Maxim Two

Anger

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him. Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved. He who angers you conquers you. In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. The world needs anger. The world often continues to allow evil because it isn't angry enough. For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness. Anger is one letter short of danger.

Maxim Three

Individuality

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. You must have control of the authorship of your own destiny. The pen that writes your life story must be held in your own hand. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

Maxim Four

Courage

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others. Every man has his own courage, and is betrayed because he seeks in himself the courage of other persons. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. When we are afraid we ought not to occupy ourselves with endeavoring to prove that there is no danger, but in strengthening ourselves to go on in spite of the danger.

Maxim Five

Death

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blending and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is sting less indeed, and as beautiful as life. All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing. The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other. A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man. If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.

Maxim Six

Friendship

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Maxim Seven

Hate

A Rattlesnake, if Cornered will become so angry it will bite itself. That is exactly what the harboring of hate and resentment against others is - a biting of oneself. We think we are harming others in holding these spites and hates, but the deeper harm is to ourselves. It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

Maxim Eight

Hope

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain. There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect something for nothing - but we all do and call it Hope. The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination. Hope is but the dream of those who wake. Some see a hopeless end, while others see an endless hope. You've got to have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope life is meaning less and less.

Maxim Nine

Justice

Laws are only words written on paper, words that change on society's whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges, and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool. But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Maxim Ten

Life

Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another. Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. You cannot discover the purpose of life by asking someone else - the only way you'll ever get the right answer is by asking yourself. You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. Human life is purely a matter of deciding what's important to you. Sometimes questions are more important than answers.

Maxim Eleven

Love

Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end. Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. Love would never be a promise of a rose garden unless it is showered with light of faith, water of sincerity and air of passion. Sometimes we make love with our eyes. Sometimes we make love with our hands. Sometimes we make love with our bodies. Always we make love with our hearts. You learn to like someone when you find out what makes them laugh, but you can never truly love someone until you find out what makes them cry. Trip over love, you can get up. Fall in love and you fall forever. Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less. The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

Maxim Twelve

Nature

Look at the trees, look at the birds, look at the clouds, look at the stars... and if you have eyes you will be able to see that the whole existence is joyful. Everything is simply happy. Trees are happy for no reason; they are not going to become prime ministers or presidents and they are not going to become rich and they will never have any bank balance. Look at the flowers - for no reason. It is simply unbelievable how happy flowers are. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

Maxim Thirteen

Poverty

The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied...but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

Maxim Fourteen

Reality

Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without complaint when they sometimes collide with a bit of reality against which they are dashed to pieces. One bright day in the middle of night two dead boys rose to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot one another. A deaf policeman heard the noise, and saved the lives of the two dead boys. If you don't believe this lie is true, ask the blind man, he saw it too. An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Maxim Fifteen

Risk

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide? The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.

Maxim Sixteen

Seasons

Spring makes its own statement, so loud and clear that the gardener seems to be only one of the instruments, not the composer. Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower. Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn.

Maxim Seventeen

Sex

Now, if groups like Moral Majority have their way, there won't be any sex education at school, and our kids will be the dumbest in the world when it comes to sex.... But our parents are sexually retarded too.... Fear and primitive morals are creating a sexual pressure-cooker in this country and soon the top will blow.... Only in the U.S. do we find children drawing a picture of a baby coming from the clouds or from under a cabbage leaf. The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": fighting, fleeing, feeding, and mating.

Maxim Eighteen

Simplicity

Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things. Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter... to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring - these are some of the rewards of the simple life. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Maxim Nineteen

Society

You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. We create an environment where it is alright to hate, to steal, to cheat, and to lie if we dress it up with symbols of respectability, dignity and love.

Maxim Twenty

Time

Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow. For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work. Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

Maxim Twenty-One

Violence

We challenge the culture of violence when we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it's tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it's still valid. There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed.

Maxim Twenty-Two

War

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth. Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.

Maxim Twenty-Three

Dream

That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it.... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within our self. Dreams are only thoughts you didn't have time to think about during the day.

Maxim Twenty-Four

Faith

As your faith is strengthened you will find that there is no longer the need to have a sense of control, that things will flow as they will, and that you will flow with them, to your great delight and benefit. He who has faith has... an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well - even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly. Faith is courage; it is creative while despair is always destructive.

Passive or Active

Soul

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breathes. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.

Spirit

There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. By doing such things as passing under the eves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning you will not be perplexed though you will still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to all things.

Honor

Taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of thousands of them, it gives attention to no other bird than the one it has first marked.