Zuihitsu, 2024-05

~ cafebedouin

Technically, zuihitsu are longer reflections than what I tend to collect. But, the general idea is right. Here’s this month’s installment. If you want the complete set, please download the fortune file.

  • The price of a fresh start is no support.
  • A heart in the right place often means a brain in the wrong one.
  • Are all body changes vanity?
  • Develop a surplus of wonder.
  • The more we are dispossessed, the more intense our appetites and our illusions become.—Emil Cioran
  • Change is always dangerous and unavoidable.
  • Few things are as unsettling as a lack of control in an unfamiliar situation.
  • Nobody is free. If we are very lucky, we choose our chains.
  • Knowledge is often a defense against truth.
  • It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.—Bertrand Russell
  • The need to be right is the sign if a vulgar mind.—Albert Camus
  • Knowledge without purpose is useless. But, purpose imposes boundaries on knowledge.
  • The root of amateur is love. A pro does it for money.
  • Each person is a little war.
  • The machinery of government depends on the quality of its administrators.
  • This is going to hurt like chili sauce on your arsehole.
  • Acquire advantages when they are relatively inexpensive.
  • The Baby Test: would you trust this person with your baby?
  • Leave environments that veto joy.
  • Dare to be bad.
  • As soon as the inner voice speaks, surrender to it.
  • The myth is of even more importance, historically, than the reality.—Bertrand Russell
  • A lawsuit that isn’t about the money is going to be about something stupider.
  • Start and end well. 好來好去
  • Select for beauty.
  • Surround yourself with the best people you can.
  • Be original.
  • Don’t give up easily.
  • Hope for luck; it is most important.
  • Even Satan is part of God’s plan.
  • Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no-one was listening, everything must be said again.—Andre Gide
  • Everyone touches the hot stove at some point.
  • After any change, it is going to get worse first.
  • Without a foundation, a detailed flourish is of little use.
  • Opinions offered without any risk are worthless.
  • The reality of the algorithmic world is that it rarely rewards brevity and excellence.
  • The quality boundary for writing is around 1000 words.
  • Being personally responsible for outcomes is essential for value.
  • Proceed on the hypothesis that everything you are is a lie and everything you know is wrong and try to disprove it.—Jed McKenna
  • True privilege is being raised with abundance mindset.
  • Focus on positive reinforcement for people and increasing the costs on bad systems.
  • The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.—Max Born
  • Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.—Marshall McLuhan
  • Subtle avoidances, warping your shared narrative in order to make everyone happy, is a slow-crawling cancer.—Aella
  • Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.—Sylvia Plath
  • Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.—Søren Kierkegaard
  • Civilization takes work.
  • Have a knack for unspoken kindnesses.
  • Play your own tune, but keep it a virtue and not turn life into a game of chance.
  • Find a wild place.
  • Sometimes all you can do is make to work.
  • Two rules: no weapons, no bad times.
  • Life is layers.
  • The universe is a beam of light that refracts differently depending on the eye viewing it.
  • Reflexes can keep you safe, but also stupid.
  • Convenience is morality’s most cunning foe.
  • No agency, no responsibility.
  • Half of people care about identity, the other half care about ideas.
  • Want to change yourself? Change your environment.
  • There is no satisfaction in having nothing left to ask.
  • We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others, that in the end, we become disguised to ourselves.—La Rochefoucauld
  • Do not spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.
  • When people believe in boundaries, they become them.
  • No matter how difficult your struggle a successful outcome is not guaranteed.
  • Remember the good deed and do not carry a grudge for the bad one.
  • Every group chat has a n-1 group containing everyone except that annoying member.
  • You must hone beauty in yourself to be able to recognize it in others. Everything is a mirror.
  • You win and you lose, and if you don’t know how to lose, you don’t know how to live.—Tony O’Reilly
  • Don’t shoot down an idea unless you have an idea to replace it with.
  • Anais Nin: “We are born with the power to alter what we are given at birth.—Anais Nin
  • Context determines form.
  • The known boundary is not a real boundary. Real boundaries mark off our totality, making it impossible to imagine a frame outside of it.
  • Go with your heart.
  • The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.—David Lynch
  • Search for spirits to find only wine.
  • Only in contending with strength can we discover our own.
  • Truth is all we have, without it you are cast adrift on a sea of sophistry.
  • Move from closed mode to open mode.
  • A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.―Ezra Pound