Advice for creative types
Beatrice Taylor, Aunt Bee: “Nobody can create on an empty stomach.”
Advice for academics
From Carl Cederström and Michael Marinetto, advice about “How to Live Less Anxiously in Academia.”
Work advice
From Roger Rosenblatt.
Bill Cunningham (1929–2016)
“Money’s the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive.”
Good advice
“I like to tell people that if you wait until you’re completely qualified for something, maybe it’s too late.”
From a van Gogh letter
Admire as much as you can, most people don’t admire enough.
On ambition
The philosopher Mark Kingwell on ambition.
A brief message from the Academy of Lifelong Learning
“A problem should retain its shape and size.”
Words of wisdom from Albert King
“Most important thing: the better you get, the harder you work.”
x + 1
From the 21st-Century Stoic.
From Philip K. Dick
“Just because something bears the aspect of the inevitable one should not, therefore, go along willingly with it.”
Good advice from Seth Godin
“If you try to delight the undelightable, you’ve made yourself miserable for no reason.”
“Pat talks to teenagers”
“For your own future enjoyment I say go bowling, or to a basketball game, or watch a good TV program (like the Pat Boone Chevy show!), at least for a while.”
Libby Kingston’s advice
“Whenever you want to know who you are, don’t ask anybody else. Just ask yourself.”
Kurt Vonnegut, advice for students
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
Probably not from Calvin Coolidge
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.”
Sherwin Cody wants to know
Do You Make Mistakes in English?
Advice from Sydney Smith
The cleric Sydney Smith writes to a friend with advice for overcoming “low spirits.”
Wise advice
From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
“Do the work”
Advice from Professor Kingsfield.
Dear Downton Abby
Bill Madison gives advice.
“The necessary limitations of our nature”
W. H. Auden on figuring out who we are.
Words from Theodore Roosevelt, sort of
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” Quoted by Roosevelt
Bill Withers on wanting to be cool
“When you’re a kid, you want to be cool, and you want to be cool with the cool people. And that doesn’t always happen. So if you can learn to value the people who value you —”
Three suggestions
If you’re driving on a highway and the traffic suddenly slows or stops, and the vehicles behind you are at some distance: 1. Turn on your hazard lights. 2. Leave significant space between you and the vehicle in front of you. 3. Keep checking your rear-view mirror.
Words from Steve Jobs
Good advice for life, from a 2005 commencement address.
Happy v. right
Jonathan Kaplan: “It’s better to be happy than to be right.”
Sans approval
Useful advice about seeking approval
From the president, to schoolchildren
"No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work."
Jonathan Kozol, advice for students
"Life goes so fast"