Pearls of Wisdom (so we believe)

These individual pieces of thought are the product of the founder of this Web site, unless otherwise attributed.

• Everything intelligent returns regularly to the basic.

• Routine tasks teach us humility.

• Efficiency by itself is not acceptable. There must always be style as well; furthermore, if they compete, style must win.
  (inspired by the writings of the late Quentin Crisp
  [pseudonym of Denis Charles Pratt, 1908-1999])

• Be not structured. Be thou motivated.

• Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
  Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
  -- T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
      The Rock, first performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, 28 May 1934

• Be dependable, not predictable.

• If it could happen, it will. If you're absolutely sure it couldn't happen, it could.

• Efficiency and competition are socialized in, therefore unnatural.
  Consciously slow down. Get back the detail.

• One of the best things about our [Western industrialized] society is the Free Market; one of the worst things about our society is competition.

• OPTIMUM is not necessarily MAXIMUM.
  [cf.: Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien. (The best is the enemy of the good.)
      --Voltaire (1694-1778), "Art Dramatique" in Dictionnaire Philosophique, 1764]

• When you do something, do it for a reason. Never do anything just because you can.

• Our society currently prepares teens to be consumers via mass media and mega-corporations controlling most commerce. In the past, we prepared teens to be contributors via apprenticeships and community-centered mentoring. Which is better?

• We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.
  -- Bryan White (b.1974)
      Readers Digest, 1999

• Die Knabenliebe ist so alt wie die Menschheit, und man könne daher sagen, sie liege in der Natur, ob sie gleich gegen die Natur sei. [Boy-love is as old as humanity, and thus we could even say that, though it is contrary to nature, it nevertheless conforms to it.]
  variant: Die Knabenliebe ist so alt wie die Menschheit, und man kann daher sagen, sie liege in der Natur; obwohl sie gegen die Natur ist. [Boylove is as old as humanity, from which one can deduce that it lies in Nature, in spite of being against Nature.]
  -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
      in C.A.H. Burkhardt. Goethes Unterhaltungen mit dem Kanzler Friedrich von Müller
      [Goethe's Conversations with Chancellor Friedrich von Müller]
      Stuttgart: Verlag der J.G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung. 1870, p.138

• Maxwell E. Perkins (1884-1947), an influential editor at Charles Scribner's Sons Publishers in the 1930s, worked with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1896-1953) to publish The Yearling (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938; Pulitzer Prize, 1939). He shared with her his ideas about classic books such as Huckleberry Finn (Twain), Kim (Kipling), and Treasure Island (Stevenson) in a letter dated 19 November 1930: "All these books are primarily for boys. All of them are read by men, and they are the favorite books of some men. The truth is the best part of a man is a boy." (From an essay by Robert Gottlieb in the New York Times Book Section, 2 July 2000.)

• From eight to fourteen is a period of life piquantly interesting to the congenial observer; for in studying it he may perceive unconcealed in the boy not only what is later to be found coated over in the man but something also of the history of all mankind.
  --Booth Tarkington (1869-1946)
      "What I Have Learned From Boys"
      The American Magazine, January 1925, p.6

• No earthly object is so attractive as a well-built, growing boy.
  --Henry William Gibson (1867-c.1941)
      Boyology, or Boy Analysis
      New York: Association Press (YMCA), 1916/1922

• The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.
  -- Max Born (1882-1970), physicist