Polinius' Advice to Laertes

Hamlet 
Act 1 Scene 3

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame!
The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

Quotes - November

By Evan Robertson

11/8

"Lose your mind and come to your senses." - Fritz Perls

11/10

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” - Bob Dylan

" I'm good at love. I'm good at hate. It's in between I freeze." - Leonard Cohen

" I hear their voices in the wine
  That sometimes did me seek
  The band is playing Auld Lang Syne
  But the heart will not retreat
  There's no forsaking what you love
  No existential leap
  As witnessed here in time and blood
  A thousand kisses deep"  - Leonard Cohen

11/11


“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.”  ― Fyodor Dostoevsky

" The only thing that sustains one through life is the consciousness of the immense inferiority of everybody else, and this is a feeling that I have always cultivated." - Oscar Wilde

11/17

"Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools." - Douglas Bader

11/18

“Do not hurry; do not rest.” - Goethe

"Our lives are frittered away by details...simplify, simplify." - Throeau

11/19

“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”  - Ernest Hemingway,

11/20

“There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.” –Salvador Dalí

"Vision without execution is hallucination" - Edison

"The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it." - Edwin Land

 "Don't do anything that someone else can do." - Edwin Land

Quotes - October

By Evan Robertson

10/10


" Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. " - George Orwell

"A woman simply is, but a man must become. Masculinity is risky and elusive. It is achieved by a revolt from woman, and is confirmed only by other men. Feminist fantasies about the ideal “sensitive” male have failed. Manhood coerced into sensitivity is no manhood at all." - Camille Paglia


10/13

" The scariest moment is always just before you start." - Stephen King, on Writing.

10/24

" All men's miseries come from their inability to sit quiet and alone." - Blaise Pascal

" It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just aint so." - Mark Twain

10/26

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is." - Yogi Berra

" Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want." - Howard Marks

" Good times teach only bad lessons." - Howard Marks

" Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong." Howard Marks

10/20

“I don’t deserve this honor – but, then, I have arthritis, and I don’t deserve that either.” Jack Benny

“If you don’t know whose side someone is on, he’s probably not on yours.” - Warren Buffett

"Having a rich daddy can lead to sloppy decisions." - Warren Buffett

“Develop your eccentricities when young. That way, when you get older, people won’t think you are going gaga.” - David Ogilvy 

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” - Charles Darwin

10/28

" The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on." - Oscar Wilde

Cockroach rule " Where there is one, there are many."

" Predicting rain doesn't count; building ark does." - Warren Buffett

Quotes - September

9/1

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Victor Frankl

"Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." - Victor Frankl

"When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves."  - Victor Frankl

"Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it." - Victor Frankl 

"For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment." - Victor Frankl 

"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." - Victor Frankl 

"Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives."- Victor Frankl 

9/3

Kieran Culkin: What did she die of? 
Caine: She died of secrecy. She died of ignorance. - Cider House Rules

"Goodnight. You princes of Maine. You Kings of New England." - Cider House Rules

9/7 ‎  
"Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious." - Oscar Wilde

9/8    
“You shape your houses and then they shape you.” - Winston churchill

9/9   
" Power is based on perception. If you think you got it, you got it, even if you don't got it" - Herb Cohen 

9/17
"I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability." - Oscar Wilde

9/19

"One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards." - Oscar Wilde

9/21

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” - William Gibson

"Think like a person of action. Act like a person of thought." -  Jim Rohn

"Money often costs too much." - Ralph Emerson

"If you owe bank 100$ its your problem. If you owe bank 100 Million $ its their problem." - J paul Getty

" Its human nature not to do anything irreversible " Andrei Tarkovsky

" Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do." - Mark Twain

9/25

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live." - Oscar Wilde

“I liked you better before I got to know you so well.” 

9/26

"When someone with experience proposes a deal to someone with money, too often the fellow with money ends up with the experience, and the fellow with experience ends up with the money." - Warren Buffett 

" It is hard to grow up in a society in which one's important problems are treated as non existent." - Paul Goodman

9/27

Michael:  What's the matter? What's bothering you? I'll handle it. I told you I can handle it, I'll handle it. 

Don Corleone: I knew Santino was going to have to go through all this and Fredo... well, Fredo was... But I, I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life, I don't apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots. That's my life, I don't apologize for that. But I always thought that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the strings. Senator Corleone, Governor Corleone, something. 

