Who Thought?

To uncover deficiencies is not enough; indeed, it is wrong to do so, unless one knows and cites the means for improvement.
— Goethe's World View, Frederick Ungar, Heinz Norden (tr.), p. 81.

All the clever thoughts have long since been thought. What matters is to think them anew.
— Ibid., p. 129.

Anything that liberates the mind without giving us dominion over ourselves is pernitious.
— Ibid., p. 139.

Humiston's Law:
When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp.
— 1,001 Logical Laws.... for All Walks of Life, John Peers/G. Bennett, p. 49.

Pardo's Postulates:
(1) Anything good is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
— Ibid., p. 59.

Thompson's Adage:
Be kind. Remember everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
— Ibid., p. 67.

Saunder's Slants:
(1) As scarce as the truth is, the supply is much greater than the demand.
(4) There is always free cheese in a mousetrap.
(5) The expedient thing and the right thing are seldom the same thing.
— Ibid., p. 70.

John Bear's Observations:
(2) Mistakes are the steppingstones to failure.
(3) A silent man does not always know a secret.
— Ibid., p. 86.

Mark Twain's Thought:
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
— Ibid., p. 87.

Law of Selective Advancement:
The man who knows "how" will always have a job. The man who knows "why" will always be his boss.
— Ibid., p. 122.

Come To Think Of It

From Murphy's Law Calendar:

Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof.

Pardo's Third Postulate:
Don't care if you're rich or not, as long as you can live comfortably and have everything you want.

Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies; but it doesn't matter, since nobody listens.

Churchill's Commentary On Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

First Truth of Management:
No executive devotes effort to proving himself wrong.

Lord Faulkland's Rule:
When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision.

Weinberg's Corollary:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

Clarke's Third Law:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Levy's Eight Law:
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.

The Cardinal Conundrum:
An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds.
A pessimist fears this is true.

Gourd's Axiom:
A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

Ray's Rule for Precision:
Measure with a micrometer.
Mark with chalk.
Cut with an axe.

Matz's Maxim:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Fagin's Rule on Past Prediction:
Hindsight is an exact science.

Hawkin's Theory of Progress:
Progress does not consist in replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists in replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong.

Hanley's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Parkinson's Law of Delay:
Delay is the deadliest form of denial.

I Know Nothing

From The Quotable Nothing Book, Running Press, 1980:

Non-being penetrates that in which there is no space. Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.
— Lao Tzu

Nature expects a full-grown man to accept the two black voids, fore and aft, as stolidly as he accepts the extraordinary visions in between.
— Vladimir Nabakov

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
— Seneca

God made everything out of nothing. But the nothingness shows through.
— Paul Valéry

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that, from our very prison, we should draw from our own selves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.
— André Malraux

There is as much difference between nothingness and empty space as there is between empty space and material body.
— Blaise Pascal

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
— Gertrude Stein

Eternal nothingness is O.K. if you're dressed for it.
— Woody Allen

_________________________________________________


We must know what is truly beautiful, what is ugly; what befits man; what can fill him with wonder without confounding him, possess him without stupefying him.... It is that which puts him, without effort, above his own nature.
— Paul Valéry, Paul Valéry: Dialogues, pp. xii.

An artist is worth a thousand centuries.
— Paul Valéry, Ibid., p. xii.

Man can act only because he can ignore.
— Paul Valéry, Ibid., p. xii.

The greatest liberty is born of the greatest rigor.
— Paul Valéry, Ibid., p. xiii.

....André Levinson said in relation to Dance and the Soul: "To explain a thing is to deform it; to think is to substitute what is arbitrary for the unknowable truth."
— Paul Valéry, Ibid., p. xxviii.

Say What?!

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
—Samuel Johnson, in The Book of Insults (Ancient and Modern),
Nancy McPhee (ed.), pp. 17-18.

The Earl of Sandwich: Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox.
John Wilkes: That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.
— John Wilkes (1727-1797), in Ibid., p. 20.

Lady Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I should flavour your coffee with poison.
Churchill: Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it.
— In Ibid., p. 20.

Bessie Braddock, M.P.: Winston, you're drunk!
Churchill: Bessie, you're ugly. And tomorrow morning I shall be sober.
— In Ibid., p. 20.

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
— Charlotte Whitton (1896-1975), former Mayor of Ottawa,
in Ibid., p. 25.

It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.
— Mark Twain, in Ibid., p. 26.

This was a good dinner enough, to be sure; but it was not a dinner to ask a man to.
— Samuel Johnson, in Ibid., p. 29.

I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.
— Viscount Melbourne (1770-1848), in Ibid., p. 51.

He not only overflowed with learning but stood in the slop.
— Sidney Smith (1771-1848), On Thomas Babington Macaulay,
in Ibid., p. 51.

America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
— George Clemenceau (1841-1929), in Ibid., p. 97.

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
— H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), in Ibid., p. 99.

His speeches leave the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a struggling thought and bear it triumphantly a prisoner in their midst until it died of servitude and overwork.
— Senator William McAdoo (1863-1941), On Warren Harding, in Ibid., p. 124.

The Right Honourable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
— Richard Brinslay Sheruidan (1651-1816), On the Earl of Dundas, in Ibid., p. 128.

I don't object to the Old Man's always having the ace of trumps up his sleeve, but merely to his belief that God Almighty put it there.
— Henry Labouchere (1798-1869), On William Ewart Gladstone, in Ibid., pp. 130-131.

A systematic liar and a beggarly cheat; a swindler and a paltroom .... He has committed every crime that does not require courage.
— Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), On Daniel O'Donnell, in Ibid., p. 131.

He is a self-made man, and worships his creator.
— Benjamin Disraeli, On John Bright, in Ibid., p. 132.

Old Thought New

Onchsheshonqy taught:
Do not instruct a fool, lest he hate you.
Do not instruct him who will not listen to you.
Do not consult a wise man in a small matter when a large
     matter is to hand.
Do not consult a fool in a large matter when there is a wise
     man whom you can consult.
Do not laugh at instruction.
— The Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians, William MacQuitty, p. 44.

Onchsheshonqy taught:
Do not run round in circles simply in order to stand still, and: Do not run away after you have been beaten, lest your punishment be doubled, and: He who is stout-hearted in a misfortune shall not feel its full force.
— Ibid., p. 54.

Onchsheshonqy warns:
No, drunkenness of yesterday removes today's thirst.
— Ibid., p. 70.

Merikare was taught:
Copy your forefathers, for work is carried out through knowledge; see, their words endure in writing. Open, that you may read and copy knowledge; even the expert will become one who is instructed.
— Ibid., p. 71.

     Evil. — Test the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly heavenward can dispense with bad weather and tempests: whether disfavour and opposition from without, whether every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favouring circumstances without which a great growth even in virtue is hardly possible? The poison by which the weaker nature is destroyed is strengthening to the strong individual — and he does not call it poison.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Joyful Wisdom, #19, pp. 56-57.

     Cause and Effect. — We say it is "explanation"; but it is only in "description" that we are in advance of the older stages of knowledge and science. We describe better, — we explain just as little as our predecessors. We have discovered a manifold succession where the naive man and investigator of older cultures saw only two things, "cause" and "effect," as it was said; we have perfected the conception of becoming, but have not got a knowledge of what is above and behind the conception. The series of "causes" stands before us much more complete in every case; we conclude that this and that must first precede in order that that other may follow — but we have not grasped anything thereby. The peculiarity, for example, in every chemical process seems a "miracle," the same as before, just like all locomotion; nobody has "explained" impulse. How could we ever explain! We operate only with things which do not exist, with lines, surfaces, bodies, atoms, divisible times, divisible spaces — how can explanation ever be possible when we first make everything a conception, our conception! It is sufficient to regard science as the exactest humnaizing of things that is possible; we always learn to describe ourselves more accurately by describing things and their successions. Cause and effect: there is probably never any such duality; in fact there is a continuum before us, from which we isolate a few portions; — just as we always observe a motion as isolated points, and therefore do not properly see it, but infer it. The abruptness with which many effects take place leads us into error; it is however only an abruptness for us. There is an infinite multitude of precesses in that abrupt moment which escape us. An intellect which could see cause and effect as a continuum, which could see the flux of events not according to our mode of perception, as things arbitrarily separated and broken — would throw aside the conception of cause and effect, and would deny all conditionality.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #112, pp. 157-158.

     To be Profound and to Appear Profound. — He who knows that he is profound strives for clearness; he who would like to appear profound to the multitude strives for obscurity. The multitude thinks everything profound of which it cannot see the bottom; it is so timid and goes so unwillingly into the water.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ibid., #173, p. 190.

