The Bed of Procrustes

• If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead the more precision, the more dead you are.
• Nothing is more permanent than “temporary” arrangements, deficits, truces, and relationships; and nothing is more temporary than “permanent” ones.
• Most people fear being without audiovisual stimulation because they are too repetitive when they think and imagine things on their own.
• The fastest way to become rich is to socialize with the poor; the fastest way to become poor is to socialize with the rich.
• You don’t become completely free by just avoiding to be a slave; you also need to avoid becoming a master.
• You will be civilized on the day you can spend a long period doing nothing, learning nothing, and improving nothing, without feeling the slightest amount of guilt.
• Someone who says “I am busy” is either declaring incompetence (and lack of control of his life) or trying to get rid of you.
• Most feed their obsessions by trying to get rid of them.
• Men destroy each other during war; themselves during peacetime.
• We are hunters; we are only truly alive in those moments when we improvise; no schedule, just small surprises and stimuli from the environment.
• You need to keep reminding yourself of the obvious: charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.
• What I learned on my own I still remember.
• Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.
• You are only secure if you can lose your fortune without the additional worse insult of having to become humble.
• Happiness; we don’t know what it means, how to measure it, or how to reach it, but we know extremely well how to avoid unhappiness.
• To become a philosopher, start by walking very slowly.
• For the classics, philosophical insight was the product of a life of leisure; for me, a life of leisure is the product of philosophical insight.
• The weak shows his strength and hides his weaknesses; the magnificent exhibits his weaknesses like ornaments.
• The mediocre regret their words more than their silence; finer men regret their silence more than their words; the magnificent has nothing to regret.
• The classical man’s worst fear was inglorious death; the modern man’s worst fear is just death.
• You know you have influence when people start noticing your absence more than the presence of others.

Link to PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QUwqSQPZQGJEYBzpv2TCRTtML2fkiBFS/view?usp=share_link