The Smartest Things Ever Said about Everything: True Wisdom from the Most Brilliant People Who Ever Lived 1629147974, 9781629147970

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the SMARTEST TH Ever Said

about Everything

To Mum - The Wisest of the Wise

The SMAR IE S ip TH Ever Said

about Everything

True Wisdom

from the M OS if

BRILLIANT

PEOPLE" ROSEMARIE JARSKI!

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright © 2014 by Rosemarie Jarski All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York,

NY 10018 or [email protected].

Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.

10:92: 7

63,43) 2.1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. Cover design by Rain Saukas

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-797-0 Printed in China

CIOUNE PeINE es A Ability *Acceptance * Accident *Achievement ® Acting Action ®Adolescence *Adult *Adultery *Adventure ®Adversity Advertising * Advice ® Afterlife *Age *Agreement * Aims ® Alcohol Ambition * America *Analysis * Angel *Anger * Animal *Apathy Apology * Appearance ® Architecture *Argument © Art © Artist Assassination ® Astrology® Astronomy ® Atheist * Attitude Attraction ®Awards and Honors

Beauty and Ugliness » Begin * Behavior © Being ® Belief * Bird » Birth Blame ® Blessings * Body ® Books ® Bore * Bureaucracy ® Business * Busy

Cc Capitalism * Capital Punishment * Cat * Category ® Censorship Certainty and Uncertainty *Chance * Change ® Chaos ® Character

Charity * Charm * Cheerfulness * Childhood * Children * Christianity Church ® Circumstances ® City ® Civilization ®Club * Color Commandments ® Common Sense ®Communication *Communism Community ® Compassion *Compliment *Composer *Compromise

Computer ® Confession ® Confidence *Conformity and Originality Conscience ®Consequences ® Contentment * Conversation Cosmetic Surgery ®Country & Western Music * Courage ® Creativity Crime and Punishment ® Critic *Cruelty ® Curiosity *Cynic

Ci) CONTENTS

.

ee D

Dance * Danger * Dating *Days * Death * Deceiving and Deception Decision *Democracy * Depression * Design * Desire * Despair * Detail Devil *Dictator * Diet * Difference and Similarity * Difficult *Disability Disappointment ® Discovery * Divorce and Separation * Doctor Dog * Doubt * Dreams * Drugs and Addiction

E Education and Learning ® Effort *Ego *Emotion *Enemy Enthusiasm * Environment ® Envy ® Equality * Euthanasia * Evil Evolution * Excuse ® Exercise *Expectations * Experience * Expert F

Facts ® Failure * Faith *Fame * Family ® Fanatic *Fashion and Dress Fate * Father ® Faults *Favors * Fear * Feminism ® Fight ® Film ® Fishing Flattery * Flowers * Food * Fool * Forgive * Freedom ®* Friend ® Future

G Gambling * Games * Garden * Gender and Sexuality * Generosity Genius * Gentleness * Ghosts * Gifts and Giving *God * Good and Bad Goodbyes * Gossip *Government ® Gratitude * Greatness

Grief * Guest and Host * Guilt

H Habit * Hair * Happiness * Hate * Health and Illness *Heart *Heaven Hell »Help * Hero * History *Hobbies *Holiday *Home * Honesty Hope * Humor * Hunting * Hurry * Hypocrisy

CONTENTS

Ideas © Idle * Ignorance ° Illusion * Imagination * Immortality Importance * Impossible and Possible * Improvement © Indifference Individuality * Information ° Innocence ° Insect ° Inspiration Instinct * Intellectual * Intelligence * Internet * Invention

Jazz * Jealousy * Jewish * Journalism ¢ Journalist * Joy ® Justice

Kindness © Kiss * Knowledge

L Language ® Law @ Lawyer ® Leader @ Letter @ Lies and Lying ® Life Light and Dark ® Listening * Literature » Little Things * Living Logic, Reason and Nonsense * Loneliness * Love * Luck Luxury and Necessity

M Madness * Man ® Manners ® Marriage * Martyr ® Masses and Minorities

Maths ® Meaning ® Meaning of Life ® Memory * Men * Men and Women Mind # Miracle * Misery * Mistake ® Money * Morals ® Mother Murder ® Music ® Mystery

N 347 Name ® Nature ® Needs ® Neighbor * Neutral * Never... Noise * Normal * Nostalgia * Nothing

(iil) CONTENTS

;

ee Oo

Obvious * Opinion * Opportunity * Optimist and Pessimist

P Pain ® Paradise * Paranoia ® Passion ® Past * Patience Patriot * Peace * Peace of Mind ® Perception ® Perfect * Persistence

Philosophy * Photograph © Pity * Places * Pleasure * Poet ® Poetry Political Correctness ® Politics *Popular Music * Pornography * Power Practice ® Praise * Prayer ® Prejudice * Preparation ® Pride ® Prison Privacy ® Problem ® Procrastinate * Progress *Promise ® Property Prostitute ® Proverbs * Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis * Punctual

