Better to operate with detachment, then; better to have a way but infuse it with a little humor; best, to have no way at all but to have instead the wit constantly to make one's way anew from the materials at hand.
Interpretation
Embrace flexibility and humor in your approach to life, rather than rigidly adhering to a fixed path.
This quote emphasizes the value of detachment and adaptability in navigating life's challenges. By suggesting that it is better to approach problems with humor and creativity rather than adhering strictly to a predetermined path, Hyde encourages individuals to embrace spontaneity and resourcefulness in crafting their own unique solutions.
In practice
In a speech about navigating career changes, one could use this quote to encourage adaptability.
All that we make and do is shaped by the communities and traditions that contain us, not to mention by money, power, politics, and luck. And even should the artist or scientist think she has extracted herself from the world to stand alone in the studio, a tremendous array of faculties and mind-states may well attend her creativity.
Unlike the sale of a commodity, the giving of a gift tends to establish a relationship between the parties involved. When gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.
But neither money nor machines can create. They shuttle tokens of energy, but they do not transform. A civilization based on them puts people out of touch with their creative powers.
Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.
An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation. Part of the work cannot be made, it must be received; and we cannot have this gift except, perhaps, by supplication, by courting, by creating within ourselves that ‘begging bowl’ to which the gift is drawn.
For the slow labor of realizing a potential gift the artist must retreat to those Bohemias, halfway between the slums and the library, where life is not counted by the clock and where the talented may be sure they will be ignored until that time, if it ever comes, when their gifts are viable enough to be set free and survive in the world.
Always be willing to look at both sides of the argument. Understanding the other side is the best way to strengthen your own.
Two thoughts cannot coexist at the same time: if the clear light of mindfulness is present, there is no room for mental twilight.
God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
A lighthouse is more useful than a church.
All day long and all night through, One thing only must I do: Quench my pride and cool my blood, Lest I perish in the flood.
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