Zuihitsu, 2024-10

~ 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.

  • Without great risks, there can be no great art.
  • You cannot learn what you think you already know.
  • What you are seeking is also seeking you.
  • If you aren’t frequently wrong, you are stagnating. To improve faster, keep taking the scarier paths.
  • When risk is low, move fast. When risk is high, move slow.
  • Happiness can only be found in the present.
  • Don’t criticize your host.
  • Only the fool learns through experience.
  • Knowing the name of something is not the same as knowing it.
  • Study, for there are no miracle people.
  • Happiness may occur at any moment, but it cannot be sought.
  • Be paranoid in planning, but when the action starts, do not waver.
  • Intuition discovers. Logic proves.
  • Get curious, not furious.
  • Inconsistent in friendship is a sign of a worthless person.
  • Real boats rock.
  • Life is like a revolver. Our productive life is thirty years. It takes at least five years to do something meaningful. So, you have no more than six shots.
  • Nobody believes anything bad will happen, until it does.
  • Disasters aren’t rare.
  • The ability to adapt is more important than planning.
  • The unusual and immediate always gets more attention than the familiar, slower moving catastrophes.
  • Where truth is irrelevant so is reason.
  • It is easy to mistake possibility for certainty.
  • When uncertain of what to do next, simplify the problem.
  • Heavy, lifelong debt burdens require consistent employment.
  • Watch out for lifestyle creep.
  • If you don’t have talent, try working harder.
  • Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage.—Dale Carnegie
  • He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.—Jean-Luc Godard
  • Fiction, more than any other written form, explains and expands life.—Julian Barnes
  • Anything you publish repeatedly, on a schedule, will take on a life of its own.
  • The first impression sets the agenda.
  • Amateurs practice till they get it right; professionals practice till they can’t get it wrong.
  • Diversity is being invited to the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.—Verna Myers, Esq.
  • Nobody entirely lacks the will to be honest; but most people settle for a rather small share of it.—Walter Kaufmann
  • A theory should not attempt to explain all the facts, because some of the facts are wrong.—Francis Crick
  • Is the problem the person or their environment?
  • Take ears to the field, take eyes to the farm.—Thai idiom that suggests people don’t use their faculties even when they have them.
  • It’s not that we have limited time. It’s that we have unlimited desires.
  • Knowledge isn’t free. You have to pay attention.—Richard P. Feynman
  • The key element of fanaticism is surpressed doubt.
  • There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.—Alfred Henry Lewis
  • To serve, or be served by, someone is the quickest way to see their true face.
  • Everything’s already been said. Nobody was listening then, or now.
  • Acta non verba.
  • You are rich when you don’t have to worry about money. You are wealthy when you only spend time with people you like.
  • Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.—Rumi
  • The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.—Tacitus
  • Know that one day, your pain will become your cure.—Rumi
  • Do not recite poetry to a swordsman.
  • If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.―Mo Willems
  • Those with nothing to say are the ones doing most of the talking.
  • Keep in mind, throughout your day, that the jails, hospitals, mad houses and graves are packed with people.
  • It’s easier to be odd when you are a 1,000 miles away.
  • Go from impractical to tactical.
  • Avoid people that look for excuses over agency and responsibility.
  • The fundamentals: consistency, focus, discipline, and patience.
  • To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.—Herman Hesse
  • If you want war, go get your kit on.
  • Will is useless if you don’t have the means.
  • Identify and hone your personal edge. Compete and honor the competition. Learn from your mistakes. Luck favors the bold.
  • If an organization four layers of management, it likely has layers it doesn’t need.
  • Less curious about people, more about ideas.
  • Terrorism has two purposes: disrupt the status quo and collapse ambiguity to the point people choose a side.
  • Until it’s done, tell none.
  • Every rose has a thorn, and many thorns without a rose.
  • Freedom is without fear.
  • Envy, anger or anxiety are signs you need to change your outlook or circumstances.
  • The real body count is how many people are in therapy because of you.
  • The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.—Arthur Schopenhauer
  • The more in front, the less in back.
  • The cure for pain is in the pain.—Rumi
  • Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.—Heraclitus
  • Everything that happens is a doorway to transcendence.
  • The eye comes before the seeing.
  • Confidence comes from preparation.—Kobe Bryant
  • Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.―Nikola Tesla
  • It is a rare person that is interested in you, rather than interested in you agreeing with them.
  • Friend: someone who shares a great suffering and a great hope.
  • Turn toward the sun and shadow will fall behind you.
  • If you believe in yourself, there is no need to convince anyone else.
  • Keep the ones who heard you when you never said a word.
  • Let darkness be your candle.
  • The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.—Bertrand Russell
  • Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.—Pythagoras
  • Aesthetics reveal values.
  • To think is to resist and thinking is improved by writing.
  • Do not obey in advance.
  • There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.—Rumi
  • Better to go wrong your own way than go someone else’s.