When I hear somebody sigh that “Life is hard,”
I am always tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”

“Everybody is different” and
“Everybody is pretty much the same.”
I believe that both these statements are true,
and that a realistic view of life
consists in holding them in balance at all times.

On the Contrary

But the truth, as Aristotle said,
is like a barn door:
Nobody who throws at it can miss it,
but nobody can hit all of it.

Pieces of Eight

The only way to avoid trouble is to avoid living.

On the Contrary

The first great rule in life is to put up with things;
the second is to refuse to put up with things;
and the third, and hardest,
is to be able to distinguish between the first two.

Be Wary of a “Bad Success”…
It turns the person into a product, a package, a symbol.
He becomes literally a slave of his success,
and like the Red Queen in Alice
has to keep running as fast as he can
just to stay in the same place.

Pieces of Eight

Determination may get you to the top,
but it is flexibility that keeps you there—
and the two don’t often go together.

Pieces of Eight

Nobody knows himself until he has come face to face with calamity; it is only in crises that we learn our true identity; and many a man has gone through life thinking he was strong, when he was only safe.

Last Things First

It is the single-purposed man who reaches the goal most surely and swiftly—and then has the most time to find out that having a single purpose is not a satisfactory goal in life.

Pieces of Eight

If you want something hard enough and are willing to devote yourself exclusively to it and will sacrifice everything else for it, then unless you are conspicuously defective, you will reach your goal. It may not turn out to be a goal worth reaching at such cost, but this is another matter—and a matter that never concerns the single-minded.

Pieces of Eight