QUOTES
Nassim Taleb has been an early influence on my epistemological relationship with the world. While I painfully learned that some of his wisdom is just not meant to be translated into actions by myself, one idea (apart from Antifragility, which basically inspired my PhD topic) has found great application in my life: The Anti-library.
I own many books, and even more which I have not read yet. Sometimes I feel like I learned more from a book by not reading it. But there is one form of literature that I just can’t put out of my hands: poetry.
Now, I don’t necessarily like contemporary poetry. Once the writer tries to convince me of their position, I stop enjoying the read. Political poetry is political first of all – but while it is important to be political, I like my poetry to be poetry. However, there are writers who allow me to see through their well-wishing eyes. No strong messages, but the truth, which stays truthful whether you agree with them or not. Their words are like a still-life picture in which I can lose myself without being forced to change my opinion or take a strong stance.
My ongoing venture into Vedanta philosophy has provided me with access to great poets and a new understanding of their perspectives. I will use this space to collect quotes (and sprinkle in a few wise words of non-poets) that remind me of a story or provide a greater truth on which one could contemplate without much burden.
Because that which is forced will never be forceful.
d
William Cowper – desire
“Our dear delights are often such,
Exposed to view, but not to touch;
The sight our foolish heart inflames;
We long for pineapples in frames;
With hopeless wish one looks and lingers,
One breaks the glass, and cuts his fingers;
But they whom Truth and Wisdom lead,
Can gather honey from a weed.”
f
Kahlil Gibran – friendship
“And let the best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.”
g
Victor Hugo – giving
“Life is to give, not to take.”
Kahlil Gibran – giving
“And there are those who give and know not pain in giving, nor do they seek joy, nor give with mindfulness of virtue; they give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.”
Edward Wallis Hoch – good and bad
“There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it ill behooves any of us
to talk about the rest of us.”
Shakespeare – good and bad
“There’s nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
h
Drew Pinsky – health
“Health is about accepting and perceiving and dealing with reality on realties terms.”
Malcolm X – health
“When ‘I’ becomes ‘WE’, Illness becomes Wellness.”
i
Eli Wiesel – indifference
“I believe that a person who is indifferent to the suffering of others is complicit in the crime. And that I cannot allow, at least not for myself. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
l
Herbert Spencer – learning
“If I were as big as a reader as others, I should have been as big an ignoramus as others.”
Michael Scott – lighthearted
“Would I rather be feared or loved? Easy, both: I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.”
r/jokes – lighthearted
“A plateau is the highest form of flattery.”
p
Ernst von Glasersfeld – perception
“Believing is seeing.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes – perspective
“For him in vain the envious seasons roll,
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.”
Alejandro Jodorowski – perspective
“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”
Felix Lewandowski – perspective
“Always be open for a pleasant surprise.”
Mike Slade – perspective
“All conversations are interrupted conversations.”
“Hanlons razor” – principle
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
Comment on “Hanlons razor” by my Vedanta class – principle
“Never attribute to bad intentions that which is adequately explained by the lack of applied intellect.”
r
Juliana of Norwich – resilience
“He said not ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased’; but he said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome’.”
s
Bob Ross – sadness
“Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in a while so you know when the good times come. I’m waiting on the good times now.”
Bhagavad Gita VI Verse 6 – self-development
“Let man lift himself by himself, let him not lower himself; his self alone is his friend, his self alone is his enemy.”