gathered wisdom from the real and non-real worlds

#134 These are my quotes. There are many like them, but these are mine. My quotes are my best friend. They are my life.

This is an interesting piece.

One day I copied over a couple of quotes from a reading notebook that I have. If I recall correctly, I had intended to share a bunch of quotes I had come across that specifically imparted knowledge. More likely than not, I got lazy, and left it incomplete as a draft.

Actually, that’s not what happened. I started my first quote dump and some of these seemed “self-help-y” or something….Then I added a few more after.

Here we are a few months later (it feels longer than that). I have another draft that is critical of modern writers repackaging old wisdom as their own with dumb commentary. This isn’t too far off of that, so apologies, I’m about to be a touch hypocritical, though don’t view this as me telling you how to behave or anything like that — these are simply quotes that I liked, that hopefully, out of context, still make sense and are useful for your own introspection or amusement.

yadda yadda, let’s get to the fun stuff.

Part 1: An American Life Ben Franklin

FYI this is a biography, some of these aren’t Ben’s direct quotes but paraphrases. Still, that doesn’t make them any less useful or meaningful.

people are more likely to admire your work if you’re able to keep them from feeling jealous of you.

A secret to being more revered than resented, he learned, was to display (at least when he could muster the discipline) a self-deprecating humor, unpretentious demeanor, and an unaggressive style in conversation.

To endeavor to speak truth in every instance; to give nobody expectations that are not likely to be answered, but aim at sincerity in every word and action—the most amiable excellence in a rational being.

It would be vain, he wrote for any person to insist that “all the doctrines he holds are true and all he rejects are false.”

Leisure to read, study, make experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy men as are pleased to honor me with their friendship

That’s a good goal!

The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.

Part 2: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

“saving” in short, in the modern world, is only another form of spending…The usual difference is that the money is turned over to someone else to spend on means to increase production.

Part 3: Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson* (I included some in the last post, but here are more with different themes)

Plan every battle as if you will inevitably retreat but fight every battle like there is no backing down.

Leave them idle, make them assume they’re inconsequential, and you’ll ruin them. Give them something important to do instead, work they’ll be proud of, and they’ll serve you with honor. A failed soldier is often on that has been failed.

Don’t deflect your evils by pointing out the faults of others.

To beat someone, you must first know them.

Men do well learning many different skills. But men also do well using what the gods have given them. In the Peaks, a man may not have such choices. Is a privilege.

I don’t mind people believing what works for them, Uncle. That’s something nobody ever seems to understand—I have no stake in their beliefs. I don’t need company to be confident.

Have you ever considered that bad art does more for the world than good art? Artists spend more of their lives making bad practice pieces than they do masterworks, particularly at the start. And even when an artist becomes a master, some pieces don’t work out. Still others are somehow just wrong until the last stroke…

…You learn more from bad art than you do from good art, as your mistakes are more important than your successes. Plus, good art is the same kind of good. But bad pieces can each be bad in their own unique way. So I’m glad we have bad art…

This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone.

*Book 5 of this series comes out December 6th. Hotly anticipated So much so that the waiter at a coffee shop recently asked if I was excited when he saw I was reading Warbreaker. Nice.

Part 4: The Botany of Desire

Food is also about pleasure, about community, about family and spirituality, about our relationship to the natural world, and about expressing our identity. As long as humans have been taking meals together, eating has been as much about culture as it has been about biology.

imagine consciousness as a kind of lens through which we perceive the world, the drastic constricting of its field of vision seems to heighten the vividness of whatever remains in the circle of perception, while everything else (including our awareness of the lens itself) simply falls away.

Louis hatched an ingenious promotional scheme. he ordered a field of potatoes planted on the royal grounds and then posted his most elite guard to protect the crop during the day. He sent the guards home at midnight, however, and in due course the local peasants, suddenly convinced of the crop’s value, made off in the night with the royal tubers.

Part 5: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Goodwin

Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.

Part 6: Both Flesh and Not: Essays by David Foster Wallace

Think, for instance, about the way prolonged exposure to broadcast drama makes each one of us at once more self-conscious and less reflective. A culture more and more about seeing eventually perverts the relation of seer and seen.

For the student, a community of like-minded persons with whom to exchange ideas has pretty clear advantages.

rigorous constructive criticism helps toughen young writers’ hides and prepare them for the wildly disparate responses…I regularly formulate consistent, reasoned criticisms of colleagues’ work; and this, almost without fail, makes them far more astute about the strengths and weaknesses of their own fiction.

Nothing from nature is good or bad. Natural things just are; the only good and bad things are people’s various choices in the face of what is.

Ok enough of the quotes, they can get tiresome. There are a ton more quotes still not included here; I will be back again with more, some day.

Boys in the Boat

I haven’t read the book, but watched the movie this weekend. I really liked it. Bonus points since University of Washington wins and Hitler loses. Yes, technically that’s a spoiler but it’s actual history and kind of the selling point of the whole story. Still a great watch if you know what happens.

Concluding Remarks

I love going back and reading these quotes. Many I’ve forgotten about. Others I recall almost immediately and it sends me down a new thinking pathway. If you choose to go read a book I’ve mentioned or do any additional thought beyond the scroll, I have succeeded. You’re welcome. Or sorry I suppose if somehow you ended up in a dark place.

The word “remarks” will always remind me of “Studying Politics” by Emery; “we begin with concluding remarks”. In our case, we are concluding with concluding remarks.

fin.