“I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland.” — Sydney Smith, letter to Lord Holland, 1815
Quotations
Unquote
“He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.” — Schopenhauer
Unquote
“No man is a hero to his valet. But that is not because the hero is no hero, but because the valet is a valet.” — Hegel
Worldly Wisdom
Maxims of Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracián (1601-1658):
- When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
- To overvalue something is a form of lying.
- Do something well, and that is quickly enough.
- Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised.
- Those who want to look like hard workers give the impression that they aren’t up to their jobs.
- Complaints will always discredit you. … Once divulged to others, the offenses done to us seem to make others pardonable.
- Not believing others implies that you yourself are deceitful. The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.
- Better to be cheated by the price than by the merchandise.
- Because the ignorant do not know themselves, they never know for what they are lacking. Some would be sages if they did not believe they were so already.
- Some die because they feel everything, others because they feel nothing. Some are fools because they suffer no regrets, and others because they do.
- Some marry the first information they receive, and turn what comes later into their concubine. Since deceit is always first to arrive, there is no room left for truth.
- To hear a prince’s secrets is not a privilege but a burden. Many smash the mirror that reminds them of their ugliness. They cannot stand to see those who saw them.
- Some people belong entirely to others. … They have not a day, not an hour to call their own, so completely do they give themselves to others. This is true even in matters of understanding. Some people know everything for others and nothing for themselves.
- Many pleasant things are better when they belong to someone else. … When things belong to others, we enjoy them twice as much, without the risk of losing them, and with the pleasure of novelty.
- Imagination travels faster than sight. Deceit comes in through the ears, but usually leaves through the eyes.
- Freedom is more precious than the gift that makes us lose it.
- Virtue alone is for real; all else is sham. Talent and greatness depend on virtue, not on fortune. Only virtue is sufficient unto herself. She makes us love the living and remember the dead.
“Honorable beginnings should serve to awaken curiosity, not to heighten people’s expectations. We are much better off when reality surpasses our expectations, and something turns out better than we thought it would. This rule does not hold true for bad things: when an evil has been exaggerated, its reality makes people applaud. What was feared as ruinous comes to seem tolerable.”
Unquote
“Books we want to have young people read should not be recommended to them but praised in their presence. Afterwards they will find them themselves.” — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, notebook, 1775-1779
Unquote
“You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a ‘realist,’ he is preparing to do something that he is secretly ashamed of doing.” — Sydney Harris
“When a stupid man is doing something that he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.” — George Bernard Shaw
Unquote
“A man doesn’t learn to understand anything unless he loves it.” — Goethe
“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” — Samuel Johnson
“We soon forget what we have not deeply thought about.” — Proust
Amara’s Law
“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” — Roy Amara, president of the Institute for the Future, 1978
(“A modern maxim says: People tend to overestimate what can be done in one year and to underestimate what can be done in five or ten years.” — J.C.R. Licklider, Libraries of the Future, 1965)
Misc
- Mel Gibson has 38 lines in The Road Warrior.
- The ATMs in Vatican City bear instructions in Latin.
- The Finnish length unit peninkulma, 6.2 miles, originally meant “the distance a dog can be heard from.”
- The Corduroy Appreciation Club meets on 11/11, “the day that most resembles corduroy.”
- “It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.” — Aristotle
Complaint
“Have you noticed … there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.” — Max Beerbohm