The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83¼ Years Old
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Read between April 7 - April 12, 2020
5%
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His philosophy: the only point of being alive is to kill time as pleasantly as possible. The trick is not to take anything too seriously.
7%
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Self-knowledge tends to decrease drastically with age. Just as in children it increases year by year.
8%
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If a fire ever breaks out in here, the entire population will be cremated. Only the staff will be able to make it outside in time.
9%
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could Nelson Mandela, for example, have requested to see his own obituary ahead of time and been allowed to make some changes?
11%
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It’s the harsh law of the dotage jungle: either view or be viewed.
12%
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Biologically speaking, you become superfluous on your fortieth birthday or thereabouts, since the children are born by then and approaching self-sufficiency. That is when slowly but surely the rot starts to set in, with hair loss and reading glasses. On a cellular level too things start going wrong. You have more and more errors of division and multiplication. A slowing metabolism leads to a weaker nervous system, which also makes the mind begin to weaken.
14%
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Woe to the man who thinks he is worth fifty-six times more than the woman who lovingly performs the dirty work.
15%
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alcohol doesn’t exactly bring out the restrained subtlety in him.
15%
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Elternunterhalt,
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Old people, like children, are always losing things, but they no longer have a mom to tell them where to look. Friday,
31%
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even the most high-minded person is only human; you wind up joining the bellyaching rabble, you can’t help yourself.
33%
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The other side of the coin is that some of the old people in here are such terrible bores that you wouldn’t mind letting them wallow in their own poop a bit longer.
37%
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Maybe I shouldn’t grumble so much. I should just work harder at making sure that every day is worth living. Or at least every other day. There have to be rest days too, just like the ones in the Tour de France.
37%
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Alas, “doing something” is no guarantee of a pleasant afternoon.
50%
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Never underestimate the grudge holders, the schemers, and the backbiters.
51%
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If you don’t have anything special to do all day long, a molehill can turn into a mountain. A person’s time must be filled with something; one’s attention has to have a focus.
58%
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We haven’t much time left, yet we have all the time in the world. We should be in a hurry, but have almost nothing left that’s worth hurrying for.
59%
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Endless torrents of vapid verbiage drowning out everything else like rampant weeds. Thoughtless. Senseless. Relentless. Aired just to let everyone know that the speaker isn’t dead yet and still has something to say. Whether there’s anyone willing to listen is a question they rarely ask themselves, otherwise they’d keep their mouths shut far more often.
69%
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almost
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Comes a time when your children finally amount to something, and you’re faced with your grandchildren’s troubles. Yet another cause of insomnia.
99%
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As long as there are plans, there’s life.