Profundities

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.

Bernard Berenson

I think one of the things that keeps a person sane is healthy skepticism about what you believe. Every now and then enjoy a conversation with an inner voice that says, "You're full of shit again."

Stewart Brand, July 1983

Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent.

Dionysius the Elder, Fragment

"For the first six months, you should listen and not become involved in debate," Disraeli advised a newly elected member of the Parliament. "But," the man replied, "my colleagues will wonder why I do not speak." "Better they should wonder why you do not speak," explained Disraeli, "than why you do."

Benjamin Disraeli

No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side.

Jascha Heifetz

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

Eric Hoffer, "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer," The New York Times Magazine, 25 Apr 1971

Une des choses qui fait que l'on trouve si peu de gens agréables et qui paraissent raissonables dans las conversation, c'est qu'il n'y en a quasi point qui ne pensent plutôt à ce qu'ils veulent dire qu'à répondre précisement à ce qu'on leur dit. Les plus complaissants se contentent de montrer une mine attentive, au même temps qu'on voit dans leurs yeux et dans leur esprit en égarement et une précipitation de retourner à ce qu'ils veulent dire, au lieu qu'on devrait juger que c'est un mauvais moyen de plaire que de chercher à se satisfaire si fort, et que bien écouter et bien répondre est une plus grande perfection que de parler bien et beaucoup, sans écouter et sans répondre aux choses qu'on nous dit.

(One factor that makes it rare for us to find so few people who can carry on an agreeable and rational conversation is that there are practically no people who do not think first of all about what they want to say, rather than responding precisely to what others are saying to them. The politest people are content merely to show an attentive mien, while all the time we see that their eyes and their minds are wandering, and that they are in a rush to return to what they want to say. They should consider that this insistent search for self-satisfaction is a poor way of giving pleasure, and that it is a greater accomplishment to listen well and reply justly than to speak well and often without responding to what others are saying to us.)

Madame de Sableé

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. (I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.)

Terence, Heauton Timoroumenos

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke

Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.

Zeuxis

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