Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man's Principles for Delicious Living
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5%
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We didn’t have to do anything to have a good time. It’s an incredible gift to be able to make your own fun.
8%
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The notion of getting together as a community to remind ourselves why we shouldn’t behave like animals is a fucking great idea.
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When the clergy get too big for their britches, they take these wonderfully benevolent writings from the Bible and crumble their intended integrity by slathering them with human nature.
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When you’re aiming to apply force to a job with a tool, you have to isolate the focal point of your work as much as possible.
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It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
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All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune, make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.
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“If you’re gonna do a job, do it right,” and “Just always do the best you can, and then nobody can fault your effort.”
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The calmer I become, the more I enjoy my day. The more I enjoy my day, the more people enjoy me and the more they want to see me in my enjoyment.
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I’m here to tell you that we’ve been duped on a societal level. My favorite writer, Wendell Berry, writes on this topic with great eloquence. He posits that we’ve been sold a bill of goods, claiming that work is bad, that sweating and working, especially if soil or sawdust is involved, are beneath us. Our population, especially the urbanites, has largely forgotten that working at a labor that one loves is actually a privilege. To be on the receiving end of this gift of a life complete with human body, mind, and heart is to be indescribably blessed indeed, but all of our conveniences and ...more
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Marching through life with a confederate in mirth is one of the greatest pleasures that can befall a man, woman, or chipmunk.
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Many hands make light work,
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The sense of it is, come to the edge of the cliff, face the leap, and be afraid. Then acknowledge your fear, step forward once more, and then push yourself off the cliff.
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Whatever it is that makes you different, weird, unique from the others, it is that, if anything, which will see you prosper.
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“Always maintain the attitude of a student.” When a person thinks they have finished learning, that is when bitterness and disappointment can set in, as that person will wake up every day wondering when someone is going to throw a parade in their honor for being so smart.
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As human beings, we, by the definition of our very natures, can never be perfect. This means that as long as we are alive and kicking, we can be improving ourselves. No matter our age, if we always have a project to which we can apply ourselves, then we will wake up every day with an objective, something productive to get done. This allows us to go to bed at night in the peaceful knowledge that we have done some good, gained some achievement, however small.
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for if we think of others in our fastidiousness or lack thereof around the toilet, how can we not extrapolate that notion into how we are leaving the rest of the world for the others who will come to use it after us?
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A lucky actor learns that the projects one says no to end up being much more important than the jobs one takes.
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“Many a true word is spoken in jest.”
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John Lennon quote: “When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
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Another John Lennon jewel: “Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.”
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I’ve been wrong before, and the smart money’s on my being wrong again.