I have 3 but would LOVE to hear more…
You can always have more but you can’t have less
This one’s from my dad and it really stuck with me. You can, and really should, apply this to any intoxicant.
On the pitch is off the streets
This is about getting restless kids, or kids who might be in a bad situation, into sports.
The axe forgets but the tree remembers
Translation on this one: People who cause hurt are less likely to remember than those it affected.
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It is only when a mosquito lands on your testicles that you realize there is a way to solve problems without using violence.
This reminds of “To a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
Please do not nail or hammer your testicles. And above all else, don’t google that.
Unfortunately I am familiar with the pain Olympics.
In short: Don’t worry about it.
In long: If you have a problem, you can either do something about it or you can’t. If you can do something about it, do that thing instead of worrying. If you can’t, worrying just gives you an additional problem.
Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.
Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.
This is essentially the Serenity prayer as used in 12-step programs:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.
That’s stoicism in a nutshell. That and amor fati.
Perfection is the enemy of progress
There’s a saying in Chinese. It rhymes in Chinese (which makes it so much cooler) but the translated version is this:
Given equivalent units of gold and time, it is easy to trade time for gold, but it is challenging to trade gold for time.
Essentially, be wary of how much you’re devoting to your work, because it doesn’t matter how successful you are, you will never get your life back
There’s another one that I find to be very relevant with the times:
a boat with naturally straighten itself when it nears a bridge
It’s a descriptivist version of the English saying “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” Essentially, problems have a way of sorting themselves out when things get desperate enough
Time is the only commodity that you can’t make more it. Make sure you spend it well.
Love these.
Just want to clarify that “we’ll cross that bridge when we get there” is closer to “work on one problem at a time” than implying the problem will sort itself out.
Isn’t that what I meant? English saying is a prescriptivist version of the Chinese song; Chinese saying is a descriptivist version of the English saying
To be clear, the Chinese saying isn’t implying that the problem will naturally go away. It’s implying that people will be driven to solve the problem as the deadline approaches
Love both of these. Thank you!
Ignore negative people, they have a problem for every solution. When the wind changes, some will build walls, others build windmills. When God created man, she was only joking.
I love all of these but OMG really love the first one.
I’ve been trying to live more by the first one since I’ve realized how easy and safe negativity is. Just be a jerkass cynic and you’ll never have to actually try and change something for the better. You’ll still be disappointed and bitter in the end, of course. It guarantees the worst outcomes but at least you won’t be hurt from trying.
Reflexively: Ignore positive people, they are incapable of comprehending or acknowledging problems.
Sorry, but the previous comment taught me to ignore you.
Ah, but you see I am neither negative nor positive.
I am in fact a graviton, and therefore not a charge carrier.
Here’s a few that stuck with me over the years:
“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.” --Jeff VanderMeer
“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” --Gustav Mahler
“If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy.” - - Sir Terry Pratchett
That’s a great quote by Gustav Mahler, thank you!
You have to do something poorly before you can do it well.
famed new york maker, jimmy diresta has a version of this “you go to school on the first one”
Haven’t seen it yet.
You can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life. -Picard
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw
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Brush your teeth.
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No.
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The most dangerous minority are the Rich.
That last one we need more people saying.
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“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.” - Douglas Adams
If it’s your job to eat a frog every day, eat it for breakfast. If it’s your job to eat two frogs, eat the big one first.
All you can do is your best, and your best will always be good enough.
Just because something is old doesn’t mean it’s obsolete, and just because something is obsolete doesn’t mean it’s ineffective.
“The only decision you should do when you are angry is to stop being angry.” Timothy Zahn
Oh, I thought of another, which I’ve said to my kid hundreds of times over the years:
‘It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it’, typically with things like an umbrella or water.
My parents used that one a lot for condoms.
I’m sorry that’s how you had to find out that you were an unwanted pregnancy.
That’s how you make a hoarder.
A variation on the same theme: I’d rather be looking at it than looking for it.
jimmy diresta again, woot
“The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way”
