Gertrude always took the time to assay life’s complex wonderments but never took a moment to brush her teeth.
-Gladys Potter
Despite my desperate attempts to assay and memorize every single ad, grafitti, person’s face, etc. on the subway this morning (I even translated a complex advertisement in Mandarin for divorce lawyers), I couldn’t help but notice the gentleman sitting directly across from me–he was in shorts without underwear and continued to cross and uncross his legs all the way from Queens to Manhattan, his old balls flapping around like jumpropes. 
–Cindy Capleton
Every time I take a minute to assay my observations on life the most complex thought I have is it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. Which proves to me I’m dumber than a bag of hammers.
~Lady Schwartz
Secret Touchings 
Once everything became clear to Peridiot, the estranged son of a lesser known Greek God of sanitation, the situation no longer seemed so complex. He should be able to assay the output of the third floor U-bend, not the waste pipe in the basement, to more easily figure out whose poop was stinking out the balcony underneath.
To what do we owe the complex nature of our ambitions? To my knowledge, no cause has yet been discerned. Science offers no assay and the gods are deaf to our petition. It appears that we seek the solace of comfort and permanence, then, at every turn, acquiesce to whatever serves to frustrate our pursuit. I suppose it is in our nature (or at least in mine). “To what?”, indeed. Perhaps, the clutter of life. Or, as a demure and judicious sage -The Tooch – once so eloquently stated, “We all have our contradictions.”