Sophistication is upscale conformity.

The days are in order, the months, the seasons, the years. But the weeks are work. They have no names; they repeat.

Too much apology doubles the offense

Few plans survive their first success, which suggests they were less about their goals than about the possibility of a little success.

How proud we are of our multitasking. What is Life but something to get off our desks, cross off our lists?

The reader lives faster than life, the writer lives slower.

I need someone above me—the Committee, the Law, Money, Time—to be able to say No. Sad my lack of integrity, though I suppose it would be sadder to need them to say Yes.

Beware of speaking of The Rich as if they were someone else

We've learned to wonder which neutralizes truth more effectively, the tyranny's censorship or the democracy's ten thousand media outlets. In the former truth is too costly, in the latter there's no market for it. In Freud the facts get around the censor in the metaphors of dreams, in Shelley we live in a dream of overfamiliarity and dead metaphor that only the poet can revivify. Does repetition emphasize or hypnotize? Which is clearer, what we see or what we don't see? Are we new or old? Do we love hate or hate love?

Selfsufficiency clings...to itself.

As I thumbed through my copy of The Best American Poetry 2011, I rediscovered James Richardson's Even More Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays from Vectors 3.0.     

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James Richardson is one of the finest poets now writing, and the best contemporary practitioner of the art of aphorism."--Publishers Weekly "Not since the appearance of W. S. Merwin's translations and adaptations of aphorisms inAsian Figures, some thirty years ago, has an American poet managed to put down so much delightful and compelling wisdom."--American Literary Review "No one theme or moral pervades these tesserae of specificity. Rather, Richardson's elegant compression invites the reader to fill in the blanks with personal experience... Richardson's knack for the quintessential, sustained for more than a hundred pages, left me satisfied yet hungry for more."--Times Literary Supplement "Readers will be obsessed by this book; they will memorize passages, give copies to friends, proselytize. That's becauseVectors so generously provides the best that poetry can offer. It is a masterpiece of practicality, beauty, and solace."--Boston Review "James Richardson'sVectors... penetrates to the very heart of human nature. I stand looking in the mirror, alert to my own foibles, shaking my head as I tolerate what I know he knows about who I am."--The Georgia Review "Almost every entry... introduces a new insight, provides a revelation, supplies a surprise... it is a book one wants to spend time with, a wonderfully friendly book, generous, witty and entertaining."--Gulf Coast "Vectors is the kind of book you read, reread, thumb through, and pick up several extra copies because you want to share the joy you found in perusing it with friends."--Barrow Street "James Richardson'sVectors is a book of subversive wonders. Stunningly precise, these brilliant aphorisms and ten-second essays show a mind assessing, reassessing, discovering, and interrogating assumptions in ways that feel diamond-sharp, at once good-natured, quietly sly at times, and always, always, very shrewd. 'It can never be satisfied, the mind, never,' wrote Wallace Stevens.Vectors is a remarkable testament to such questing, vivid minding, as these aphorisms alight on everything from the nature of perception, to God, success, fear, shame, self-consciousness, love and friendship."--Laurie Sheck

James Richardson

Vectors

As a Man Thinketh by James Allen is a short and insightful oft-quoted book that highlights the idea that, we are forged—for better or for worse—by our thoughts and their quality. More than that, we have agency in the matter of our lives, and so that when quality thinking combines with diligent action, extraordinary happens. Some quotes from the book are included below. Enjoy.

The Power of Directing Your Thoughts and Your Internal Movie

"Every man is where he is by the law of his being; the thoughts which he has built into his character have brought him there, and in the arrangement of his life there is no element of chance, but all is the result of a law which cannot err. This is just as true of those who feel “out of harmony” with their surroundings as of those who are contented with them."

The Law Which Cannot Err

Not what he wishes and prays for does a man get, but what he justly earns. His wishes and prayers are only gratified and answered when they harmonize with his thoughts and actions.

"The soul attracts that which it secretly harbours; that which it loves, and also that which it fears; it reaches the height of its cherished aspirations; it falls to the level of its unchastened desires,—and circumstances are the means by which the soul receives its own."

You Inner World Fashions Your Outer Life

"Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself"

Living is the Looking Glass

Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life. Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into circumstance.

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colours, which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts.

To live continually in thoughts of ill will, cynicism, suspicion, and envy, is to be confined in a self made prison-hole.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.

It's easy to get overwhelmed by the mechanics of daily life, and then to assign blame for everything to this or that thing. And while it maybe true that there is so much out there, and so little over which we have control, our thoughts are our own. At the thought level, we have the power to exert influence, and it is at this level that we must begin to interface with the world, because our thoughts determine how the world as we come to see it, is framed.

As a Man Thinketh is a literary essay and book by James Allen, published in 1903. It was described by Allen as "... [dealing] with the power of thought, and particularly with the use and application of thought to happy and beautiful issues. I have tried to make the book simple, so that all can easily grasp and follow its teaching, and put into practice the methods which it advises. It shows how, in his own thought---world, each man holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into his life, and that, by working patiently and intelligently upon his thoughts, he may remake his life, and transform his circumstances. The price of the book is only one shilling, and it can be carried in the pocket." It was also described by Allen as "A book that will help you to help yourself", "A pocket companion for thoughtful people", and "A book on the power and right application of thought."

THIS little self-help volume (the result of meditation and experience) is not intended as an exhaustive treatise on the much-written-upon subject of the power of thought. It is suggestive rather than explanatory, its object being to stimulate men and women to the discovery and perception of the truth that-- "They themselves are makers of themselves." By virtue of the thoughts, which they choose and encourage; that mind is the master-weaver, both of the inner garment of character and the outer garment of circumstance, and that, as they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness.

James Allen is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. James Allen has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. James Allen's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

Vectors

As a Man Thinketh

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