Pen-Sieve

     Yes, I wrote about Wilkins. But he also invented a wonderful word that strangely enough has never been used by English poets — an awful word, really, a terrible word. Everness, of course, is better than eternity because eternity is rather worn now. Ever-r-ness is far better than the German Ewigheit, the same word. But he also created a beautiful word, a word that's a poem in itself, full of hopelessness, sadness, and despair: the word neverness. A beautiful word, no? He invented it, and I don't know why the poets left it lying about and never used it.
— Jorge Luis Borges, in Writers at Work - 4th Series, George Plimpton/Wilfrid Sheed (eds.), p. 140.

                                         ON INTENT
     The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through — not very much. And if he is a writer wise enough to know it can't be done, then he is not a writer at all. A good writer always works at the impossible. There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights. And giving up the impossible he gives up writing. Whether fortunate or unfortunate, this has not happened to me. The same blind effort, the straining and puffing go on in me. And always I hope that a little trickles through. This urge dies hard.
     Writing is a very silly business at best. There is a certain ridiculousness about putting down a picture of life. And to add to the joke — one must withdraw for a time from life in order to set down that picture. And third one must distort one's own way of life in order in some sense to simulate the normal in other lives. Having gone through all this nonsense, what emerges may well be the palest of reflections. Oh! it's a real horse's ass business. The mountain labors and groans and strains and the tiniest of rodents come out. And the greatest foolishness of all lies in the fact that to do it at all, the writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true. If he does not, the work is not worth even what it might otherwise have been.
     All this is a preface to the fear and uncertainties which clamber over a man so that in his silly work he thinks he must be crazy because he is so alone. If what he is doing is worth doing — why don't more people do it? Such questions. But it does seem a desperately futile business and one which must be very humorous to watch. Intelligent people live their lives as nearly on a level as possible — try to be good, don't worry if they aren't, hold to such opinions as are comforting and reassuring and throw out those which are not. And in the fullness of their days they die with none of the tearing pain of failure because having tried nothing they have not failed. These people are much more intelligent than the fools who rip themselves to pieces on nonsense.
     It is the fashion now in writing to have every man defeated and destroyed. And I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name a dozen who were not and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is of battles — the defeated are forgotten, only the winners come themselves into the race. The writers of today, even I, have a tendency to celebrate the  destruction of the spirit and god knows it is destroyed often enough. But the beacon thing is that sometimes it is not. And I think I can take time right now to say that. There will be sneers from the neurosis belt of the south, from hard-boiled writers, But I believe that the great ones, Plato, Lao Tze, Buddha, Christ, Paul and the great Hebrew prophets are not remembered for negation or denial. Not that it is necessary to be remembered but there is one purpose in writing I can see, beyond simply doing it interestingly. It is the duty of the writer to lift up, to extend, to encourage. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice. And how any negative or despairing approach can pretend to literature I do not know. It is true we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth, and a few remnants of fossilized jaw bones, a few teeth in strata of limestone would be the only mark our species would have left on the earth.
     It is ....
— John Steinbeck, Ibid., p. 2??

Updike: It comes down to what is language? Up to now, until this age of mass literacy, language has been something spoken. In utterance there's a minimum of slowness. In trying to treat words as chisel strokes, you run the risk of losing the quality of utterance, the rhythm of utterance, the happiness. A phrase out of Mark Twain —  he describes a raft hitting a bridge and says that it "went all to smash and scatteration like a box of matches struck by lightning." The beauty of "scatteration" could only have occurred to a talkative man who had been brought up among people who were talking and who loved to talk himself. I'm aware myself of a certain dryness of this reservoir, this backlog of spoken talk. A Rumanian once said to me that Americans are always telling stories. I'm not sure this is as true as it once was. Where we once used to spin yarns, now we sit in front of the TV and receive pictures. I'm not sure the younger generation even knows how to gossip. But, as far as a writer, if he has something to tell, he should perhaps type it almost as fast as he could talk it. We must look to the organic world, not the inorganic world, for metaphors; and just as the organic world has periods of repose and periods of great speed and exercise, so I think the writer's process should be organically varied. But there's a kind of tautness that you should feel within yourself no matter how slow or fast you're spinning out the reel.
— John Updike, in Ibid., pp. 452-453.

A Writer's Work

Interviewer: All writers complain of the constraint under which they work and of the difficulty of writing.
Cendrars: To make themselves sound interesting, and they exaggerate. They should talk a little more about their privileges and how lucky they are to be able to earn some return from the practice of their art, a practice I personally detest, it's true, but which is all the same a noble privilege compared with the lot of most people, who live like parts of a machine, who live only to keep the gears of society pointlessly turning. I pity them with all my heart. Since my return to Paris I have been saddened as never before by the anonymous crowd I see from my windows engulfing itself in the Métro or pouring out of the Métro at fixed hours. Truly, that isn't life. It isn't human. It must come to a stop. It's slavery ... not only for the humble and poor, but the absurdity of life in general.
— Blaise Cendrars, in Writers at Work - The Paris Review Interviews, 3rd Series, George Plimpton (ed.), p. 33.

[Asked about Dashiell Hammett's testimony before the Army-McCarthy hearinngs:]
     Yes. It was on television.... I think McCarthy, said to him, "Mr. Hammett, if you were in our position, would you allow your books in U.S.I.S. libraries?" And he said, "If I were you, Senator, I would not allow any libraries." A good remark. McCarthy laughed. Nobody else did, but McCarthy did. Dash had an extremely irritating habit of shrugging his shoulders. For years I would say, "Please don't shrug your shoulders." I don't know why it worried me, but it did. He was shrugging his shoulders like mad at the committee. He'd give an answer, and he'd shrug his shoulders with it. And when he was finished and got to the airport he rang me up and said,"Hey, how did you like it? I was shrugging my shoulders just for you."
— Lillian Hellman, in Ibid., p. 134.

Interviewer: Mary McCarthy has characterized you as a soured utopian. Is that accurate?
Burroughs: I do definitely mean what I say to be taken literally, yes, to make people aware of the true criminality of our times, to wise up the marks. All of my work is directed against those who are bent, through stupidity or design, on blowing up the planet or rendering it uninhabitable. Like the advertising people we talked about, I'm concerned with the precise manipulation of word and image to create an action, not to go out and buy a Coca-Cola, but to create an alteration in the reader's consciousness. You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary — it's always imaginary — world in which I would like to live.
— William S. Burroughs, in Ibid., p. 174.

     And though indeed that is united with thy heaven as one body, and so together is but the one body of God, yet thou art not become a creature in that very place which is above many hundred thousand miles off, but thou art in the heaven of this world, which contains also in it such a Deep as is not of any human numbering.
     The true heaven is everywhere, even in that very place where thou standeth and goeth; and so when thy spirit presses through the astral and the fleshly, and apprehends the innermost moving of God, then it is clearly in heaven....
— The Confessions of Jacob Böehme, W. Scott Palmer (tr.), pp. 22-23.

     God has set light and darkness before everyone; thou mayest embrace which thou wilt, thou dost not thereby move God in his being. His Spirit goes forth from him and meets all those that seek him. Their seeking, in which he desireth humanity; for humanity is his image, which he has created according to his whole being and wherein he will see and know himself. Yes, he dwells in man, why then are we men so long a-seeking? Let us but seek to know ourselves we find all; we need run nowhere to seek God, for we can thereby do him no service; if we do but seek and love one another, then we love God; what we do to one another, that we do to God; whosoever seeketh and findeth his brother and sister hath sought and found God. In him we are all one body of many members, everyone having its own office, government and work, and that is the wonder of God.
— The Confessions of Jacob Böehme, W. Scott Palmer (tr.), pp. 94-95.

Think For Yourself

.... Göethe here .... gives expression to one of the tragic facts of life, namely that the very act of living involves a man (or a commonwealth) in wrong-doing, inevitably. this becomes all the more painfully apparent as a man's career develops in scope and power. To illustrate this by an extreme, negative example, one might call to mind those Buddhist monks in Tibet who did not venture forth from their cells in the summertime for fear of the crime of destroying the life crawling beneath their feet. This solution in inaction is one hardly valid or generally acceptable to man; he must resolutely face the fact that action means sin and so conduct his life that the active good he does will in the end far outweigh the wrong in which he will necessarily be involved, realizing that with care and awareness he may actually be able to turn his particular wrongs into a general good.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, The Soothsayings of Bakis, Harold Jantz (tr.), p. 12.

