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Comedy is tragedy plus time.
 - Woody Allen (Easterly 2002, p211)

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.
- Stephen Vincent Benet

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To use bitter words, when kind words are at hand is like picking unripe fruit when the ripe fruit is there.  -Thiruvalluvar, poet (c. 1st  century BCE or 6th century CE)

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Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

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They know enough who know how to learn. -Henry Adams (1838-1918)

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies inside us" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which  differ from that of their social environment. -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

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Doubt comes in at the window when inquiry is denied at the door.  - Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893)

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Nothing produces such odd results as trying to get even. -Franklin P. Jones

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Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

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It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in  your enterprise. -Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

"Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it." - Horace

"Show me someone who has done something worthwhile, and I'll show you someone who has overcome adversity." - Lou Holtz

"Without adversity, without change, life is boring." -  John Amatt

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit." - Napoleon Hill

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Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.  -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906]

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God gives every bird his worm, but he does not throw it into the nest. -Swedish proverb

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Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it. -Lucius Annaeus Seneca, philosopher (BCE 3-65 CE)

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The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. -Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

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Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others. -Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him" -Aldous Huxley

Chinese Proverbs

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.


A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers.

A book holds a house of gold.

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

A book tightly shut is but a block of paper.

A child's life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.

A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.

A filthy mouth will not utter decent language.

A fool judges people by the presents they give him.

A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man perfected without trials.

A nation's treasure is in its scholars.

A rat who gnaws at a cat's tail invites destruction.

Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still.

Be the first to the field and the last to the couch.

Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.

Dig the well before you are thirsty.

Do good, reap good; do evil, reap evil.

Do not employ handsome servants.

Do not fear going forward slowly; fear only to stand still.

Do not remove a fly from your friend's forehead with a hatchet.

Don't open a shop unless you like to smile.

Each generation will reap what the former generation has sown.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

He who is drowned is not troubled by the rain.

He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument.

If heaven made him, earth can find some use for him.

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

If you bow at all, bow low.

If you don't want anyone to know, don't do it.

Keep your broken arm inside your sleeve.

Not until just before dawn do people sleep best; not until people get old do they become wise.

Raise your sail one foot and you get ten feet of wind.

Teachers open the door. You enter by yourself.

The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.

When you drink the water, remember the spring.

When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.

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Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
- Mark Twain

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve. 
- Max Planck

Nine-point Gentleman

Confucius describes a true gentleman (a chun-tzu, or one replete with virtue) in the following manner -

`For a perfect gentleman there are nine considerations. These are:

• a desire to see clearly when he looks at something;
• a desire to hear every detail when listening to something;
• a desire to present a tranquil countenance;
• a desire to preserve an attitude of respect;
• a desire to be sincere in his words;
• a desire to be careful in his work;
• a willingness to enquire further into anything about which he has doubts;
• a willingness to bear in mind the difficulties consequent on anger;
• a willingness to consider moral values when presented with the the possibility of profit.`

(The Analects of Confucius, chapter 16)

His maxim on governance:


`Guidance by morality; control by ceremony`

Virtues: Benevolence, loyalty, ceremony, bravery, faith, frugality
Its interesting to note that the modern Japanese dropped `benevolence`; modern Chinese dropped `Loyalty`  (Morishima 1982)

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Confucianism Principles of Moral Thought and Action - http://www.patheos.com/Library/Confucianism/Ethics-Morality-Community/Principles-of-Moral-Thought-and-Action.html

Hunger, Piety, Work, Gandhi

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"True to his poetical instinct, the poet [referring to Tagore] lives for the morrow and would have us do likewise. He presents to our admiring gaze to the beautiful picture of the birds early in the morning singing hymns of praise as they soar into the sky. These birds have had their day's food and soared with rested wings, in whose veins new blood had flown during the previous night. But I have had the pain of watching birds who for want of strength could not be coaxed even into a flutter of their wings. The human bird under the Indian sky gets up weaker than when he pretended to retire. For millions it is an eternal vigil or an eternal trance. It is an indescribably painful state which has got to be experienced to be realized. I have found it impossible to soothe suffering patients with a song from Kabir.

"The hungry millions ask for one poem -- invigorating food. They cannot be given it. They must earn it. And they can earn only by the sweat of their brow. . . . Imagine, therefore, what a calamity it must be to have 300 millions unemployed, several millions becoming degraded every day for want of employment, devoid of self-respect, devoid of faith in God.

"I may as well place before the dog over there the message of God as before those hungry millions who have no lustre in their eyes and whose only God is their bread. I can take before them a message of God only by taking the message of sacred work before them. . . . To them God can only appear as bread and butter. ... My ahimsa would not tolerate the idea of giving a free meal to a healthy person who has not worked for it in some honest way and, if I had the power, I would stop every Sadavrata where free meals are given. It has degraded the nation and it has encouraged laziness, idleness, hypocrisy and even crime .... Do not say you will maintain the poor on charity"

- Mahatma Gandhi
(Excerpts from Nirmal Kumar Bose, Selections from Gandhi ,  Navijan Publishing House, 1957)

"I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the root of all progress ...The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form.

"The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. . . . It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed  capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself and fail to develop nonviolence at any time. . . . What I would personally prefer, would be not a centralization of power in the hands of the State but an extension of the sense of trusteeship; as in my opinion, the violence of private ownership is less injurious than the violence of the State. However, if it is unavoidable, I would support a minimum of State-ownership"

- Mahatma Gandhi (Excerpts from Nirmal Kumar Bose, Selections from Gandhi ,  Navijan Publishing House, 1957)

Passive Resistance

When the great lord passes the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts.
- Ethiopian Proverb


The bigger the donkey, the deeper you bow.
- Gujarati Proverb (first read it in a piece by Ardeshir Cowasjee)

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A Problem worthy of attack
Proves its worth by fighting back.
- Piet Hein