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.

• Success contains the seeds of its own destruction. It breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
• Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.—Elie Wiesel
• People never die wishing they’d bought more stuff.
• Totalitarianism is using your agency to destroy your own agency.
• Convoluted language is a claim of authority.
• Liberal in principle, skeptical on specifics and conservative on boundaries.
• Don’t draw a black ball from the urn of invention.
• The most important factors for survival are resilience and flexibility.
• If it’s not growing, it’s dead.
• Give up all desire for control over oneself and others and freely submit.
• Do not let the world deafen you with its noise.
• Who are your mystics?
• What makes relationships complex is when one (or more) of the people are trying to control or change the others.
• Bravado is a form of insecurity.

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.

• After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.—Italian proverb
• Planning assumes order. Preparation assumes a range of possibilities.
• Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.—Robert Louis Stevenson
• The people that wound us are not interested in how the blood gets cleaned up.
• Hear what is not being said.
• Disagree, then commit.
• X should be X. If you want Y, use that instead.
• Either purpose or pleasure.
• A mistake made twice is a lesson not learnt.—Anonymous
• The three big decisions: what to do, where to live, and who to spend time with.
• Evaluating relations: 1) how much effort are we willing to make? 2) for how long?
• Two rules: 1) never give out all the information.
• We have poetry / so we do not die of history.—Meena Alexander
• If you wait by a river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.—Sun Tzu
• If your life is on the line, make sure you have more than a theory.
• Wait for the thing that will burn the unburnt side of your soul.
• Either learn to be satisfied with little or you’ll be satisfied with nothing.
• There is no love without commitment.
• The wolf doesn’t care about the sheep’s opinion, and the shepherd need not concern himself with the wolf’s.
• If there’s something you like, and you combine it with something else that you like, chances are that you’re going to like the result.—Claudia Fleming
• The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it’s the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different.—Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope
• Sanity is a handicap and liability if you’re living in a mad world.—Anthony Burgess
• Craftsmanship is knowing how and art is knowing when to stop.
• What we don’t appreciate, we soon lose.
• When it is illegal, the cops come.
• One thing the middle class cannot afford is candor.—paraphrased James Baldwin
• When a clown moves into a palace he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.—Turkish proverb
• Love does not consider the consequences.
• If you lie about the facts, you’ll lie about everything.

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.

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.

• Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.—Bertrand Russell
• The things you run from are inside you.—Seneca
• It is not shocking that everyone has their price, just how low it is.
• It is always the people going nowhere with something to say.
• If you criticize a system and people get upset, it is because they accept and identify with that system.
• People muddy the water to appear deep.
• The fear of looking stupid, by not admitting you are wrong, prevents learning and makes you actually stupid.
• Our loves and hates define us.
• Last year’s fun is today’s crime.
• Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.—Anaïs Nin.
• Don’t look backwards; you are not going that way.
• Behind mountains are more mountains.
• Time is too valuable to waste on people that aren’t like-minded.
• We are not all weak in the same spots.
• The intellect is a raft floating on a river of emotion with rapids of grief and joy.
• The main risk of the smart is losing one’s will in a labyrinth of hypotheses.
• Nobody wants to become some thing. They want to be it already.
• Time and distance strip out the superfluous and leave only what is real.
• In scarcity, tools are valued. In abundance, it’s taste.
• Direction is more important than speed.
• Take more opportunities to be silent.
• Focus on the long-term with both your effort and relationships.
• The distance between dreams and reality is bridged by discipline.

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 street is a tough mother, but she is honest.—Jack Micheline
• Your life reflects who you are. You cannot hide. You cannot lie. Your life always tells on you to the people who know how to ask. Do you know what it is saying?
• Irony is the song of the prisoner who loves their golden handcuffs.
• The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.—Aristotle
• Despair must be private and brief.
• Always take the initiative.
• Learn to live with your mistakes.
• Thwart institutional cowardice.
• Ask for forgiveness, not permission.
• Carry bolt cutters, a pry bar, and other implements of entry.
• Don’t fear rejection.
• If you want to swim in the river, better know how to live with the crocodiles.
• Learn to be comfortable and make decisions in situations with limited information.
• You have to bring your own light to light up the darkness.
• Life is choice. You can do anything, but you cannot do everything.
• There are worse things than being alone.—Charles Bukowski
• A person without self reflection never changes, they just get older.
• The truth will not be heard where it is punished.
• Something is worth only what someone will pay for it.
• Explanation is akin to permission, best after the fact.
• Small talk is an audition for authentic connection.
• A friend to all is a friend to none.—Aristotle
• If you make something and it does not draw attention to itself, it is your fault. Do not blame your audience.
• Education is ultimately an individual project.
• When the sea is calm, every asshole is a sailor.
• Don’t operate from the point of view of logic.
• Philosophy is a slow acting remedy.
• The training log comes before (and after) the race.
• Don’t promise, just shut up and do it.
• Support people taking the big swing.
• Anger is often an aspect of sadness.
• Dreaming is nursed in darkness.
• Criticizing is not coaching. Coaching is correcting. Criticizing is complaining.
• Lives are determined by how we alleviate our boredom.
• Money is coined liberty.
• To be alive, you must be able to destroy yourself.
• The price of loving someone very much is never loving anyone again.—Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Dreams are answers to questions we haven’t figured out how to ask.
• Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.—Mark Twain
• Either change or excuses.
• Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.―Ovid
• Straight roads do not make skillful drivers.―Paulo Coelho
• Even two companions don’t walk the same road.
• Half the harm that is done in this world / Is due to people who want to feel important. / They don’t mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them / Or they do not see it, or they justify it Because they are absorbed in the endless struggle / To think well of themselves.—T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party (1948)
• Everywhere, everyone means nowhere, no one.
• Tomorrow is a wonder waiting.