     In our day, also, the impassioned social idealists, in their admiration for the words, tend to overlook the acts and intents of the neotyranies. They continue to use every trick of mental self-deception to keep on believing that the deeds are somewhat unimportant, that the millions who perish in the process are as nothing compared to the glorious goal envisaged for mankind. It is an old insight shared by Göethe that the idealist in power becomes the ruthless tyrant sweeping away all human opposition to the realization of his idea while disregarding the real needs of the people.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 21.

....Out of the many promising undertakings of men and nations, only a few come to fruition; out of the hopes and ambitions of the individual, only a few are realized; out of the millions of children with brilliant promise, only a few reach greatness. As Göethe observed in the second book of his autobiography, "If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses." The prodigality of blossoming life is simply a part of the process of nature; we should not expect too much future fruit from it. But what of it? The blossoms are so beautiful.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 43.

    The percept he conveys in his life and work [Göethe] could perhaps be phrased in this way: know which way the wind blows, but take your direction from the stars.
— Johann Wolfgang von Göethe, Ibid., p. 51.

     People go to church as they go to a tavern, in order to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to see themselves in their imagination, for a few minutes at least, free and happy, as happy as others, the well-to-do people. Give them a human existence, and they will never go into a tavern or a church. And it is only the Social Revolution that can and will give them such an existence.
— Michael Bakunin, A Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy, 10-1871, in Quotations From the Anarchists, Paul Berman (ed.), p. 91.

     Reduced intellectually and morally as well as materially, to the minimum of human existence, confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison, without horizon, without outlet, without even a future if we believe the economists, the people would have the singularly narrow souls and blunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to escape; but of escape there are but three methods — two chimerical and a third real. The first two are the tavern and the church, debauchery of the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.
— Michael Bakunin, God and State, 1871, in Ibid., p. 98.

     The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the state is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism, 1910, in Ibid., p. 182.

     Let us not be afraid to say that we want men capable of evolving endlessly, capable of destroying and renewing their environments without cessation, of renewing themselves also; men whose intellectual independence will be their greatest force, who will attach themselves to nothing, always ready to accept what is best, happy in the triumph of new ideas aspiring to live many lives in one life. Society fears such men; therefore, we must not hope that it will ever want an education able to give them to us.
— Francisco Ferrer, The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School, 1913, in Ibid., p. 209.

Think Before You Leap

....For suicide is, after all, the result of a choice. However impulsive the action and confused the motive, the moment when a man finally decides to take his own life he achieves a certain temporary clarity. Suicide may be a declaration of bankruptcy which passes judgment on a life as one long history of failures. But it is a history which also amounts at least to this one decision which, by its very finality, is not wholly a failure. Some kind of minimal freedom — the freedom to die in one's own way and in one's own time — has been salvaged from the wreck of all those unwanted necessities.
— A. Alvarez, The Savage God: A Study of Suicide, p. 87.

Unless you find paradise
at your own center,
there is not the smallest chance
that you may enter.
— Frederick Franck, The Book of Angelus Silesius, p. 31.

It is a rare privilege to be born
as a human being, as
we happen to be.
If we do not achieve
enlightenment in this life,
when do we expect to achieve it?
— Echu, in Ibid., p. 40.

It is not that things are illusory,
but their separateness in the
fabric of Reality is illusory.
— Anonymous, in Ibid., p. 50.

A professor who wanted to know all about Zen
visited a master, who poured tea for his guest, but
kept pouring until the visitor cried:
— Stop, stop! It is running over!
— Indeed, said the master, like yourself! As long
as you are brimming over with opinions and
theories, there is no way to show Zen to you!
— Silesius, Ibid., p. 59.

When the eternal truth is revealed,
this Earth itself is the Pure Land,
this body itself is the body
of the Buddha.
— Hakuin, in Ibid., p. 81.

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror.
     It grasps nothing, it rejects nothing
          It receives but does not keep.
— Chuang Tzu, in Ibid., p. 95.

High and Low

     "Even if fate did not permit of success: the striving in itself rewards the exertion of one's body" (619). — "If one accepts the burden as joy, there emerges a splendour for which even one's enemies are eager" (630).
— Attributed to the weaver Tiruvalliuvar, "Maxims" from the Kural, in Indian Thought and Its Development, Albert Schweitzer, p. 202.

     "The loveless man takes everything for himself; the man full of love gives even his own bones to others" (72). — .... "To assuage the deadly hunger of the poor is the treasury of the rich" (226). — "Wealth in benevolence is the wealth of wealths. Wealth in possessions the mob has also" (241).
— Ibid., p. 203.

.... "The wealth of him who gives nothing to the poor is as if a very fine lady grows old in solitude" (1007).
— Ibid., p. 204.

     Somehow I did [stand up for a head count, even after a severe beating], and that pertains to the second rule of survival burned into my mind: never admit the least sign of infirmity. A sore throat or a cough threatened to develop into something worse? A cut or wound or sore that might be protected against a fatal infection if you can scrounge up a piece of cloth? A back or leg injury that makes you stoop or limp? Don't improvise anything that the guards can spot as a makeshift bandage. Hide any mark of illness, no matter how serious or how slight. Remember that you live under the percept — however lunatic it may sound in a pit where all are condemned to destruction — that the weakest, and often the bravest and the best, go first....
— Samuel Pisar, Of Blood and Hope, p. 71.

     Life is so horribly ugly, we human beings so abysmally evil, that if a writer were to describe all that he had seen and heard no one could bear to read it. I can think of people I have known, good, respectable, popular people, who have said or done things that I have crossed out, things that I can never bring myself to mention and that I refuse to remember. Breeding and education seem to do no more than mask the beast in us, and virtue is a disguise. Our highest achievement is the concealment of our vileness.
     Life is so cynical that only a swine can be happy in it, and anyone who can see this hideous life as beautiful is a swine!
     Sure enough, life is a punishment! A hell. For some a purgatory, for none a paradise.
     We are absolutely forced to do evil and to torment our fellow men. It is all sham and delusion, lies, faithlessness, falsehood and self-deception. "My dear friend" is my worst enemy. Instead of "My beloved" one should write "My hated."
— August Strindberg, From An Occult Diary, September 3rd, 1904, [days before he started divorce proceedings from his wife], pp. 76-77.

Jewish Wisdom

     Said the Riziner: "Various types of people come to me, but not all are influenced by my counsel to improve themselves. If a man is covered by a blanket, his inner warmth is increased. But if a stone is covered in this way, it receives no warmth."
— "The Blanket," in Hasidic Anthology, Louis I. Newman (ed.), p. 29.

     A Rabbi was asked: "Why is it that the pious man seems less eager to persuade others to become religious than the impious man to gain companions in wickedness?"
     He replied: "The man of piety walks in light and is not afraid to walk alone, whereas the man of impiety walks in darkness and is anxious for company."
— "The Need for Company," in Ibid., p. 278.

     Said the Bershider: "Two things I learned from my Master during my last visit to him: 'The less one talks, the nearer he is to holiness'; and 'Only that good deed is valuable of which no one knows.'"
— "Silence and Secrecy," in Ibid., p. 321.

     The author of Kol Omer Kera said: "We read in a Midrash that Cain and Abel quarreled for the reason that each wished to establish the Holy Temple on his land. This excuse ever since has been brought forward for every shedding of blood and for every war. It is always maintained that the fight is on behalf of a holy purpose."
— "Every War a Holy War?," in Ibid., p. 366.

     Rabbi Nahum of Tzernobil was accustomed to befriend poverty-stricken Hasidim but was abrupt with wealthy ones. A rich Hasid asked him: "Rabbi, does not the Talmud teach that the Shekinah rests upon him who is wise, strong and rich? Does not this prove that God loves the rich?"
     The Rabbi smiled and said: "Do you truly believe that God cares for that which is external to a man? The wise, strong and rich man on whom the Shekinah rests, is the one described in Pirkei Avoth (4:1): 'Who is wise? He who learns from all men. Who is mighty? He who subdues his passions. Who is rich? He who rejoices in his portion.'"
— From "Does God Love the Rich?," in Ibid., pp. 504-505.

Poetic Search

....Everything is unexpected in Cocteau, but everything is a coherent part of his character and the result of his particular genius. He has never claimed to be  more than he is. This is one of his most sympathetic traits. He has constantly pointed out his own limitations. Man, especially the poet, is infirm, a prisoner of his own dimensions. The poet, in contrast with the ordinary man, writes on the fourth wall of his prison. This act gives him the illusion of escape.
— Wallace Fowlie (tr. & ed.), from the Introduction, The Journals of Jean Cocteau, p. 4.

