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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Haven’t seen it yet.
You can make no mistakes and still lose. That is not failure, that is life. -Picard
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.
If not me, then who? If not now, then when?
…as an adult, you realize that much of the time, no one is going to come save you.
“Never let perfect get in the way of good enough.”
If you wait on the “perfect” time to do something, or the “perfect” opportunity, you may find it never comes. Make the most of what’s in front of you.
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people don’t remember what you say or do nearly as much as they remember the way that you make them feel.
thanks turd burglar
“The graveyard is filled with people who had the right of way”
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.
“I’ve always enjoyed an advantage over people who don’t read the instructions.” -My Dad.
Folks, life doesn’t always come with instructions, but when it does… read them.
Got this one from a fortune cookie. What can I say, if it’s good it’s good.
“Friends are those who, when you’ve made a fool of yourself, don’t think you’ve done a permanent job of it.”
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!
Perfection is the enemy of progress
A few from the file I keep:
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. - Jan van de Snepscheut
I would rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned. - Richard Feynman
Give a man a mask and he’ll show you his true face. - Oscar Wilde (paraphrased)
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending. - C.S. Lewis
Magic is science you can’t explain. Science is magic you can. - My Daughter
You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago. - Alan Watts
What you do to achieve your goals must never become more important than the goals themselves. - Anonymous
Wow. These are really good.
Feynman’s quote goes HARD. full on 1 sentence diss track to authoritarianism!
Yes, including the authoritarianism of social intimidation.
Buy a plunger before you need a plunger
And
Win small, lose small
This last one I heard applied to backing up a trailer, but it works in many corners of life.
We think we are approaching death gradually, and will die one day. That’s not true. We are dying every single day, every single minute. The time in our life that has already passed, now belongs to death… It’s not that our life is short, it’s just that we waste a lot of it… We may leave this life this very moment, let that decide how we will go about with our stuff today.
- Seneca / Marcus Aurelius
“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
