Own only what you can always carry with you; know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn
So I can’t claim not to have stuff… but I can certainly claim to understand that the things that matter are people and stories. It doesn’t hurt to remind myself from time to time, though.
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
—Albert Einstein
This is what the unweaving the rainbow people don’t get is that science doesn’t remove beauty by removing mystery–it adds beauty by adding scale and a different kind of mystery. I can take “cold and uncaring”, if I can also have “infinite in all directions“.
Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
——G. K. Chesterton
Partly this is to remind me to take risks and try new things, and partly it’s just because I’m getting tired of everyone bbeing so cynical and blase about everything all the damn time. Having seen it all doesn’t make you cool–it makes you boring.
“It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.”
—Issac Asimov
I’m not sure what old Isaac was referring to here, but this is a lesson that has paid off handsomely for me on certain poker nights.