     After the scandal of Parade in the Chatêlet, in 1917, two remarks flattered me. First, a theater director crying, "We're too old for Punch and Judy"; and then, a gentleman whom Picasso and I heard say to his wife, "If I had known it was so crazy, I would have brought the children."
— Jean Cocteau, in The Journals of Jean Cocteau, Wallace Fowlie (tr. & ed.), p. 90.

     In Blood of the Poet, the blood flowing through that film upset my judges. They wondered why they should be disgusted and shocked so deliberately. The blood which sickened them forced them to turn aside and prevented their enjoying the "windfalls" (by this word, they meant: the entrance through the mirror, the moving statue, the beating heart), but I should like to ask what bond exists between these various startling episodes, save the blood which flows and which gives the film its title. What can those who want only to enjoy the ports of call, know of the river? And what would the "windfalls," as they call them, be worth, if they were not the consequence of a plan, even subconscious, and tributary moreover, by means of this bond of blood? They sleep and believe that I sleep and that my waking up awakens them. In a meal their heaviness condemns them to distinguish only peppers. They are sensitive only to witticisms. That is what inflames them, makes them restless, and forces them to run from place to place.
— Jean Cocteau, in Ibid., pp. 128-129.

     I hate nullity, the half-way.
     In the arms of the beloved who says to me, "Ah, my handsome Rolla, you are killing me!" I do not want to be obliged to say, "No, I'm not in form this evening."
     I must have everything, I cannot conquer everything but I will to do so.
     Let me get my breath and cry once more:
     "Spend yourself, spend yourself again! Run till you are out of breath and die madly! Prudence ... how you bore me with your endless yawning!"
     Philosophy is dull if it does not touch my instinct. Sweet to dream of, with the vision that adorns it, it is not science ... or at most science in the germ. Multiple, like everything in nature, ceaselessly evolving, it is not a deduction from things, as certain solemn personages would have us believe, but rather a weapon, which we alone, even as savages, fabricate ourselves. It dares not manifest itself as a reality but as an image, even as a picture is, — admirable if the picture is a masterpiece.
     Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty?
     The Colossus remounts to the pole, the world's pivot; his great mantle shelters and warms the two germs, Seraphitus, Seraphita, fertile souls, ceaselessly uniting who issue from their boreal mists to traverse the whole universe, teaching, loving, creating.
     You wish to teach me what is within myself? Learn first what is within you. You have solved the problem, I could not solve it for you. It is the task of all of us to solve it.
     Toil endlessly. Otherwise, what would life be worth?
     We are what we have been from the beginning; and we are what we shall be always ships tossed about by every wind.
     Shrewd, far-sighted sailors avoid dangers to which others succumb, partly, however, thanks to an indefinable something that permits one to live under the same circumstances in which another, acting in the same manner, would die.
     The few use their wills, the rest resign themselves without a struggle.
— Paul Gauguin, in Paul Gauguin's Intimate Journals, Van Wyck Brooks (tr.), pp. 239-240.

Bountiful Beckett

Nothing is more real than nothing.
— Democritus, from frontispiece, of I Can't Go On, I'll Go On, Samuel Beckett, "A Selection from His Works," R. W. Seaver (ed.).

The expression that there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the objection to express.
— Three Dialogues with George Duthuit (1946), in Ibid.

His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year....
— Samuel Beckett, from Dante and the Lobster, in Ibid., p. 19.

....It took  me a long time, my lifetime so to speak, to realize that the colour of an eye half seen, or the source of some distant sound, are closer to Guidecca in the hell of unknowing than the existence of God, or the origins of protoplasm, or the existence of self, and even less worthy than these to occupy the wise. It's a bit much, a lifetime, to achieve this consoling conclusion, it doesn't leave you much time to profit by it. So a fat lot of help it was when, having put the question to her, I was told they were clients she received in rotation. I could obviously have got up and gone to look through the keyhole. But what can you see, I ask you, through holes the likes of those? So you live by prostitution, I said. We live by prostitution, she said. You couldn't ask them to make less noise? I said, as if I believed her. I added, or a different kind of noise....
— Samuel Beckett, from First Love, in Ibid., pp. 154-155.

....and what prevented the dog from being one of those stray dogs that you pick up and take in your arms, from compassion or because you have long been straying with no other company than the endless roads, sands, shingle, bogs and heather, than this nature answerable to another court, than at long intervals the fellow-convict you long to stop, embrace, suck, suckle and whom you pass by, with hostile eyes, for fear of his familiarities? Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it the time needed for it to love you and you it, then throw it away....
— Samuel Beckett, from Molloy, in Ibid., p. 219.

Boy: Yes Sir.
     He steps back, hesitates, turns and exit running. The light
     suddenly fails. In a moment it is night. The moon rises
     at back, mounts in the sky, stands still, shedding a pale
     light on the scene.
Vladimir: At last! (Estragon gets up and goes towards Vladimir, a boot in each hand. He puts them down at the edge of stage, straightens and contemplates the moon.) What are you doing?
Estragon: Pale for weariness.
Vladimir: Eh?
Estragon: Of climbing heaven and gazing on the likes of us.
Vladimir: Your boots, what are you doing with your boots?
Estragon: (turning to look at the boots). I'm leaving them there. (Pause.) Another will come, just as ... as ... as me, but with smaller feet, and they'll make him happy.
Vladimir: But you can't go barefoot!
Estragon: Christ did.
Vladimir: Christ! What has Christ got to do with it? You're not going to compare yourself to Christ!
Estragon: All my life I've compared myself to him.
Vladimir: But where he lived it was warm, it was dry!
Estragon: Yes. And they crucified quick.
                Silence.
Vladimir: We've nothing more to do here.
Estragon: Nor anywhere else.
Vladimir: Ah Gogo, don't go on like that. To-morrow everything will be better.
Estragon: How do you make that out?
Vladimir: Did you not hear what the child said?
Estragon: No.
Vladimir: He said that Godot was sure to come to-morrow....
— Samuel Beckett, from Waiting for Godot, near end of Act I, in Ibid., pp. 424-425.

Common Sense Laws

"Never try to be nice to a man with a tattoo on his face" was all one note said .... Goldwyn on Thinking Small: Why only twelve disciples? Go out and get thousands.
— Paul Dickson, from the Preface, The Official Explanations, pp. xi-xiii.

Balzer's Law. Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
— Robert Balzer, in Ibid., p. 8.

Banacek's Law. When the owl shows up at the mouse picnic, he's not there to enter the sock race.

Cooper's Law. All machines are simplifiers.
— Unknown, in Ibid., p. 40.

Cost Effectiveness, Three Important Points. ....(3) Just before being blasted off into orbit Astronaut Walter Shirra was asked by Dr. E.R. Annis, "What concerns you the most?" Shirra thought and then replied, "Every time I climb up on the couch [in the capsule] I say to myself, 'Just think, Wally, everything that makes this thing go was supplied by the lowest bidder.'"
— Ibid., p. 41.

Ertz's Observation on Immortality. Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
— Susan Ertz, in Ibid., p. 58.

Harum's theory of Fleas. A moderate amount of fleas is good for a dog; it keeps him from broodin' on bein' a dog.
— David Harum (title character of E.N. Westcott's 1898 novel), in Ibid., p.76.

Maslow's Maxim. If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.
— Abraham Maslow, in Ibid., p. 134.

Old Boy's Law. You don't learn anything new the second time you're kicked by a mule.
— Unknown, in Ibid., p. 168.

Peter's Principle of Success. Get up one time more than you're knocked down.
— Jimmie Peters, quoted in San Antonio Express News, 1-19-79), p. 177.

Ranger's Rule. We have done so much with so little for so long, that now we can do anything with nothing.
— U.S. troops in Vietnam, in Ibid., p.186.

Santayana's Philosophical Reminder. It is a great advantage for a system of philosophy to be substantially true.
— George Santayana, in Ibid., p. 198.

Westheimer's Discovery. A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
— Frank Westheimer (Harvard chemist), in Ibid., p. 232.

Thought Rhyme

The classical Japanese syllabary, consisting of forty-seven syllables. It is also a poem, which may be translated:
"Their luster remains, but the blossoms have fallen;
in our world, who goes on forever?
Crossing the deep mountain of being today,
I saw no shallow dreams, nor was I drunk."
"Incorporating i-ro-ha" means beginning each tanka with one of the forty-seven syllables.
— Footnote #7, in From the Country of Eight Islands, Hiroaki Sato/Burton Watson (trs. & eds.), p. 195.

Plum blossoms at their best — if only the wind blew empty-handed!
— Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), 1667, in Ibid., p. 278.

