Dictionary of Proverbs
Book A: THE WISE
A wise king is rarer than a wise man; but he is rarer than a king also.
After your betrayal, as Jesus, the son of Sirach, said, your friend will lose his love for the neighbor and you will lose him as a friend.
Compared to diamonds, the rarest and most valuable thing on this planet is wisdom.[1]
David and Solomon had the same knowledge about wisdom: its inception is the fear of God.
For the wise, more time means more knowledge and also more forgetting.
If you do not love wisdom, you will not see it (except if someone else shows it to you).
If you see wisdom, you will love it or not.
In thinking of reforming society by subtraction (that is, the removal of evil), Nassim Taleb and I are like-minded: To not do to others what is hateful to you, you must first learn what is hateful to you (and you learn it when they do it to you).
Look for the wisdom you do not have and need, such as, the Jewish sage and king Solomon.[2]
My commentary to Jesus, the son of Sirach, “A single betrayal is sufficient to end years of trust and friendship,” tells you that trust and friendship are fragile.
One gains a reputation for wisdom by saying nothing against the truth.[3]
Solomon’s glory is wisdom.
The mark of the wise man is that he does not speak against the truth. (Jesus, the son of Sirach)
The wiser you are in conversations with women, the more you show them, and the more you seduce them.
The wiser you are, the more profound you are.
Think of Asa of Judah: To be wise until the end is to always seek God.
To err is human, but to be wise is godly in The Tanack.
To know who people are, think in tests. And the wisdom behind a test, like the one of friendship, is this: Not the days of plenty, but the days of adversity, will separate your friends and the people who are not your friends, but pretend to be; they are all your companions.[4]
Wisdom is not fallible because of complicated words.
Wisdom makes me happy.
Wisdom, to judge the people, will find the truth first, as it happened with Solomon.
Book B: THE PHILOSOPHER
From antiquity to modernity, philosophers use the same method: they make variations on the same theme.[5]
If you are a philosopher, you will see wisdom where it is.[6] (Jesus, the son of Sirach)
The Romanian professor and philosopher Ilie Pârvu does not philosophize without a method; on the contrary: his method is to see the unity in diversity. And that is wisdom.[7]
When I find a moment of peace, I begin to philosophize.
Book B: THE DOER
Being a man of practice has its advantages and disadvantages: no theory can fool you; only the written facts[8].
Immanuel Kant is wrong: to know if there are causes without effects, see if what happens today affects those who died before it happened –it does not.
Doing rarely a brilliant thing does not make you a brilliant person; doing it often, does.
From a conversation with a trader: a statistics professor cannot teach how to become a trader.
From my professional experience: if I cannot say to you why you cannot have it, you can have it.[9]
In action, what we may attain depends on us and what is unattainable does not.[10]
The one who denies it, “People believe in beliefs not only when they act, but also when they decide not to act,” errs.
There is one thing you should know about doers, about philosophers: they are the same people.
Those who say “Who would do such a thing?” did it.
What you do is either bad, or good, or both (given the situation); but you cannot say it is neither good nor bad.
Book C: THE STUPID
Marker of stupidity: one does not use future wisdom to correct past mistakes.[11]
The opposite of the intellectually lazy, for whom, as Nouriel Roubini defines them, normal times are always with us to stay,[12] is the falsificationist.[13] [14]
The stupid err by confusion (they consider only the similarities), but the wise do not err as the stupid do (they consider the differences first and the similarities later).
The stupid err by induction, never the wise.
The stupider you are in conversations with women, the less you show them, and the less interested they are in you.
To know if someone is an idiot, speak wisely to him and check if he becomes averse to it.[15]
To still practice a doctrine of life, contrary to evidence of the contrary, is a mark of stupidity.
When you conceptualize –that is when your stupidity manifests itself.
When you learn from your mistakes,[16] you overcome your limits, but not your fallibility.
Book D: THE FOOL
The fool may suffer from an unfulfilled love; never the wise.[17]
The fool never speaks the truth.
To separate the godly and the fools, Jesus, the son of Sirach, considers their speech: the latter are always changing their words, but the former are always wise.
