The source of failure

It is the individual who is not interested in his fellow men
who has the greatest difficulties in life
and provides the greatest injury to others.
It is from among such individuals that all human failures spring.

        Alfred Adler, What Life Should Mean to You 

 

 

 

Capacity

The capacity for growth depends on one's ability
to internalize and to take personal responsibility.
If we forever see our life as a problem caused by others,
a problem to be 'solved,' then no change will occur.

    James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife 

 

 

 

 

Culture shock

The past is a foreign country;
        they do things differently there.

                L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Let the sun shine

But friendship is precious,
not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life;
and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things,
the greater part of life is sunshine.

        Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

 

 

 

 

Something

I've learned what I can control is whether
I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or
whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day,
as wonderful a day, as I can.

        Gilda Radner, It's Always Something

Patience

But the fact is, things always seem to come slowly
    when you are longing for them.

            Teresa of Ávila, The Letters of St. Teresa of Jesus

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

                A.E. Stallings 

Define politics

Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly,
and applying the wrong remedies.

Larry Boucher, Peculiar, Missouri
quoted in a November 2024 New York Times
story about a local battle with developers

Consequences

Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep.

            Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty

 

 

 

 

Justification

The end may justify the means
as long as there is something that justifies the end.

        Leon Trotsky, Their Morals and Ours

 

 

 

Disclaimer

Not my circus,
    not my monkeys.

            Polish proverb

Freedom's possibility

Freedom's possibility is not the ability to choose the good or the evil. The possibility is to be able. In a logical system, it is convenient to say that possibility passes over into actuality. However, in actuality it is not so convenient, and an intermediate term is required. The intermediate term is anxiety, but it no more explains the qualitative leap than it can justify it ethically. Anxiety is neither a category of necessity nor a category of freedom; it is entangled freedom, where freedom is not free in itself but entangled, not by necessity, but in itself.

        Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety

God is still around

God is still around.
One day, you're going to need him.
The problems of life will begin to overwhelm you;
disappointments will begin to beat upon
the door of your life like a tidal wave.
And if you don't have a deep and patient faith,
you aren't going to be able to make it.
I know this from my own experience.

        Martin Luther King Jr., Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Enemies

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

            Wendell Berry 

Glory

Glory is largely a theatrical concept.
There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience —
the knowledge that our mighty deeds will come to the ears
of our contemporaries or “of those who are to be.”
We are ready to sacrifice our true, transitory self
for the imaginary eternal self we are building up, by our heroic deeds,
in the opinion and imagination of others.

Eric Hoffer, True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Size matters

The greatest evil which fortune can inflict on men
is to endow them with small talents and great ambition.

        Luc de Clapiers, Reflections and Maxims 

 

 

 

 

 

Work and trust

One must go on working silently,
    trusting the result to the future.

        Vincent Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother

 

 

 

Old is good

I love everything that's old —
old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine.

        Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

 

 

 

 

An existential question

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself:
“I have to go to work — as a human being.
What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for —
the things I was brought into the world to do?
Or is this what I was created for?
To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

        Marcus Aurelius, Meditations