In my hut, square light cast by the window moon.
— Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), 1684, in Ibid., p. 280.

An old pond: a frog jumps in — the sound of water.
— Matsuo Basho (1644-1694), 1686, in Ibid., p. 282.

     Take Saigyo's waka, Sogi's renga, Sesshu's paintings, Rikyu's tea — what runs through them is one and the same thing. Those in art follow nature and make friends with the four seasons. Whatever they see can only be a flower; whatever they think can only be the moon. Those who see no flower in anything are no better than barbarians; those who feel no flower [moon] in their hearts are akin to birds and beasts. Get out from among barbarians, take yourselves away from birds and beasts. Follow nature and return to nature, that's what I say.
     Early in the tenth month the sky looks uncertain and I feel like a leaf in the wind, not knowing where I'm going:

I'd like to be called a traveler in the first showers [FN # 14: Followed by Yoshiyuki's wakiku, "again lodging under sasanqua from place to place."
— In Ibid., p. 283.

A green willow's quiet, wherever you plant it.
— Chiyojo (1703-1775), in Ibid., p. 333.

"Truth is one":
Clear water has no front or back.
— Chiyojo (1703-1775), in Ibid., p. 334.

    It is hazardous to think that a coordination of words (for philosophy is nothing more than that) could resemble the universe. It is also hazardous to think that of those illustrious coordinations, one — albeit in an infinitesimal way — might resemble it a little more than the others. I have examined the combinations which enjoy a certain credibility. I venture to affirm that only in the one formulated by Schopenhauer have I glimpsed some trace of the universe. According to that doctrine, the world is a factory of the will. Art requires certain visible unrealities ... always. Allow me to cite on: the metaphorical, or multiple, or carefully casual diction of the interlocutors of a play ... Let us admit that which all idealists admit: the hallucinatory nature of the world. Let us do that which no idealist has done; let us search for the unrealities which confirm that nature. We will find them, I believe, in Kant's antinomies and in Zeno's dialectics.
     "The greatest sorcerer," wrote Novalis in a memorable phrase, "would be he who bewitched himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagories for autonomous apparitions. Would that be our case?" I surmise that this is so. We (the indivisible divinity who operates in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it to be resistant, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space, and fixed in time; but we have  permitted tenuous and eternal intersticies of illogic a reason in its architecture in order to know that it is false.
— Jorge Louis Borges, from "Joyce and Neologisms," in Borges: A Reader, Emir Monegal/Reid (eds.), pp. 108-109.

Poetic Writers

             Seeing Off Master T'an

             By Meng Chiao (751-814)

A poet suffers making poems —
Better to waste your efforts trying to fly!
My whole life, a spirit of useless squawking,
Bare, leafless twigs hang from cold branches,
Cast off as though a tiny ball of spittle.
Step after step you beg
For scrap after scrap of clothing.
Those who have relied on poetry for a living
Since ancient times have never gotten fat.
This old man, hungry from poetry, is not bitter,
But your suffering tears fall like rain.
— Stephen Owen (tr.), in Sunflower Splendor,
Wu-xchi Liu/Irving Lo (eds.), pp. 158-159.

                     Call to Arms
           By Lu Hsün (1881-1936)

Take up the pen: fall into the net of law;
Resist the times: offend popular sentiments.
Accumulated abuse can dissolve the bones,
And so, one gives voice to the empty page.
— William R. Schultz (tr.), in Ibid., p. 508.

Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound. "A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not."
— The Almanac of American Letters, Randy F. Nelson (ed.), p. 166.

Richard Wilbur on Edgar Allan Poe. "Poe's mind may have been a strange one; yet all minds are alike in their general structure; therefore, we can understand him, and I think he will have something to say to us as long as there is civil war in the palaces of men's minds."
— Ibid., p. 171.

Tennessee Williams on William Faulkner. "I felt a terrible torment in the man. He always kept his eyes down. We tried to carry on a conversation but he would never participation. Finally he lifted his eyes once to a direct question from me, and the look in his eyes was so terrible, so sad, that I began to cry."
— Ibid., pp. 171-172.

John Dos Passos. "If there is a special hell for writers, it would be the forced contemplation of their own works.
— Ibid., p. 173.

William Faulkner. "The only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost."
— Ibid., p. 173.

Benjamin Franklin. "Write with the learned. Pronounce with the vulgar."
— Ibid., p. 173.

            On Love
In that little ugly hut
I'd like to burn down,
on a spread of rotten bedding
fit for the trash,
entwined in those
ugliest of ugly arms —
may they break! —
you're sleeping, I suppose —
and because of you every hour
of the madder-red day,
all through the night
black as leopard-flower seeds,
till the floor beneath me
creaks and groans,
I lie tormented!
                  ENVOY
It is I poor thing,
who burns up
my own heart that makes me
long for you so!
— From "Six Anonymous Choka," in From the Country of Eight Islands,
Hiroaki Sato/Burton Watson (trs. & eds.), pp. 77-78.

Years to come
will there be those
who wish they'd known me too? —
like me, letting their mind
dwell on the past

While I gaze far off,
thinking on and on
about this world of ours,
a white cloud vanishes
in the empty sky
— Saigyo (1118-1190), from "Sixty-Four Tanka," in Ibid., p. 168.

Dig Deep

     The spiritual aim is reached neither by many works, nor by few, but by grace alone. As the saint Ibn 'Ata-Allah says in his counsels: If you were destined to reach Him only after the destruction of your faults and the abandonment of all your claims, you would never reach Him.... He absorbs your quality into His and your attributes into His and thus brings you back by means of what comes to you from Him, not by means of what comes to Him from you.
— Kennerth Cragg, The Wisdom of the Sufis, XLII, pp. 40-41.

     It was related of Sari al-Saqati of Baghdad, who had a shop in the bazaar, that when the word came of a fire in which his shop was burnt, he said: Then I am set free from the care of it. Later, there came word that his shop was intact but those around it had been destroyed. Then Sari gave all he possessed to the poor and took the way of a sufi.
— Kenneth Cragg, Ibid., XLV, p. 41.

     One came to the Beloved's door and knocked. And a voice from within whispered: 'Who is there?' And the lover answered: 'It is I.'

     Then the voice said: 'There is no room in this house for thee and me.' And the door was not opened to him. So the lover went back into the desert and fasted and prayed. At the end of a year, he returned once more to the Beloved's door and knocked.

     And the voice from within said again: 'Who is there?' This time, the lover, having learned self-renunciation, answered: 'It is thyself.' And the door was opened.
— Kenneth Cragg, Ibid., LXXIX, p. 56.

     The problems of Art. New artists have been obtained. These do not object to, and indeed argue enthusiastically for, the rationalization process. Production is up. Quality-control devices have been installed at those points where the interests of artists and audience intersect. Shipping and distribution have been improved out of all recognition. (It is in this area, they say in Paraguay, that traditional practices were most blameworthy.) The rationalized art is dispatched from central art dumps to regional art dumps, and from there into the lifestreams of cities. Each citizen is given as much art as his system can tolerate. Marketing considerations have not been allowed to dictate product mix, rather, each artist is encouraged to maintain, in his software, highly personal, even idiosyncratic, standards (the so-called "hand of the artist" concept). Rationalization produces simpler circuits and, therefore, a statement in symbolic logic. The statement is then "minimized" by various clever methods. The simpler statement is translated back into the design of a simpler circuit. Foamed by a number of techniques, the art is then run through heavy steel rollers. Flip-flop switches control its further development. Sheet art is generally dried in smoke and is dark brown in color. Bulk art is air-dried, and changes color in particular historical epochs.
— Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories, "Rationalization," p. 130.

Writing Rite

     Purely formal criticism of Sophocles, by rule, is an impertinence. "All arts aspire to the condition of music"; what this means was illustrated by (I think) Schumann. He was once asked by a man who had just heard him play one of his compositions what it meant. "I will tell you," said Schumann, and he played it again. the form was the meaning; and so it is with Sophocles until it is shown that he was incapable of expressing himself properly. Any fool could "improve" the Ajax, but only by making it mean something that Sophocles thought not worth saying. The diastrous notion that the artist is one who makes pretty things has been "the beginning of many evils to the Greeks."
— H.D.F. Kitto, "Middle Tragedy: Sophocles," in The Proper Study: Essays on Western Classics, Anderson & Mazzeo (eds.), p. 86.

