The refuge which was not a refuge,

Or an illusion?

1. Do not belittle others as you would not have others belittle you.

2. Do not aggrandize others as you would have others aggrandize you.

a. One who says, "I can't help it" means "I want it."

b. One who refuses to rebel condones his slavery.

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

Time heals all things but one: Time.

The cosmic system, oddly enough, is not to be found in the pit of the stomach.

Resentment is a communicable disease and should be quarantined.

He who cries, "What do I care about universality? I only know what is in me," does not know even that.

A blasphemer: He who laments his lot without sufficient cause.

What is sufficient cause?

What seems sufficient not to oneself, but to others.

1. There are no exterior forces. There are only interior forces.

2. Hope directed toward luck is not hope but superst.i.tion.

One's sense of "Self" is not relevant to the world unless one considers the world relevant to the Self. What does this purport? If everything outside of the expression of your own feelings does not exist for you, or if it exists but is of no consequence to you, to whom and to what will you express your feelings?

He who cries, "All right, then, I'm selfish-so be Undoes he think confession is absolution?

The continents of desire and wisdom lie beyond the membrane-meridian of the self.

The difference between sorrow and petulance is the difference between having cancer and having a temper tantrum.

Aspiration and complaint come in successive breaths. One is the catarrh to be expelled by the other.

1. Feelings of "constant distraction" occur when one refuses to allow oneself to be distracted even for a moment-from oneself.

2. An "inability to concentrate" is the result of excessive concentration-on something else.

a. A little discomfort is better than a great deal of grat.i.tude.

b. But there is a great deal of comfort in a little grat.i.tude.

Unmitigable depression = mitigable self-indulgence. It is useless either to hate or to love truth-but it should be noticed.

1. Before you blame a person for not understanding you, first ask yourself whether he is obliged to do so. (If you have lent him money, he is.) 2. Before you blame a person for not weeping for you, first be sure that his tears are not needed elsewhere. (If he has lent you money, they are.) He who squanders talent praises death.

Ego should not be condemned. Ego without imagination to evaluate ego should be.

The difference between thirty-two and twenty-five is not seven, but a generation.

Do not choose for sympathizer your psychological twin.

A sense of proportion presupposes an interest in the size of the universe.

Exploitation, whether material or not, is reduction in the guise of swelling.

Dedication to one's work in the world is the only possible sanctification. Religion in all its forms is dedication to Someone Else's work, not yours.

Not G.o.d but fashion compelled the fig-leaf. G.o.d would have contrived something that did not have to be pasted on or held by the hand that should hold the plough. It is not our nakedness that G.o.d intends us to cover, but our notions of dress.

Riddle:

Who is the starved traveler who chooses the longest road, carries the weightiest baggage, and hardly ever arrives? And should he arrive, he at once loses not only his whole equipage but his very name.

Answer:

Hope.

Fear of hostility is less useful than hostility to fear.

Ideals die not because they fail of their attainment but because they have succeeded. To defeat a cause, work for it.

The unhappy person resents only his own unhappiness, not another person's. Unhappiness is the inability to generalize.

Boredom is the consequence of believing in the uniqueness of one's own experience. It vanishes the moment one acquires History.

The books we care for most are the ones which read us.

a. Critics: people who make monuments out of books.

b. Biographers: people who make books out of monuments.

c. Poets: people who raze monuments.

d. Publishers: people who sell rubble.

e. Readers: people who buy it.

Two things remain irretrievable: time and a first impression.

Lonesomeness is hatred of truth.

If one does not reduce one's trouble to its proper proportion on one's own, life will do it soon enough-only more brutally.

Offer the resourceful man one of two legacies: a mammoth trust fund by inheritance of wealth, or a minuscule fund of trust by inheritance of nature; and he will choose the one which least inhibits venturesomeness.

Friendships produce confidences; but confidences do not often produce friendships.

A person who mourns for himself while his parents are alive is" a sinner.

Death persecutes before it executes.

Detail mocks Theme; Theme worships Detail. That is why the possible and the feasible are always at war.

23.

Here I stopped; an apparition of Enoch blotted the doorway.

"I've been waiting hours. Believe me I've just about run out of patience," my mother said. "What kept you? Don't tell me reporters or I'll know it was dancing girls. Washington's just the town for dissipation. What was it, you found a salami market? A peanut store?"

"Of the three cardinal pations," my stepfather said (he set down his suitcase), "choose one as follows: A, dissi-, hereinabove referred to; B, consti-, the mind's enemy; C, extir-, the world's delight. So you can never run out of pations even if you try." He spotted me swimming in aphorisms. "Where'd she get those?"

"I gave them to her," my mother said.

"Old saws have no teeth."

"Plenty of big jokes in your pockets. Something to celebrate. Comes in playing parlor games. Lost your life, and first thing home it's ha ha."

"Ha ha I have not lost my life."

"All right, call it anything you want, call it self-respect. Self-respect you've lost."

"I continue to think highly of myself," he demurred.

"Time," she said. "Don't say you haven't lost time! In a career time is everything. How long before they start taking you seriously again, that's what I want to know. You've lost time, you've lost a job, you've lost your footing on the high rungs, you've lost everything."