A belief in Imperfection
We harbor no romantic notions about the perfectibility of humans or of human society, but instead are satisfied with progress, and do not demand perfection.
Quotations
“Between Saturday night and Sunday morning”
Oh, there’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.
Jimmy Buffet, from Fruitcakes, 1994
“Continually debating people and never winning”
If your view of the world is that people use reason for their important decisions, you are setting yourself up for a life of frustration and confusion. You’ll find yourself continually debating people and never winning except in your own mind. Few things are as destructive and limiting as a worldview that assumes people are mostly rational.
Scott Adams, from the book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, 2014
“Expectations of holiness”
It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.
“Finish every day and be done with it”
Finish every day and be done with it. For manners and for wise living it is a vice to remember. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in: forget them as fast as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day for all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from the letter “To Daughter Ellen”, 8 Apr 1854
“Four Sentences that Lead to Wisdom”
There are four sentences that lead to wisdom. Do with them what you will.
- I am sorry.
- I was wrong.
- I don’t know.
- I need help.
Louise Penny, from the book The Madness of Crowds, 2021
“I learned a lot of things from failure”
I learned a lot of things from failure. When you play 162 games, I don’t think any sport emulates life like baseball. You play football once a week or basketball twice. But you start playing baseball, you play every day, day in and day out. And you understand in a hurry that you’re going to have bad days and bad nights. You’re going to have bad weeks, and you just have to make up your mind that, hey, tomorrow’s tomorrow, and you forget about it.
Brooks Robinson, from the book We Would Have Played For Nothing, 2008, © The Baseball Oral History Project Foundation
“I'll take the big sordid dirty crooked city”
The other part of me wanted to get out and stay out. But this was the part I never listened to. Because if I ever had I would have stayed in the town where I was born and worked in the hardware store and married the boss’s daughter and had five kids and read them the funny paper on Sunday morning and smacked their heads when they got out of line and squabbled with the wife about how much spending money they were to get and what programs they could have on the radio or TV set. I might even have got rich – small-town rich, an eight-room house, two cars in the garage, chicken every Sunday and the Reader’s Digest on the living room table, the wife with a cast iron permanent and me with a brain like a sack of Portland cement. You take it, friend. I’ll take the big sordid dirty crooked city.
Raymond Chandler, from the book The Long Goodbye, 1953
“Life is not like formula fiction”
Life is not like formula fiction. The villain has a heart, and the hero has great flaws.
Anne Lamott, from the book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 1994
“Unbelievable Heroes”
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
John Rogers, from the blog post “Kung Fu Monkey”, 2009