     The natural human tendency towards forgetfulness and confusion normally produces error, but in poets it may produce poetic truth. Their unconscious mind is full, not only of imaginative impressions, but also of a latent reason. The "hooked atoms" combine according to it. The reason in it all is missed, because it is too quick, and too compressed and elliptic. Poets seem to talk nonsense because they talk so much truth all at the same time.
— Matthew Arnold, "An Essay on Marcus Aurelius," in Ibid., p. 199.

     (A life without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing; — Every day we ought to renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught; — Our improvement is in proportion to our purpose; — We hardly ever manage to get completely rid of one fault, and do not set our hearts on daily improvement; — Always place a definite purpose before thee; — Get the habit of mastering thine inclination.)
— Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ, in Ibid., pp. 227-228.

     What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? Art thou not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it, just as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking?
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, in Ibid., p. 239.

     A bird rose over their heads with a leaping flight that made it seem as though its black was bouncing against the bright sky. The foolish noise and motion precipitated their thoughts. They were broken into a new conception of life. They perceived that God is war and his creatures are meant to fight. When dogs walk through the world cats must climb trees. The virgin must snare the wanton, the fine lover must put the prude to the sword. The gross man of action walks, spurred on the bloodless bodies of the men of thought, who lie quiet and cunningly do not tell him where his grossness leads him. The flesh must smother the spirit, the spirit must set the flesh on fire and watch it burn. And those who were gentle by nature and shrank from the ordained brutality were betrayers of their kind, surrendering the earth to the seed of their enemies. In this war there is no discharge. If they succumbed to peace now, the rest of their lives would be dishonorable, like the exile of a rebel who has begged his life as the reward of cowardice. It was their first experience of religious passion, and they abandoned themselves to it so that their immediate personal qualities fell away from them. Neither his weakness nor her prudence stood in the way of the event.
— Rebecca West, "Indissoluble Matrimony," in Blast I, Wyndham Lewis (ed.), p. 110.

Mind Mend

I wonder what feelings inspire a man to complain of "having nothing to do." I am happiest when I have nothing to distract me and I am completely alone.
     If a man conforms to society, his mind will be captured by the filth of the outside world, and he is easily led astray; if he mingles in society, he must be careful that his words do not offend others, and what he says will not at all be what he feels in his heart. He will joke with others only to quarrel with them, now resentful, now happy, his feelings in constant turmoil. Calculations of advantage will wantonly intrude, and not a moment will be free from considerations of profit and loss. Intoxication is added to delusion, and in a state of inebriation the man dreams. People are all alike: they spend their days running about frantically, oblivious to their insanity.
     Even if a man has not yet discovered the path of enlightenment, as long as he removes himself from his worldly ties, leads a quiet life, and maintains his peace of mind by avoiding entanglements, he may be said to be happy, at least for the time being.
     It is written in Maka Shikan, "Break your ties with your daily activities, with personal affairs, with your arts, and with learning.
— Kenko, Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa), #75, Donald Keene (tr.), pp. 66-67.

A man who was famous as a tree climber was guiding someone in climbing a tall tree. He ordered the man to cut the top branches, and, during this time, when the man seemed to be in great danger, the expert said nothing. Only when the man was coming down and had reached the height of the eveas did the expert call out, "Be careful! Watch your step coming down!" I asked him, "Why did you say that? At that height he could jump the rest of the way if he chose."
     "That's the point," said the expert. "As long as the man was up at a dizzy height and the branches were threatening to break, he himself was so afraid I said nothing. Mistakes are always made when people get to the easy places."
     This man belonged to the lowest class, but his words were in perfect accord with the percepts of the sages. In football too, they say that after you have kicked out of a difficult place and you think the next one will be easier you are sure to miss the ball.
— Kenko, Ibid., #109, pp. 92-93.

Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain. One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing in it to steal.
     Ryokan returned and caught him. "You may have come a long way to visit me," he told the prowler, "and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift."
     The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away.
— #9, The Moon Cannot Be Stolen, in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Paul Reps (ed.), p. 12.

     Hoshin, who related this story, told his disciples: "It is not necessary for a Zen master to predict his passing, but if he really wishes to do so, he can."
     "Can you?" someone asked.
     "Yes," answered Hoshin. "I will show you what I can do seven days from now."
...."Seven days ago," he remarked, "I said I was going to leave you. It is customary to write a farewell popem, but I am neither poet nor calligrapher. Let one of you inscribe my last words."
     His followers thought he was joking, but one of them started to write.
     "Are you ready?" Hoshin asked.
     "Yes, sir," replied the writer.
     Then Hoshin dictated:

     I came from brilliancy
     And return to brilliancy
     What is this?

     The poem was one line short of the customary four, so the disciple said: "Master, we are one line short."
     Hoshin, with the roar of a conquering lion, shouted "Kaa!" and was gone.
— #10, in Ibid., pp. 13-14.

     Jiun, a Shingon master, was a well-known Sanskrit scholar of the Tokugawa era. When he was young he used to deliver lectures to his brother students.
     His mother heard about this and wrote him a letter:
    "Son, I do not think you became a devotee of the Buddha because you desired to turn into a walking dictionary for others. There is no end to information and commentation, glory and honor. I wish you would stop this lecture business. Shut yourself up in a little temple in a remote part of the mountain. Devote your time to meditation and in this way attain true realization.
— #20, A Mother's Advice, in Ibid., p. 24.

     Sagen Shaku, the first Zen teacher to come to America, said: "My heart burns like fire but my eyes are as cold as dead ashes." He made the following rules which he practiced every day of his life:

     In the morning before dressing, light incense and meditate.
     Retire at a regular hour. Partake of food at regular intervals. Eat with moderation and never to the point of satisfaction.
     Receive a guest with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.
     Watch what you say, and whatever you say, practice it.
     When an opportunity comes do not let it pass by, yet always think twice before acting.
     Do not regret the past. Look to the future.
     Have the fearless attitude of a hero and the loving heart of a child.
     Upon retiring, sleep as if you had entered your last sleep. Upon awakening, leave your bed behind you instantly as if you had cast away a pair of old shoes.
— #22, My Heart Burns Like Fire, in Ibid., p. 26.

French Wit

Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.
— De Saint-Réal, in French Wit, Wisdom & Wickedness, J. De Finod (ed.), p. 9.

To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat his own desires: a woman must resist her own inclinations, and the continual attack of man.
— Laténa, in Ibid., p. 15.

Prejudice is the reason of fools.
— Voltaire, in Ibid, p. 19.

In external cares we spend our years, ever agitated by new desires: we look forward to living, and yet never live.
— Fontenelle, in Ibid., p. 19.

Under the freest constitution ignorant people are still slaves.
— Condorcet, in Ibid., p. 22.
 
Shun idleness: it is the rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
— Voltaire, in Ibid., p. 24.
 
Alas! what does man here below? A little noise in much shadow.
— Victor Hugo, in Ibid., p. 30.

Solitude causes us to write because it causes us to think.
— Mlle. de Guérin, in Ibid., p. 31.

Use, do not abuse: neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.
— Voltaire, in Ibid., p. 34.

The moment past is no longer: the future may never be: the present is all of which man is the master.
— J.J. Rousseau, in Ibid., p. 35.

Everything falls and is effaced. A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet, so much tumult on the surface!
— Victor Hugo, in Ibid., p. 44.

Prosperity unmasks the vices; adversity reveals the virtues.
— Denis Diderot, in Ibid., p. 55.

Patience is the courage of virtue.
— Bernardin de St. Pierre, in Ibid., p. 56.

Promises retain men better than services. For them, hope is a chain, and gratitude a thread.
— J. Petit-Senn, in Ibid., p. 58.

How can we expect another to keep our secret, when it is more than we can do ourselves?
— La Rochefoucauld, in Ibid., p. 83.

Truth is the sun of the intelligence.
— Vauvenarques, in Ibid., p. 88.

In order to do great things, we should live as though we were never to die.
— Vauvenarques, in Ibid., p. 115.

Everybody gives advice: some listen to it, none apply it.
— Alfred Bougeart, in Ibid., p. 127.

The heart has reasons that the reason does not understand.
— Bossuet, in Ibid., p. 135.

Those who always speak well of women do not know them enough; those who always speak ill of them do no know them at all.
— Pigault-Lebrun, in Ibid., p. 143.

Why should we complain, since we are so little moved by the complaints of others?
— Alfred Bougeart, in Ibid., p. 148.

Many wish to be pious, but none to be humble.
— La Rochefaucauld, in Ibid., p. 163.

He who reckons ten friends has not one.
— Malesherbes, in Ibid., p. 174.

There are men who pride themselves on their insensibility to love: it is like boasting of having been always stupid.
— S. de Castres, in Ibid., p. 177.

