When Charlie and I disagree, Charlie says, “In the end you’ll see it my way, because you’re smart and I’m right!”
Tag: quotes
We do not bring in compensation consultants and we don’t have a human resources department, legal department, etc. That makes life way too complicated, and people get vested in going to conferences.
Ideas and views that differ from one’s own should not be targets for demolition, but whetstones for sharpening one’s own thoughts.
Philip Ball in the preface to his very good book, The Music Instinct.
Of all the duties required of the professional critic, the least important–certainly the least enduring–is the verdict.
Anthony Lane. (via)
If you are dependent on borrowed money, you have to wake up every day worried about what the world thinks of you.
Warren Buffett. The context for this was the Bear Stearns meltdown, but it applies to so much more.
You don’t have to have perfect wisdom to get very rich – just a bit better than average over a long period of time.
Charlie Munger. Applies to more than investing, of course.
When people call you with bad idea, don’t be polite and waste 10 minutes.
I never took a business class, except accounting. When I was a boy, there was a man who came to the club every day at 10:30am. I asked my dad about him – he had such a good life! My Dad said, “He gathers up and renders dead horses.” I learned from that.
We also look for three things: intelligence, energy and integrity. If [they] don’t have the latter, then you should hope they don’t have the first two either. If someone doesn’t have integrity, then you want them to be dumb and lazy.
It’s a poor fellow who can’t take his pleasure without asking other people’s permission.
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then.
Herman Hesse’s Steppenwolf on musical ecstasy.
When I was young, I read The Richest Man in Babylon, which said to under-spend your income and invest the difference. Lo and behold, I did this and it worked. I got the idea to add a mental compound interest too, so I decided I would sell myself the best hour of the day to improving my own mind, and the world could buy the rest of the time. It sounds selfish, but it worked.
Charlie Munger on investing in your brain. The Richest Man in Babylon looks pretty sensible.
There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé attitude.
Her bottom is so beautiful that once as she crossed the room to the cooler I felt my eyes smart with tears of gratitude.
A selection from The Moviegoer by Walker Percy, which so far has been very enjoyable.
After us they’ll fly in hot air balloons, coat styles will change, perhaps they’ll discover a sixth sense and cultivate it, but life will remain the same, a hard life full of secrets, but happy. And a thousand years from now man will still be sighing, “Oh! Life is so hard!” and will still, like now, be afraid of death and not want to die.
I ain’t that particular. Between Scotch and nothing, I’ll take Scotch.
At last R gets down again to his score, though he still has no pen which he likes.
Cosima Wagner. I have no idea who is behind the tweeted diaries of Richard Wagner’s second wife, but it’s one of my favorites. It’s a great inside view of a married couple, 19th-century upper-crust German social life, creative struggle, random dreams, etc. Here are a few other favorite excerpts.
There’s always something more interesting going on than whether I like something or not.
I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.
Umberto Eco. I was super-super-super-impressed when I went to see Umberto Eco talk about how he writes. (via theparisreview) Cf. Montaine.
We need some delusions to keep us going. And the people who successfully delude themselves seem happier than the people who can’t.
Woody Allen. (via)
Mark Larson 