399. Dictionary

Dictionaries are imperative. There’s a difference between bodacious, salacious, and pugnacious.

366. Self-taught

Make self-taught a way of life.

363. Perspective

From a distance, even jagged lines may appear smooth. This is true of design as well as life.

352. Communication

Don’t speak louder to a blind person. The only change in communication you should make is to someone who is hard of hearing, with whom you may speak louder, or to a child, with whom you should speak more simply.

351. Mind Your Elder

It would do you well to spend time around the elderly. There is no room for arrogance in the final stages of life, and this is where we are all headed.

341. Quotes: Arthur Quiller-Couch on Written Style

“For — believe me, Gentlemen — so far as Handel stands above Chopin, as Velasquez above Greuze, even so far stand the great masculine objective writers above all who appeal to you by parade of personality or private sentiment.

Mention of these great masculine ‘objective’ writers brings me to my last word: which is, ‘Steep yourselves in them: habitually bring all to the test of them: for while you cannot escape the fate of all style, which is to be personal, the more of catholic manhood you inherit from those great loins the more you will assuredly beget.’

This then is Style. As technically manifested in Literature it is the power to touch with ease, grace, precision, any note in the gamut of human thought or emotion.

But essentially it resembles good manners. It comes of endeavouring to understand others, of thinking for them rather than for yourself — of thinking, that is, with the heart as well as the head. It gives rather than receives; it is nobly careless of thanks or applause, not being fed by these but rather sustained and continually refreshed by an inward loyalty to the best. Yet, like ‘character’ it has its altar within; to that retires for counsel, from that fetches its illumination, to ray outwards. Cultivate, Gentlemen, that habit of withdrawing to be advised by the best. So, says Fénelon, ‘you will find yourself infinitely quieter, your words will be fewer and more effectual; and while you make less ado, what you do will be more profitable.’”

—“On the Art of Writing,” Chapter 12: Lectures Delivered in the University of Cambridge, 1913–1914, by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944), published in 1916 by Cambridge University Press

301. Experiment

Turn your children’s bad choices into science experiments explaining cause and effect and the responsibility of their choices.

Two nights ago, eldest daughter, you decided to take a plastic bag of melted ice into your room that previously was used to soothe your bumped head. You played with it on your sister’s bed and then squeezed it until it broke.

After drying her bed we spent almost an hour filling plastic sandwich bags with water, dreaming up ways to burst them, theorizing what would happen, and carrying it out.

Beyond having fun splashing each other in the sink, we learned that the walls of the plastic sandwich bag are weaker than the seal, and usually in the same region — about a half inch below the seal. And a bad choice was turned into a learning opportunity.

This night was brought to you by the words force, pressure, and the number of bags we broke: five.

274. Quotes: Gabriel Marcel on Mystery

“A mystery is a problem that encroaches upon itself because the questioner becomes the object of the question. Getting to Mars is a problem. Falling in love is a mystery.”

—Gabriel Marcel (December 1889–October 1973), French existentialist philosopher

264. Learn

Inhabit the nobility of being alive. Always be learning.

249. Stupid

Doing something not in line with your understanding or your ability is how I define being stupid.

It has nothing to do with intelligence or factual recollection as compared with someone else, but with what you chose to do as set against the backdrop of what you are able to do and what you know to do.