is the flower of rhetoric.