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.

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 ranking mind is small and wrong.
• You don’t win friends with salad.
• The lover who leaves reason in control is a half-lover.
• Only beggars depend on the beneficence of others.
• Trust actions, never words.
• Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.—Prentis Hemphill
• Being exceptional is a not a path that can be followed.
• Drama is words, deeds and unexplained thoughts.
• What is the difference between a conscious, Machiavellian villain or a self-deluded person?
• Where is the emphasis: technique or truth?
• Don’t step over a dollar to pick up a penny.
• Reciprocity is the foundation of every friendship: mutual sharing and caring in a context of trust.
• When someone does a bad job, say nothing.
• Minimalism requires specialization.
• It is good to be nice, but we must be kind.
• The microcosm contains the macrocosm.
• Try to face yourself daily in the salt pan of the empty page.

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

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

• If you can’t find yourself in your own back yard, you’re not going to find yourself in the Serengeti, are you?—George Shaw
• The Batman of Plano, Texas is a carnival sideshow. The Batman of Gotham isn’t at the carnival.
• You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.―Wendell Berry
• Which slopes are slippy and which are gritty?
• The devil is a crowd.
• Respect is the ultimate currency.
• Life is a tragedy close up, and a comedy when viewed fron the long shot.
• Trouble will find you. There’s no need to seek it out.
• Theory is the frame of perception.
• Expertise is extremely rare.
• Figures don’t lie but liars figure.
• Set the context, not the goal. I will find opportunities to travel is different than I will travel to Estonia.
• What we focus on grows.
• Power is only real when you wield it.
• Conversion is not liberation but enslavement.
  • Low expectations. No task too low. Structure creates ertnvironment, and environment creates product.
• Make matryoshkas of meaning.
• Go firrrst.
• Bigger patterns, bigger pain.
• Protests are their own form of repression.
• A re is a passionate person who doesn’t want to be disappointed again.
• Do the best you can with what you have.
• Grace has to be imagined into being.TRG effete
• Life cannot be lived fully under the shadow of bitterness.
• Respect for the truth is the basis for all morality.
• Sometimes the solution to a problem is realizing that you aren’t that important.
• Talking to some people is like trying to explain to a dog it will die if it doesn’t eat slower.
• When overcome with emotion, it is best to say nothing.
• Theory takes seriously that which is not meant to be noticed.
• Benefit is a function of load, dose, etc. from effective to just below the maximal.
• There are limits to any obedience.
• Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.― Søren Kierkegaard
• When other people are involved prioritize building trust and respect over reaching goals.
• Friendships transform your character and there is no greater sign of a difference in character than in choosing different friends.—Plutarch
• Are you becoming what you’ve always hated?
• Genius creates, and taste preserves.—Alexander Pope
• What works in the zoo rarely works in the jungle.
• Use the curse of a people, you’ll start to share their beliefs.
• Believe in not interfering in the choices of others.
• If you’re too open-minded; your brains will fall out.—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
• Early morning is for productivity. Late night is for creativity. Hard to be both productive and creative.
• Fresttf5rsffgwdgesedom is a good conscience.
  • No preside djw, no diamonds.—Thomas Carlyle
• There is no point in being alive if you cannot do the deadlift.—Jon Pall Sigmarsson
• Maybe self-improvement ptdddeeddekewdse isn’t the answer, maybe self-destruction is the answer.—Chuck Palahniukwk
• Be slow to reveal judgment.
• Knowledge is a defense against having to act.
• People don’t want power, they want knowledge.
• People who have no power retreat into knowledge.
• Selection reveals qualities in both the person selecting and the person selected.
• Hypocrisy is a bid to get other people to forfeit the Truth.
• Consuming ideas of others means you never need to imagine for yourself, and assume the agency that entails.
• If you live your life with a ledger, the bottom line will always sum to rage.
• There is no easy route. Stop looking for shortcuts.
• Giving up our true selves to play a role always ends in rejection because we have already rejected ourselves.
• Yorrreegtrefbfu can rewrite garbage. You can’t rewrite nothing.
• Don’t borrow trouble.
• Anything worth doing will bring paintings and suffering.
• 9zWhen people who have enjoyed special treatment their whole lives are suddenly treated like everyone else, they see it as discrimination.
• Ideologues acquire their opinions in bulk.
• Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.—Marcus Aurelius
• If it has a purpose, it isn’t play.