1
The road reaches every place, the short cut only one.
2
Those who demand consideration for their sacrifices were making investments, not sacrifices.
3
Despair says, I cannot lift that weight. Happiness says, I do not have to.
4
Pessimists live in fear of their hope, optimists in fear of their fear.
5
What you give to a thief is stolen.
6
You've never said anything as stupid as what people thought you said.
7
Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart under his heart.
8
I am saving good deeds to buy a great sin.
9
If the couple could see themselves twenty years later, they might not recognize their love, but they would recognize their argument.
10
Disillusionment is also an illusion.
11
Our lives get complicated because complexity is so much simpler than simplicity.
12
The wound hurts less than your desire to wound me
13
The best way to know your faults is to notice which ones you accuse others of.
14
No matter how much time I save, I have only now.
15
Water deepens where it has to wait
16
Ah, what can fill the heart? But then, what can't?
17
Opacity gives way. Transparency is the mystery.
18
Shadows are harshest when there is only one lamp.
19
All stones are broken stones.
20
To paranoids and the elect, everything makes sense.
21
The first abuse of power is not realizing you have it.
22
Each lock makes two prisons.
23
It's amazing that I sit at my job all day, and no one sees me clearly enough to say, "What is that boy doing behind a desk?"
24
There are silences harder to take back than words.
25
It's easy to renounce the world till you see who picks up what you renounced.
26
Writer: how books read each other.
27
Of all the ways to avoid living, perfect discipline is the most admired.
28
Happiness is not the only happiness.
29
If you want to know how they could forget you, wait till you forget them.
30
I'm hugely overpaid. Except compared to the people I work with.
31
Who breaks the thread, the one who pulls, the one who holds on?
32
All work is the avoidance of harder work.
33
You who have proved how much like me you are: how could I trust you?
34
Desire, make me poor again.
35
Experience tends to immunize against experience, which is why the most experienced are not the wisest.
36
All things in moderation, wisdom says. And says last, Do not be too wise.
-- James Richardson, from Vectors: 36 Aphorisms and 10-Second Essays
