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Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.
- Dogen
I don't know who said it, and it's perhaps not a classic proverb, but I've always been fond of "We are permanently in the shit. Only the depth varies".
plinth, I've heard that one as:
"When you get a new hammer, everything looks like a nail"
Here are some of my favourites to live by. Except I don't call on a god, literally.
"fuck it dude, let's go bowling"
I love some of Hunter S Thompson's:
"Call on God, but row away from the rocks."
"You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye."
And, lastly, one that I will paraphrase because I can't find it anymore. It was a reading at our wedding: "If the rose at dusk has lost the beauty it had in morning, it's beauty then, was real."
I love the idea that we live in a completely transient state, and that expecting things to stay the same is a fool's errand.
Es mejor pedir perdón que pedir permiso (lit.:"it is better to ask for forgiveness than permission"), roughly equivalent to "it is far better to regret something you have done than something you haven't done".
Live fast, die young, and leave in a goodlooking hearse.
Better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all trapped food particles.
Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day; set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Can you interpret that one? I may be obtuse but I don't get it.
Sure. It means that luck distributes itself unevenly, that a period of bad luck will be followed by a period of good luck. The proverb is meant to inspire you to tough out a period of misfortune and keep plugging away until the day the sun shines on your own ass.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