To please, one must make up his mind to be taught many things which he already knows, by people who do not know them.
— Chamfort, in Ibid., p. 178.

The conversation of women in society resembles the straw used in packing china: it is nothing, yet, without it, everything would be broken.
— Mme. de Solm, in Ibid., p. 182.

It takes twenty years to bring man from the state of embryo, and from that of a mere animal, as he is in his first infancy, to the point when his reason begins to dawn. It has taken thirty centuries to know his structure; it would take eternity to know something of his soul: it takes but an instant to kill him.
— Voltaire, in Ibid., p. 211.

It costs more to satisfy a vice than to feed a family.
— Balzac, in Ibid., p.213.

Life is long enough for him who knows how to use it. Working and thinking extend its limits.
— Voltaire, in Ibid., p. 219.

What prevents us from being natural is the desire to appear so.
— La Rochefaucauld, in Ibid., p. 236.

Imagine That

Fools and intelligent people are equally harmless. It is half-fools and the half-intelligent who are the most dangerous.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from Proverbs in Prose, in The Permanent Goethe, Thomas Mann (sel. & ed.).

What we do not understand, we do not possess.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

Everything that liberates the mind without giving us control over ourselves is ruinous.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

One is never deceived, one deceives oneself.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science. Both, like all that is lofty and good, belong to the whole world and can be furthered only by the general free interaction of all those living in a given time, with constant regard to that which is preserved and known to us of the past.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

Everyone hears only what he understands.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

In the work of destruction all false arguments avail, but not in the work of construction. What is not true, does not build.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ibid.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
— Samuel Johnson, 1777.

LUCK is a crossroad where preparation and opportunity meet.
— Anon.

To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it.
 — J. Jenkins.

Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not the fish they are after.
— Henry David Thoreau.

So You Say

Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
— La Rochefoucauld , in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 18.

Flattery is counterfeit money which, but for vanity, would have no cidculation.
— La Rochefoucauld, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 18.

Weakness, not vice, is virtue's worst enemy.
— La Rochefoucauld, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 20. 

By the time men are fit for company, they see the objections to it.
— The Marquis of Halifax (George Savile), in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 39. 

One must do more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
— Chamfort (Sebastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort), in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 76. 

To totally block a given effect requires a force equal to that which it cost. To send it in a different direction, a trifle will often suffice.
— Lichtenberg, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 92. 

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
....
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
....
Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
....
There is nothing more dreadful than imagination without taste.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 110-112. 

There is a pleasure in madness, which none but madmen know.
....
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
— Hazlitt, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 130-131. 

Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal.
....
The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
....
A man of genius is priveleged only as far as he is a genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
....
It is a luxury to be understood
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 148-149.

Logic and consistency are luxuries for the gods and the lower animals.
....
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
— Samuel Butler, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 165-166.
 
...."Romanticism," Nietzsche himself remarked, "is only an emergency exit from ill-functioning reality"; and .... "One must pay dearly for immorality: one needs must several times die while still alive." .... "Women understand children better than men do, but men are more childlike than women." .... "A married philosopher belongs to comedy."
— Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 181.

The thought of suicide is a great consolation; with the help of it one has got through many a bad night.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Last Word, Louis Kronenberger, p. 184.

Practically Cynical

Lucidity is the only vice which makes us free — free in a desert.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 12.

If disgust for the world conferred sanctity of itself, I fail to see how I could avoid canonization.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 25

He who hates himself is not humble.

For a long time I have lived with the notion that I was the most normal being that ever existed. This notion gave me the taste, even the passion for being unproductive: what was the use of being prized in a world inhabited by madness, a world mired in mania and stupidity? For whom was one to bother, and to what end? It remains to be seen if I have quite freed myself from this certitude, salvation in the absolute, ruin in the immediate.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 26.

Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
                                      ________________

When Mara, the Tempter, tries to supplant the Buddha, the latter says, among other things: "By what right do you claim to rule over men and over the universe? Have you suffered for knowledge?
     This is the crucial, perhaps the sole question we should ask ourselves when we scrutinize anything, especially a thinker. There is never too great a distinction made between those who have paid for the tiniest step toward knowledge and those, incomparably more numerous, who have received a convenient, indifferent knowledge, a knowledge without ordeals.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 27.

Explosive force of any mortification. Every vanquished desire affords us power. We have the more hold over this world the further we withdraw from it, the less we adhere to it. Renunciation confers an infinite power.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 33.

All these poems where it is merely the Poem that is in question — a whole poetry with no other substance than itself! What would we say of a prayer whose object was religion?
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 35.

Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that he alone pursues the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 37.

A work is finished when we can no longer improve it, though we know it to be inadequate and incomplete. We are so overtaxed by it that we no longer have the power to add a single comma, however indispensable. What determines the degree to which a work is done is not a requirement of art or of truth, it is exhaustion and, even more, disgust.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 50.

Whereas any sentence one has to write requires a pretense of invention, it takes little enough attention  to enter into a text, even a difficult one. To scribble a postcard comes closer to a creative activity than to read The Phenomenology of Mind.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 51.

What a bore, someone who doesn't deign to make an impression. Vain people are almost always annoying, but they make an effort, they take the trouble: they are bores who don't want to be bores, and we are grateful to them for that: we end by enduring them, even by seeking them out. On the other hand, we turn livid with fury in the presence of someone who pays no attention whatever to the effect he makes. What are we to say to him, and what are we to expect from him? Either keep some vestiges of the monkey, or else stay home.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 76.

A free man is one who has discerned the insanity of all points of view; a liberated man is one who has drawn the consequences of such discernment.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 91.

Painful or wounding questions asked by the uncouth distress and anger us, and may have the same effect as certain techniques of Oriental meditation. Who knows if a dense, aggressive stupidity might not provoke illumination? It is certainly worth as much as a rap on the hand with a stick.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 111.

The unusual is not a criterion. Paganini is more surprising and more unpredictable than Bach.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 118.

What makes destruction suspect is its facility: anyone who comes along can excel in it. But if to destroy is easy, to destroy oneself is less so. Superiority of the outcast over the agitator or the anarchist.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 138.

"....the feeling of being everything and the evidence of being nothing." I happened across this phrase in my youth, and was overwhelmed by it.
     Everything I felt in those days, and everything I would feel from then on, was summed up in this extraordinary banal formula, the synthesis of expansion and failure, ecstasy and impasse. Most often it is not in a paradox but in a truism that a revelation appears.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 172.

Man has said what he had to say. He should rest now. But refuses, and though he has entered into his "survivor" phase, he figits as if he were on the threshold of an astonishing career.
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 176.

That I can still desire proves that I lack an exact perception of reality, that I am distracted, that I am a thousand miles from the Truth. "Man," we read in the Dhammapada, "is prey to desire only because he does not see things as they are."
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 188.

To shake people up, to wake them from their sleep, while knowing you are committing a crime and that it would be a thousand times better to leave them alone, since when they wake, too, you have nothing to offer them....
— E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born, p. 202.

Take a Hard Write

     The lotus is a very unusual flower, large and beautiful, but grows in very muddy water. When it blossoms there is no dirt, no mud ... only beautiful flowers ... so fragrant! Dirt doesn't cling to the lotus. When we were small we used to throw mud on the flowers just to watch it roll off. Dirty water rolls off in beads, as if the petals are made of wax. We can learn from this.
     We go through muddy water in our life. This should not stop us from blossoming. We can have turmoil, conflict, disappointment, whatever dark muddy things, but still we can blossom. A Chinese proverb says, "He who has tasted the bitterest of bitterness can be a man above men." From this we see that our turmoil and conflict and even our pain have their value. They add to our growth, develop our character, and teach us compassion.
— Lily Siou, in Diary of the Way, Ira Lerner, p. 89.

....Why does one not like things if there are other people about? Why cannot one make one's books live except in the night, after hours of straining? and you know they have to be your own books too, and you have to read them more than once. I think they take in something of your personality, and your environment also — you know a second hand book sometimes is so much more flesh and blood than a new one — and it is almost terrible to think that your ideas, yourself in your books, may be giving life to generations of readers after you are forgotten. It is that specially which makes one need good books: books that will be worthy of what you are going to put into them. What would you think of a great sculptor who flung away his gifts on modeling clay or sand? Imagination should be put into the most precious caskets, and that is why one can only live in the future or the past, in Utopia or the Wood beyond the World. Father won't know all this — but if you get the right book at the right time you taste joys — not only bodily, physical, but spiritual also, which pass one out above and beyond one's miserable self, as it were through a huge air, following the light of another man's thought. And you can never be quite the old self again. You have forgotten a little bit: or rather pushed it out with a little of the inspiration of what is immortal in someone who has gone before you.
— T. E. Lawrence, in Letters to Mother, Charles Van Doren (ed.), pp. 66-67.

