Zuihitsu, 2024-07

~ 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.

  • Just ask for it.
  • Sorrow eats time. Be patient. Time eats sorrow.—Louise Eldrich
  • Bring change unheralded to the unready.
  • All work gets refactored or deprecated, and eventually, all memory of it will be gone.
  • If you invite two Baptists over, they won’t drink any of your beer. Invite one and they will drink all of it.
  • Describe the facts well and don’t editorialize.
  • You have to be a sea to absorb a dirty stream without getting dirty.—Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Guilt is cruelty to ourselves.
  • Our purpose isn’t our origin story.
  • Only that which has no history is definable.—Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Life gives you the test before the lesson.
  • We are all museums of fear.— Charles Bukowski
  • Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?—Clarice Lispector
  • What is fully mature is very close to rotting.—Clarice Lispector
  • There is no complete life. There are only fragments.—James Salter
  • Be open to your friendly impulses.
  • The best camouflage is the plain and simple truth. Because nobody ever believes it.—paraphrase of Max Frisch, The Firebugs
  • One doesn’t always have to speak.—Hannah Arendt
  • Idols and heroes are distinguished is the later has something at stake.
  • Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.—Franz Kafka
  • Don’t expect humanity if you don’t give any, bitch!
  • The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom.—Jacques Lacan
  • Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.—Novalis
  • If your measurement is something other than the outcome, the outcome will be worse.
  • Be hard to offend.
  • Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood – “In this world, Elwood, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
  • Tell yourself that it will take 5 years to get your foot in the door, 10 years to become good, and 20 years to be the best.