Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due
Interpretation
Worrying about potential problems today only serves to create unnecessary suffering.
This quote suggests that excessive worry and anxiety about possible future disasters do not prevent those disasters from occurring; instead, they drain joy and peace from the present moment. By concerning ourselves with hypothetical outcomes, we pay a 'dividend' of stress and fear, while often we find that the disasters we imagine never come to fruition.
In practice
During a speech about mental health, this quote can highlight the futility of anxiety.
Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared
Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.
And don't get hurt,' [Dexter] added. 'There's no one to help you up there. And don't go stirring up a lot of trouble for us. This case isn't ripe yet. Until it is, our policy with Mr Big is 'live and let live'.' Bond looked quizzically at Captain Dexter In my job,' he said, 'when I come up against a man like this one, I have another motto. It's 'live and let die'.
You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.
If you interrupt the writing of fast narrative with too much introspection and self-criticism, you will be lucky if you write 500 words a day and you will be disgusted with them into the bargain. By following my formula, you write 2,000 words a day and you arenβt disgusted with them until the book is finished, which will be in about six weeks.
Virtue and learning, like gold, have their intrinsic value: but if they are not polished, they certainly lose a great deal of their luster: and even polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold.
I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors.
Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind was forever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a hospital waiting for death.
I know who I am. And after all these years, there's a victory in that.
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
Numb the dark and you numb the light.
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