Proverbs Of Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

“In a war of ideas it is people who get killed.”

“He had a clear conscience. Never used it.”

“When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.”

“An empty envelope that is sealed contains a secret.”

“Do not ask God the way to heaven; he will show you the hardest one.”

“Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.”

“You can change your faith without changing gods, and vice versa.”

“Life forces people to do all kinds of voluntary actions.”

“Politics: a Trojan horse race.”

An Addendum To Proverbial, Episode 73

The latest episode of Proverbial is devoted to the teacher’s proverb, “Don’t smile until Christmas.” In the course of the show, I claim it is foolish to “want to be liked.” While reading a book of proverbs this evening, I came upon a saying I wished I’d had at my disposal a week ago: “To worship the people is to be worshipped,” Francis Bacon (1623).

A Bracing Little Speech For The First Day Of School

“Not every teenager is good at being a teenager, just like not every adult is good at being an adult, not every newlywed is good at being a newlywed, and so forth. There are many stages of life, and you can be good or bad at any of them. Doing well as a teenager means spending a little time enjoying the stage you’re in, and a lot of time preparing for the next stage. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good to be a teenager. It is perfectly natural. Teenagers are as natural as oak trees, racoons, or the spring equinox. Your teenage years are not permanent, though. It is natural to be a teenager, but in a few years, nature will take away your teenage years. If you want to do well in the next stage of life—which is not college, but adulthood—you have to begin preparing now.”

-my latest for CiRCE is something you can feel free to use on your own, no attribution necessary 

You Do It To Yourself And That’s Why It Really Hurts

From a history class in the year 2500 A.D.

Teacher: One of the things men in the 21st century absolutely despised was attending meetings. No one liked meetings.

Student: I don’t know if I can believe that.

Teacher: Why?

Student: If everyone hated meetings, who was scheduling all the meetings?

Teacher: The same people that hated going to them.

Student: Why?

Teacher: (staring intensifies)

Student: Why?

Teacher: They were insane.

Exceptional Critique

A friend sent me a link to this essay by Freddie deBoer, which opens on the late Woodstock 99 documentary, but quickly turns into a brilliant assessment of the infantilization of adult taste over the last ten years.

If the title and the subject matter over the first six or seven paragraphs doesn’t hold you, I would nonetheless encourage you to press on, especially if you teach high school students.

Snobs

There is nothing the modern man finds quite so pretentious as obedience. Obedience creates a real bond between the ruler and the ruled, the transcendent and the ephemeral, the obeyed and the obedient. This bond is simply not possible for the egalitarian, the radical individual, the self-made man, or the rebel. In the end, whoever submits most deeply to the grandest thing triumphs.