Evils that make you an atheist: Madness,[18] seeking pleasure,[19] [20] and pride.[21]
Book E: THE LOVERS
Her presence, when I see her, confiscates me in such way, that I start walking faster and forget about the people in front of me and hit them and then apologize to them.[22]
His love for her and her love for him are, both, known to him: to Solomon.[23]
If a woman loves you, she will see you unique in comparison to other men. (Solomon’s Song of Songs[24])
In my 20s, I was happy in solitude, as I was in love.
To know if she does not love you, see if she renounces to nothing…
To one who has been in love reads Solomon’s Song of Songs by analogy; the one who has not been in love does not understand it.[25]
My love for different women is the same (even in bed).
Book G: ON WOMEN
Some women will go with you the whole way, even if it will bring no success to them; others will not go with you the whole way, unless it will bring success to them.
The beautiful women you do not see do exist.
To know if a woman is beautiful, you must see her (almost) naked.
To lose the sense of time, I either pray, or read, or write, or engage in sexual affaires.
Who is a womanizer? He who desires beautiful women for his own pleasure.[26]
Others: THE UNITY IN DIVERSITY
Against hedonism: By the same means you derive pleasure now you will derive pain tomorrow; George Soros is Epicurus’ buster.[27]
Another multiplicative effect: By the same means they get rich now they will lose money tomorrow.[28] (George Soros)
By the same means you do no evil you also do good: the fear of the Lord. (Jesus, the son of Sirach)
By the same means you lose pride — and you may have it, even if it is not for you[29] –, you also gain meekness.
By the same means you subtract what does not work (or, what is false), you also add what works (or, what is true): experience; condition you have a healthy mind.[30]
For the same reason, some, unexpectedly, hurt you and others, willingly, seek your company: you are tough.
Nassim Taleb: In the same crisis, some lose everything and others win everything; given their exposure to the same rare event.
The solution to the problem of induction and the solution to the mind-body problem: falsification.[31] [32]
To discover the truth about their world-view, consider the multiplicative effect: without it, things will not go in the opposite direction.[33]
You lose fear and gain courage by the same means.[34]
[1] The wise man has a clear mind.
[2] Book of Proverbs.
[3] My inspiration is Jesus, the son of Sirach.
[4] Jesus, the son of Sirach, inspired me.
[5] In other words, they find unity in diversity.
[6] If you are not a philosopher, you will not see wisdom where it is.
[7] His predecessor, the oldest one, is the Jewish sage and king Solomon.
[8] If they do not exist and he does not know it…
[9] I was an insurer.
[10] Use stoicism to complete Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
[11] Another marker of stupidity: one does not use past wisdom to correct future mistakes.
[12] The stupid are the intellectual lazy by excellence.
[13] “History is mostly peaceful.” (Aaron Haspel)
[14] Many believed that communism is always with us to stay and did nothing against it; they helped communism to be decades with us.
[15] Wanted to know it, while reading Jesus, the son of Sirach.
[16] You subtract what does not work and add what works.
[17] The wise will love another woman in the same way…
[18] David.
[19] Jesus, the son of Sirach.
[20] The reverse is also true: all hedonists are atheists. (Epicurus)
[21] Jesus, the son of Sirach.
[22] That is the sign of my love. –Before me, Solomon considered it in his Songs of song.
[23] Song of Songs.
[24] Commentary: For Israel, Saint Elohim (אֱלהִים) is unique in comparison to their gods: the Greeks and the Romans gave different names to the same gods (just as there is a unity between a man and a woman, there is one between God and Israel).
[25] Solomon’s Song of Songs encapsulates the lovers.
[26] The more you engage in sexual affairs, the more you desire it.
[27] That is the multiplicative effect at the small scale.
[28] That is the multiplicative effect at the big scale.
[29] Jesus, the son of Sirach.
[30] Cognitive neuroscience.
[31] Many unite the two problems, such as George Soros.
[32] Once falsified, always falsified –any scientific theory; that is what I call “the popperian solution to the problem of induction.”
Another problem with the same solution: When a man has brain-damage, his mind no longer functions as it did in the past not; yet some believed that the brain in without use. (Daniel Gilbert)
[33] That is George Soros’ criterion of truth in social sciences.
[34] If you are afraid of the dark, stay in the dark until you will realize it cannot hurt you –in that moment, you lose fear and also gain courage.
