You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.
~ Naguib Mahfouz
Elsewhere, this is 4a404. — slipbox
Questions →
A master of deception →
That’s what we need to do all the time—all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust—to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. Pride is a master of deception: When you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Elsewhere, this is 4a361. — slipbox
There is no hurry →
By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and said to itself, “There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
~ A. A. Milne
Elsewhere, this is 4a402. — slipbox
The way →
…but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Elsewhere, this is 4a539. — slipbox
Think for yourself →
That doesn’t mean the opposite ideas are automatically true: You can’t escape the madness of crowds by dogmatically rejecting them. Instead ask yourself: How much of what you know about business is shaped by mistaken reactions to past mistakes? The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself.
~ Peter Thiel
Elsewhere, this is 4a410. — slipbox
Past and future →
The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if the things that irritate us lasted.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Elsewhere, this is 4a353. — slipbox
Always and everywhere silence →
From pure sensation to the intuition of beauty, from pleasure and pain to love and the mystical ecstasy and death—all the things that are fundamental, all the things that, to the human spirit, are most profoundly significant, can only be experienced, not expressed. The rest is always and everywhere silence. After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
~ Aldous Huxley
Elsewhere, this is 4a407. — slipbox
Turmoil →
It’s the pursuit of these things, and your attempts to avoid them, that leave you in such turmoil. And yet they aren’t seeking you out; you are the one seeking them. Suspend judgement about them. And at once they will lie still, and you will be freed from fleeing and pursuing.
~ Marcus Aurelius
Elsewhere, this is 4a452. — slipbox
Happiness must ensue →
But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to “be happy.” Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation.
~ Viktor Frankl
Elsewhere, this is 4a417. — slipbox
Business worth minding →
A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business.
~ Eric Hoffer
Elsewhere, this is 4a411. — slipbox