Category Archives: Life

FIVE WISE LINES [March 2025]

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Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble?

george bernard shaw, PygMalion

Refrain from talk of others’ shortcomings; don’t rest on your strengths.
[罔谈彼短; 靡恃己长.]

Thousand Character classic [千字文]

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

george bernard shaw, Man and superman

A child is the most reliable measure of time. His daily growth is proof of your daily ageing and decline. The child’s gains are your losses, and the closer a child gets to anything, the farther you withdraw, as though you were tied to one another on opposite spokes of a wheel and the wheel, without your noticing it, turns. Dawn for the child is dusk for you.

Otar chiladze, A Man was going down the road

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

George bernard shaw, Pygmalion

PROMPT: Grow

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What experiences in life helped you grow the most?

The ones that involved repeated non-catastrophic failures (e.g. martial arts practice.)

Also, the ones that confronted fears (e.g. open sea swimming.)

“Away with Funeral Music” by Robert Louis Stevenson [w/ Audio]

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Away with funeral music -- set
   The pipe to powerful lips --
 The cup of life's for him that drinks
   And not for him that sips.

PROMPT: Phase in Life

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Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
View all responses

I guess it’s a confession of antsiness to admit that I haven’t experienced such a time. I left home a week before my high school graduation ceremony. I never gave reenlistment serious consideration when I was in the military. There was a several year gap between my undergraduate studies and my first graduate degree. I’ve never left a job teary-eyed.

If it’s the case that everyone experiences such a time, then mine is yet to come.

Let it Float [Lyric Poem]

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Sans fear of dying,
 The angst of trying
   Is felt and left
      To float.

“Worldly Place” by Matthew Arnold [w/ Audio]

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Even in a palace, life may be led well!
 So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
 Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
 Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
 And drudge under some foolish master's 
   ken
 Who rates us if we peer outside our pen --
 Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
 Who spoke these words, no shadow ever
   came;
 And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
 I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour
   here!
 The aids to noble life are all within."

PROMPT: Gifts

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Share one of the best gifts you’ve ever received.

As a kid, my first non-hand me down bike, a bright yellow and blue trimmed BMX bike.

Now the really interesting question is whether there was anything special about this gift, or – rather – it came at the height of the appeal of gifts for me, an appeal that faded into adulthood and is virtually nonexistent in the present day. (no pun intended)

PROMPT: Budgeting

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Write about your approach to budgeting.

Don’t want much. Don’t need much. And hope for the best.

“Sorrow” by Edna St. Vincent Millay [w/ Audio]

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Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
   Beats upon my heart.
 People twist and scream in pain, --
   Dawn will find them still again;
 This has neither wax nor wane,
   Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;
   I sit in my chair.
 All my thoughts are slow and brown:
   Standing up or sitting down
   Little matters, or what gown
      Or what shoes I wear.

Quest [Lyric Poem]

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Is it every person's dream
   To be what one is,
   And not what one seems?

Or would one rather be
   The creature of one's dreams --
   Who no one ever sees?

Or should one be the best
   Of real and imagined:
   The host and the guest?

How much of who we are
  Is the views of others
      And how much is ours?
      (And is any of it 
      Written in the stars?)