What I own is mine, but what is mine makes me in some measure theirs.
Category: Aphorisms and Observations
Appreciate What You Have
Appreciate what you have while you have it. An actual shack is better than a remembered or merely imagined or expected or merely possible palace. Do not allow the present and actual good to suffer diminution by comparison to the modally and temporally and spatially elsewhere.
This is it. This is your life. Right here and right now. If it is good, appreciate it. If it needs improving, act right here and right now to improve it, but without failing to appreciate the good that is here and now yours.
When the Goddess Caissa Becomes the She-Devil Impecunia
We patzers can sport with Caissa and her charms without too much harm. It is the very strong players, who yet fall short of the highest level, who run the greatest risk. Chess sucks them in then leaves them high and dry. The goddess Caissa becomes the she-devil Impecunia.
Relations With Relatives
Our relations with our relatives are too often like the relations of Arabs and Israelis: too much past, no future. But with the Arabs and Israelis it is even worse: too much history, not enough geography.
Tweet This
He who tweets is a twit whose brain will soon be fit only to flit.
Anecdotage
The last stop for the old raconteur.
A Prudent Assumption
It is prudent to assume that what can be taken the wrong way will be.
When to Psychologize
You are free to psychologize your opponent when his position is demonstrably false or incoherent. If his reasons are worthless, then you are justified in exposing the motives that drive his commitments.
A weapon of mass distraction.
Duty
My duty is my duty whether I am inclined to do it or not. Being inclined does not make it any less my duty; being disinclined does not make it any more.
High-Level Self-Denial
Going to the mat of meditation at the appointed time when the caffeine-induced riot of thoughts clamors for blogic expression.
One Thing You Won’t Blog About
Nothing is not fodder for the omniloquacious blogger. Nothing but one thing: his being dead.
The Grim Majority Maker
Whatever minorities we belong to in life, in death we join the greatest of all majorities, ever swelling, never diminishing, unconquerable, affiliation with which, once begun, never ends.
Dogmatism as Willfulness
What willfulness is in the sphere of action dogmatism is in the realm of belief.
Vices Vitiated
It can happen that as a man becomes weaker, he is better able to weaken the grip of his weaknesses. Having less energy for their implementation, he now masters what mastered him. Vices vitiate until the body they have vitiated vitiates them in turn.