Michael: Another pezzonovante. 

Don Corleone: Well, there wasn't enough time, Michael. There just wasn't enough time. 

Michael: We'll get there, Pop. We'll get there.     

- Godfather

                                                             
"Fredo, you're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the Family again. Ever." - Godfather

Quotes - August

Salvador Dali

8/7

" Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last." - Winston Churchill  

8/8

" Talkativeness is afraid of the silence which reveals its emptiness" -  Soren Kierkegaard

" Truths are more likely to have been discovered by one man than by a nation" - Decartes

" Without its daydreams, the self is apt to shrink to the size and shape of the estimation of others" - Michael Pollan

8/9

" The great thing about real life is that it will always surprise you " - Neil Strauss

" And with great power comes great fear of losing it." - Neil Strauss

" He was saying something about the unique responsibility we had to lead the world. " The sun will always rise in America as long as each new generation lights the fire of freedom," he concluded. It sounded good. But really, when you think about it, what the fuck does that mean?" - Neil Strauss

" And all we can ask for, all we can hope for, all we can beseech God for, is to win a few battles in a war we will ultimately lose." - Neil Strauss

8/10

" I must now go a long way ....
I must face a fight that I have not faced before.
And I must go on a road that I do not know. "     Gilgamesh, Tablet III 2100 B.C.

8/11

" A moment of realization is worth a thousand prayers "  - Quentin Torantino

8/12

" When I get up in the morning my real concern is to discover whether or not I'm in a state of grace. And if I make that investigation and if I discover that I am not in a state of grace, I try to go to bed. A state of grace is that kind of balance with which you ride the chaos that you find around you. It's not a matter of resolving the chaos - because there is something arrogant and warlike about putting the world in order - but having that kind of .. like an escape ski down over a hill, just going through the contours of the hill" - Leonard Cohen

8/16

" ... as if awaking from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams." Michael Ondaatje

8/17

" I always thought of romance as the ideal smeared with possibility" - Leonard Cohen

" We didn't know it was the 60's then, we just thought it was ordinary time" - Leonard Cohen

" There are dreams of glory whispering through the wires of my spine." - Leonard Cohen

"Whats the best place an opponent should hide? In the very last place you will ever look. He is hiding behind your pain, Jake. You are protecting him with your pain. Embrace the pain and you will win this game"  -  Guy Richie 

"If you change the rules on what controls you, you will change the rules on what you can control."  - Guy Richie

8/18

" All great ideas are dangerous." - Oscar Wilde

" Hounds follow those who feed them" - Otto Von Bismarck

" Every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future." - Oscar Wilde

" Ultimately, it comes down to taste " - Steve Jobs

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop"  Herbert Stein


8/19

" Its not what you look at that matters, its what you see" - Thoreau

"One thought driven home is better than three left on base." -James Liter

"Everyone has a plan until they get hit." - Joe Louis

"The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds." - John Maynard Keynes

8/22

"The rabbit runs faster than the fox , because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner." - Richard Dawkins

8/24

"The more a man judges, the less he loves." - Honoré de Balzac 

"Thinking is seeing." Honoré de Balzac 

"My further advice on your relations to women is based upon that other motto of chivalry, "Serve all, love one." - Honoré de Balzac 

"When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive anything, not even our virtues." - Honoré de Balzac 

"The most virtuous women have in them something that is never chaste." - Honoré de Balzac 

"Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true." - Honoré de Balzac 

"It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time." - Honoré de Balzac 

 "Behind every great fortune there is a crime." - Honoré de Balzac 

"Courtesy is only a thin veneer on the general selfishness." - Honoré de Balzac 

8/26

"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."  - Oscar Wilde

"The best truths can not be spoken and the second best will be misunderstood." Heinrich Zimmer

" When the President does it, that means its not illegal." Richard Nixon

“To go wrong in one's own way is better then to go right in someone else's.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment.

8/27

Ah, you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win    - Leonard Cohen

8/28

Quod volumus credimus libenter ( We always believe what we want to believe)

8/31

"Violence isn't what separates men. It's how far you're willing to go."    - Forrest (Lawless)

" Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." - Gandhi

" The weakest of all weak things is a virtue that has not been tested in the fire." - Mark Twain

" In times of peace, the warlike man attacks himself." - Nietzsche 

" Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting ; but never hit softly." - Theodore Roosevelt