Questions and Answers *®Quotations

R Race and Discrimination ® Reality * Regrets *Relationship Religion * Retirement *Revenge * Revolution ® Rich and Poor Right and Wrong ® Rights * Risk

S Sadness * Safety * Saint ® Satisfaction * Science ® Science Fiction Sea ® Seasons ® Secrets ® Security * Seize the Day ® Selfish Self-Knowledge © Self-Pity * Senses *Sentimental * Sex * Share Shopping and Consumerism ® Silence *Simple and Complex ® Sin Slavery * Sleep *Small Pleasures *Smoking * Solitude * Speech * Speed Sport © Statistics * Strength © Stress * Stupidity * Style * Success Suffering * Suicide *Superstition * Survival * Suspicion * Sympathy

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CONTENTS (ix)

Talent * Taste and Vulgarity *Tax ®Teacher ® Tears *Technology Telephone ® Television * Temptation * Terrorism * Theatre *Theory Thinking * Time ® Tolerance * Tragedy * Transport © Travel Trees ¢ Troubles ¢ Trust * Truth

U Understanding * Universal Laws ® Universe * University

Vv Vegetarian ® Vice and Virtue * Violence ® Vote

Ww War ® Weapon ® Weather * Win and Lose * Wisdom * Wish Women * Wonder ® Words *Work * World ® Worry ° Writer

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{i}lb asco) ko oe alALIN! An angel appears at a college faculty meeting and tells the Dean that in return for his exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitating, the Dean chooses infinite

wisdom. “Done,” says the angel, and disappears in a puff of smoke and a bolt of lightning. All heads then turn towards the Dean, who is bathed in a halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.” The

Dean looks at them and says, “I should have taken the money.” That’s the trouble with wisdom — you don’t get it until after you need it.

If only there was a way to acquire the wisdom without first having to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, how much easier would that make our journey through life. ‘To know the road ahead ask those coming back,’ goes an old Chinese saying. Who better to offer guidance than those who’ve been there, done

that, got the metaphorical long white beard and furrowed brow? “Better be wise by the misfortunes of others than by your own,” declared Aesop. They

suffer the slings and arrows so you don’t have to. The Smartest Things Ever Said about Everything gathers together hundreds

of fellow travellers on life’s highway to share their pearls of hard-won wisdom. They cover all the hot-button issues including life, death, war, peace, truth, beauty, and how to test the ripeness of Camembert cheese. Subjects are arranged alphabetically so whatever challenge you’re facing, you can speedily locate some nugget of wisdom to inspire, console or amuse.

Gai) INTRODUCTION

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Traditionally, the oracle of wisdom has been the philosopher. The word itself is Greek, meaning “lover of wisdom,” and there have been philoso>)

phers of the past who lived up to that definition. Sages such as Montaigne,

Voltaire and La Rochefoucauld

had a passion for inquiry which

they

communicated in a sparklingly witty and engaging style that spoke to everybody; however, over the last century the subject of philosophy has been hijacked by academics. Philosophers, ensconced in their ivory towers, deep

in the groves of academe, have lost touch with the lives of ordinary people. For example,

here’s a thought plucked at random

from contemporary

French philosopher Jacques Derrida: One can expose only that which at a certain moment can become present, manifest, that which can be shown, presented

as something present, a being-present in its truth, in the truth of a present or the presence of the present.

Compare that with this from fellow French thinker, Nicolas Chamfort, more than 200 years earlier:

Swallow a toad every morning to be sure of encountering nothing more disgusting the rest of the day.

Whose advice do you prefer? Perhaps more to the point, whose advice do you actually understand? It’s no contest. “Too much perspiration for too little inspiration” is how one commentator summed up Monsieur Derrida and that goes for too many modern professional purveyors of profundity. It’s easy to be

intimidated by long-winded and abstruse prose, but don’t confuse complexity with profundity. Cleverness is not wisdom. Wisdom doesn’t depend on how

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many letters you have after your name. It comes from experience, from those who have, in the words of Mae West, “been things and seen places.” The

wisdom collected here bears the stamp of authenticity because the speakers are

all graduates of the University of Life. They come from every imaginable category of humankind — saints and sinners, rebels and reprobates, celebrities

and cynics, and royals and revolutionaries. Comedians are well represented. Surprising, perhaps, since wisdom is generally considered to be serious and somber — it wears a sober suit, whereas comedy is shallow and slight — it wears a silly hat (“Comedy sits at the children’s table,” Woody Allen once remarked). In fact, wisdom and

humor are closely allied. The word “wise” is related to the Old English word “witan” meaning “wit,” from which we get words like “wisecrack” and “wiseacre.” The eye for absurdity, ear for cant, and built-in bullshitdetector

possessed

by the best comics

are

precisely

the qualities

of

wisdom. Wits like Woody Allen, Groucho Marx, Steven Wright and Spike Milligan are true philosophers of our time. As Irving Berlin put it: “The world would not be in such a snarl, had Marx been Groucho instead of

Kea The emphasis is on wisdom for everyday life so expect a liberal sprin-

kling of proverbs. A proverb is a brief sentence based on long experience, an Oxo cube containing the concentrated wisdom of man. The way they work is by converting

abstract thought into concrete

language,

often via a

picturesque image or metaphor. Since we discover what something is largely by comparing it to something else that we already understand, this is an

ideal way to learn. Chinese thinker Lin Yutang explains the process: “To say, ‘How could I perceive his inner mental processes?’ is not so intelligible as ‘How could I know what is going on in his mind?’ and this in turn is decidedly less effective than the Chinese ‘Am I a tapeworm in his belly?””