Ah, dear Mother, is any time left us in which to be happy? I dare not hope so. To be forty, under a conceil judiciaire [a financial trustee], with immense debts, and finally, worse than all, my will gone; ruined! Who can say if the intelligence itself be not dried up? I know nothing. I cannot know anything, since I have lost even the ability to make an effort.
     Before all, I want to say something which I do not say often enough to you, and which you no doubt do not know, most of all if you judge me by appearances; it is that my love for you grows without ceasing. I am ashamed to confess that that love does not give me strength enough to raise myself. I look at the past years, the awful years, and spend my time reflecting on the brevity of life; nothing more! and my will rusts more and more. If ever man knew, in youth, bile and hypochondria, that man is myself. Yet I  long to live, and would fain taste a little security, glory, and contentment with myself. Some terrible thing says to me: Never, and again something else says, try.
     With so many plans and projects, accumulated in the two or three portfolios I dare no longer open, what am I likely to achieve? Perhaps nothing, it may be.
— Charles Baudelaire, Feb. of Mar. 1861, in Ibid., p. 186.

     Do you think that deeds of wrong fly up on wings to heaven, and then someone writes them on tablets of Zeus, who looks upon the record and gives judgment upon men? Why, the whole heaven would not suffice for Zeus to write men's sins thereon, nor Zeus himself to consider them and send a punishment for each.. No; Justice is here, close at hand, if you will but see it.
— Euripides, Melanippe, frag. 506, in Greek Religious Thought, F. M. Cornford, p. 154.

We are all dullards in divinity; we know nothing.
— Anaxandrides, Canephorus, in Ibid., p. 248.

Hear, Hear!

      "Formerly, among the Persians, dinner time was at a set hour only for kings: as for all others, their appetite and their belly was their clock; when that chimed, they thought it time to go to dinner. So we find in Plautus a certain parasite making a heavy do, and sadly railing at the inventors of hour-glasses and dials, as being unnecessary things, there being no clock more regular than the belly.
     "Diogenes, being asked at what times a man ought to eat, answered, 'The rich when he is hungry, the poor when he has anything to eat.' Physicians more properly say, that the canonical hours are,
     "'To rise at five, to dine at nine,
     To sup at five, to sleep at nine.'"
— Rabelais

Some Morals from Aesop's Fables:
Some begrudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.
Appearances often are deceiving.
Honesty is the best policy.
Flatterers are not to be trusted,
Don't bite the hand that feeds you!
Beware of the promises of a desperate man!
There is no arguing a coward into courage.
Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.
It is one thing to propose, another to execute.
Any fool can despise what he cannot get.
It is not safe to trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
An old trick may be played once too often.
The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
He who has many friends has no friends.
Necessity is our strongest weapon.
Lean freedom is better than fat slavery.
The greedy who want more lose all.
A needy thief steals more than one who enjoys plenty.
Liberty is too high a price to pay for revenge.
United we stand; divided we fall.
They who neglect old friends for the sake of new ones
      are rightly served when they lose both.
Gratitude is a quality not limited to man.
Slow and steady wins the race.
One good turn deserves another.
Trouble comes from the direction we least expect it.
He that finds discontentment in one place is not likely to
     find happiness in another.
In choosing allies look to their power as well as their
     will to help you.
Too many disagreements have naught but a shadow for a basis.
One man's meat may be anothers poison.
They who voluntarily put themselves under the power of a
      tyrant deserve whatever fate they receive.
As in the body, so in the state, each member in his proper
     sphere must work for the common good.
Let well enough alone!
He who is once deceived is doubly cautious.
Try to please all and you end by pleasing none.
False confidence is the forerunner of misfortune.
Beware of the insincere friend!
It is better to drink second at the spring than to furnish
     food for the vultures.
Familiarity breeds contempt.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
He who does a thing well does not need to boast.
Gossips are to be seen and not heard.
Even a fool is wise — when it is too late!
He laughs best that laughs last.
Many go out for wool and come home shorn.
A bird in the cage is worth two on a branch.
To be satisfied with one's lot is better than to desire
     something which one is not fitted to receive.
The ignorant despise what is precious only because they
     cannot understand it.
He who prays hard against his neighbor brings a
     curse upon himself.
A man may smile, yet be a villian.
Men often mistake notoriety for fame.
The child is father to the man.
There is always someone worse off than yourself.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
The best liars often get caught in their own lies.
A bad temper carries with it its own punishment.
The true value of money is not in its possession but in its use.
If you must revile your neighbors, make certain first
     that he cannot reach you.
It is safer to know one's guest before offering him hospitality.
Treachery is the basest crime of all.
He who cries loudest is often the least hurt.
It is time to criticize the works of others when you have
      done some good thing yourself.
Even the wildest can be tamed by love.
A level path is pleasing to the laden beast.
Misery loves company.
A change of scene does not change one's character.
The gods help them that help themselves.
Some men can blow hot and cold with the same breath.
If you want a task well done, then do it yourself.
Half a loaf is better than no bread.
We learn by the misfortunes of others.
Self-conceit leads to self-destruction.
Only fools fight to exhaustion while a rogue runs off with the dinner.
One good plan that works is better than a hundred doubtful ones.
Clothes may disguise a fool, but his words will give him away.
Stretch your arm no farther than your sleeve will reach.
Hypocrisy is the cloak of villainy.
Quality is more important than quantity.
He who seeks a compliment sometimes discovers the truth.
Industry sometimes pays unexpected dividends.
In union there is strength.
It requires more than wings to be an eagle.
Too often we despise the very things that are most useful to us.
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
Those who take temporary advantage of their neighbors
      difficulties may live to repent of their insolence.
Persuasion is better than force.
Liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.
Uninvited guests are often most welcome when they are gone.
Beware of a friend with an ulterior motive.
Know thy place and keep it.
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Do boldly what you do at all.
Spare the rod and spoil the child.
The laws of hospitality are not to be broken with impunity.
Those who live on expectations are sure to be disappointed.
A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
Avoid too powerful neighbors.
There is no profit in blaming you foolish mistakes
     on foolish advisors.
You are judjed by the company you keep.
We are but sorry witnesses in our own cause.
In dangerous times wise men say nothing.
There is no eye like the master's.
There is as much malice in a wink as in a word.
Many may share in the labors but not in the spoils.
Don't believe all that you hear.
Every truth has two sides.
Enemies' promises are made to be broken.
Don't trust a friend who is liable to desert you
     when trouble comes.
You can't please everyone.
Vanity carries its own punishment.
They who enter by the back stairs may expect to be
     shown out at the window.
Do not denounce the genuine, only to applaud an imitation.
Grasp at the shadow and lose the substance.
He who compasses the destruction of his neighbor often
     is caught in his own snare.
It is better to bend than to break.
How sorry we would be if many of our wishes were granted.
Unless the seed of evil is destroyed it will grow up to destroy us.
He who plays a trick must be prepared to take a joke.
He who tries to outsmart his neighbor winds up by
     outsmarting himself.
The humble are secure from many dangers to which the
     proud are subject.
Happiness is not to be found in borrowed finery.
Example is the best precept.
Magnificent promises often end in paltry performance.
To do the right thing at the right season is a great art.
Yield to the caprices of all and you soon will have
     nothing to yield at all.
Too much cunning overreaches itself.
Those who pretend to be what they are not, sooner or later,
     find themselves in deep water.
It is too late to whet the sword when the trumpet sounds.
They are foolish who give their enemy the means of
     destroying them.
Don't covet more than you can carry.
Braggarts usually get themselves laughed at in the end.
The best laid-out scheme often has a kickback.
Think twice before you leap.
He who will not allow his friend to share the prize must
     not expect him to share the danger.
Pride goeth before a fall.
He winds up friendless who plays both sides against the middle.
No gratitude is to be expected from the wicked.
A bribe in hand betrays mischief at heart.
He who incites strife is worse than he who takes part in it.
It is difficult to see beyond one's own nose.
Trust not in him that seems a saint.
When our neighbor's house is on fire, it is time
     to look at our own.
Physician, heal thyself!
Thy pride is but the prologue of thy shame.
A willful beast must go his own way.
What is bred in the bone will never be
     absent in the flesh.
Men are too apt to condemn in others the very things
     they do themselves.
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Figures don't lie, but they won't make a hen lay.
Throw no stones into the well that
     quenched your thirst.
There is a time and place for everything.
— Morals from Aesop's Fables