Some more great passages from the work of Nassim Taleb, along with some TDE commentary:
"To understand the liberating effect of asceticism, consider that losing all your fortune is much less painful than losing only half of it."
"Work destroys your soul by stealthily invading your brain during the hours not officially spent working." Many years ago, a priest told me I really should consider making Sunday a day wholly sacrosanct by making it wholly off-limits to work. He said the Second Commandment didn't require such a thing, but he thought it would be good for me. He was right. By making Sunday wholly off-limits, the tendency of work to invade my brain on Sunday was greatly mitigated. Indeed, it was all-but destroyed.
"They will envy you for your success, for your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status–but rarely for your wisdom." Aye, no wonder I have so few detractors (chuckle).
Required understanding if you want to know why certain periods at parties are so painful: "The most painful moments are not those we spend with uninteresting people; rather, they are those spent with uninteresting people trying hard to be interesting."
"Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry." I think C.S. Lewis (an ardent critic of "scientism" and many other modern mental maladies) would've loved Taleb.
"What fools call 'wasting time' is most often the best investment." I like to think this applies to people who ridicule me for the time I spend in my garden, but I seriously doubt anybody ridicules me for such a thing. There are two hard rules every person, especially people who live in a small town or other close community, needs to know: (1) People know about you than you think they do, but (2) You wouldn't worry so much about what people think about you if you realized how rarely they think about you either way.
