Quotes

1. It is a sad thing when men have neither the wit to speak well, nor the judgment to hold their tongues. (Jean de La Bruyère. Me: One could easily exchange the word ‘when’ with the word ‘that’. But it’s still sad.)

2. Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates. (Jean de La Bruyère)

3. As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before. (-ll-)

4. Most men make use of the first part of their life to render the last part miserable. (-ll-)

5. The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet. (Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield)

6. The young leading the young, is like the blind leading the blind; “they will both fall into the ditch.” (-ll-. This is part of what I love about getting feedback here on the blog; for some reason, people who’re somewhat older than me and have a lot more life experience (you know who you are) actually don’t mind reading along and they’re (you’re) nice enough to share their (your) experiences with me. I hate the idea of repeating other people’s mistakes, and even though there probably aren’t any easy ways to get years of experience without actually, you know, spending years getting it, the help that more mature individuals sometimes offer me is greatly appreciated, even though I always have had a hard time accepting help from others one way or the other. Did that sentence even make sense?)

7. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with. Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket: and do not pull it out and strike it; merely to show that you have one. (-ll-)

8. It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and therfore one seldom does it at all. (-ll-)

9. If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. (Francis Bacon)

10. The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. (-ll-)

11. It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt. (-ll-)

12. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. (-ll-)

13. One of the strongest human impulses, after survival and reproduction, is the need to communicate irrelevant information. (Scott Adams)

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If the quotes section above contains quite a few aphorisms, it’s not a coincidence. One of my Christmas presents was ‘Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims’, by Rochefoucauld. I’ve read quite a bit of it already of course, but I’m not gonna stop there – he wasn’t the only smart guy in town.