Gav) INTROQUETION

;

Colorful, memorable

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and user-friendly, but therein lies the problem:

with excess use, proverbs eventually lose their lustre, and turn into clichés. But a cliché is only a cliché if you’ve heard it before. Reset a worn-out gem in a new setting and suddenly it sparkles anew:

Other people’s eggs have two yolks. (Bulgarian) The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. You can’t teach an old monkey how to make faces. (French) You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. He who has a head of butter must not come near the oven. (Dutch)

If you can’t stand the heat keep out of the kitchen. He ate the camel and all it carried. (Arabian)

He ate us out of house and home. When the sky falls we shall catch larks. (French)

Pigs might fly.

“By a country’s proverbs shall ye know its people” isn’t a proverb as far as I know — but it ought to be. Vivid idioms and expressions provide a glimpse into a culture, an insight into a nation’s foibles and fixations. For example, the German language is littered with sausage-based sayings, the Bulgarians favor hens and eggs, while the Arabs can’t resist a camel.

The net to catch words of wisdom

has been cast not only across

cultures and continents but centuries too. Can ancient wisdom speak to us as clearly as modern

musings? Try this for size: “Children today are tyrants. They have no respect for their elders, flout authority and have

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appalling manners. What terrible creatures will they grow up into?” This may sound like a letter in the local newspaper but it is in fact the Ancient Greek thinker, Socrates, speaking two and a half thousand years ago. He may be sporting a tunic and have a chariot parked outside, but the senti-

ments expressed are unmistakably modern. “Colors fade, temples crumble, empires fall, but wise words endure,”

wrote Edward Thorndike. Wise words endure because, in spite of radical changes in society, in spite of technological advances, and in spite of what we ourselves like to think about “progress,” human nature does not change: kids rebel, men cheat, women cry, politicians lie, the rich get richer and the poor get stuffed again. The big questions of life also remain constant: Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? And what if the hokey cokey really is what it’s all about? Questioning is the key to wisdom. Look at the world’s greatest minds,

past or present, and what distinguishes them is an unquenchable curiosity without which any innate intelligence or talent would wither and die. When Nobel Prize-winner for physics, Isidor Isaac Rabi, was asked to account for his extraordinary achievements, he explained: “When we got out of school,

all the mothers would ask their children what they had learned that day. My mother would inquire instead, ‘What did you ask today in class?’” “The important thing is not to stop questioning,” urged Albert Einstein. The greatest genius of the twentieth century never lost his child-like ability

to ask questions and modestly asserted, “I have no special gift. I am only passionately curious.” Jacob Bronowski described him as “a man who could ask immensely simple questions. And what his work showed is that when the answers are simple too, then you can hear God thinking.” To the great questions in life, even Einstein did not have the answers, because there are no right or wrong solutions. “There are trivial truths and

GS)

INTRODUCTION there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth may well be another profound truth,” explained

physicist Niels Bohr. For every wise thought there is another equally wise thought expressing precisely the opposite point of view. Contradictory proverbs illustrate the point at its simplest: Too many cooks spoil the broth. Many hands make light work.

Better safe than sorry. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The more the merrier.

Two’s company, three’s a crowd.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. He who hesitates is lost.

The ability to juggle in your mind conflicting attitudes on the same topic may be defined as understanding; the ability to reconcile conflicting attitudes is wisdom in its deepest sense. “The way of paradoxes is the way of truth,” wrote Oscar Wilde. “To test Reality we must see it on the tightrope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them.”

The irony is that, although we brand ourselves Homo sapiens (“wise

man”), we are, as a species, resistant to contradictions

and ambiguity.

Contradictions mean uncertainty and insecurity, which lead to anxiety and

fear. What Homo sapiens craves most is certainty. Hence the popularity of the “expert” in his many manifestations — guru, life-coach, inspirational

_INTRODUCTION (xvii) guide, etc. The expert has all the answers. There’s never room for doubt in

the expert’s mind. He knows the “one true path” to enlightenment/success/ wealth/health/happiness, or all of the above. The Smartest Things Ever Said about Everything is wise enough to know it does not have all the answers. After all, how can you understand the universe when it’s hard enough to find your car in the multi-story parking garage? Nor does it promise to show you the one true path for the simple reason that the only true path is the one you forge yourself. The best that these words of wisdom can do is to serve as streetlamps, lighting up the

road ahead. Then again, 6,000 kindly lights can spread quite a lot of wattage amid the encircling gloom. So, to set you on your way with a spring in your step, chew on this illuminating piece of advice from Yogi Berra: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” With guidance like that, who needs GPS?

Rosemarie Jarski

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