Free The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Page B

irrationality—without exploiting them for fun and profit.
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    The test of whether you really liked a book is if you reread it (and how many times); the test of whether you really liked someone’s company is if you are ready to meet him again and again—the rest is spin, or that variety of sentiment now called self-esteem.
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    We ask “why is he rich (or poor)?” not “why isn’t he richer (or poorer)?”; “why is the crisis so deep?” not “why isn’t it deeper?”
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    Hatred is much harder to fake than love. You hear of fake love; never of fake hate.
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    The opposite of manliness isn’t cowardice; it’s technology.
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    Usually, what we call a “good listener” is someone with skillfully polished indifference.
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    It is the appearance of inconsistency, and not its absence, that makes people attractive.
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    You remember emails you sent that were not answered better than emails that you did not answer.
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    People reserve standard compliments for those who do not threaten their pride; the others they often praise by calling “arrogant.”
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    Since Cato the Elder, a certain type of maturity has shown up when one starts blaming the new generation for “shallowness” and praising the previous one for its “values.”
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    It is as difficult to avoid bugging others with advice on how to exercise and other health matters as it is to stick to an exercise schedule.
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    By praising someone for his lack of defects you are also implying his lack of virtues.
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    When she shouts that what you did was unforgivable, she has already started to forgive you.
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    Being unimaginative is only a problem when you are easily bored.
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    We call narcissistic those individuals who behave as if they were the central residents of the world; those who do exactly the same in a set of two we call lovers or, better, “blessed by love.”
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    Friendship that ends was never one; there was at least one sucker in it.
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    Most people fear being without audiovisual stimulation because they are too repetitive when they think and imagine things on their own.
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    Unrequited hate is vastly more diminishing for the self than unrequited love. You can’t react by reciprocating.
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    For the compassionate, sorrow is more easily displaced by another sorrow than by joy.
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    Wisdom in the young is as unattractive as frivolity in the elderly.
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    Some people are only funny when they try to be serious.
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    It is difficult to stop the impulse to reveal secrets in conversation, as if information had the desire to live and the power to multiply.

MATTERS ONTOLOGICAL
    It is a very recent disease to mistake the unobserved for the nonexistent; but some are plagued with the worse disease of mistaking the unobserved for the unobservable.
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    Asking science to explain life and vital matters is equivalent to asking a grammarian to explain poetry.
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    You exist if and only if you are free to do things without a visible objective, with no justification and, above all, outside the dictatorship of someone else’s narrative.

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE
    You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane, but you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy.
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    Atheism (materialism) means treating the dead as if they were unborn. I won’t. By accepting the sacred, you reinvent religion.
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    If you can’t spontaneously detect (without analyzing) the difference between sacred and profane, you’ll never know what religion means. You will also never figure out what we commonly call art. You will never understand anything.
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    People used to wear ordinary clothes weekdays and formal attire on Sunday. Today it is the exact reverse.
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    To mark a separation between holy and profane, I take a ritual bath after any contact, or correspondence (even emails), with consultants, economists, Harvard Business School professors, journalists, and those in similarly depraved pursuits; I then feel and act purified from the