You don't reach Serendib by plotting a course for it. You have to set out in good faith for elsewhere and lose your bearings... serendipitously.
Interpretation
True discoveries happen when one is open to unforeseen opportunities rather than strictly following a predetermined plan.
This quote by John Barth highlights the idea that significant achievements and delightful surprises often arise from exploration and openness rather than rigidly adhering to a predetermined path. When one sets out on a journey with good intentions but without strict expectations, they are more likely to encounter unexpected and fortuitous experiences, akin to the concept of serendipity.
In practice
When discussing the benefits of improvisation in creative projects.
He wishes he had never entered the funhouse. But he has. Then he wishes he were dead. But he's not. Therefore he will construct funhouses for others and be their secret operator -- though he would rather be among the lovers for whom funhouses are designed.
Nothing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it from outside the thing itself, by people.
In art as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal and so does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity.
I particularly scorn my fondness for paradox. I despise pessimism, narcissism, solipsism, truculence, word-play, and pusillanimity, my chiefer inclinations; loathe self-loathers ergo me; have no pity for self-pity and so am free of that sweet baseness. I doubt I am. Being meβs no joke.
When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it's bottomless.
No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
The right thing to do never requires any subterfuge, it is always simple and direct.
Correcting oneself is correcting the whole world. The Sun is simply bright. It does not correct anyone. Because it shines, the whole world is full of light. Transforming yourself is a means of giving light to the whole world.
Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.
There is not a woman in the world the possession of whom is as precious as that of the truths which she reveals to us by causing us to suffer.
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