asFORisms 3

Cristache Gheorghiu

asFORisms 3 (A kind of thoughts)

Translated from Romanian by Dana Bunoaica

Athens, 2016

Pastel Publishing House

Edited by: Editura Pastel Braşov e-mail: editurapastel@gmail.com tel: 0733.043.263

Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României GHEORGHIU, CRISTACHE A kind of thoughts : asFORisms / Cristache Gheorghiu ; trad. în lb. engleză: Dana Bunoaica. - 2015vol.

ISBN 978-606-670-513-4 Vol. 3. - Braşov : Pastel, 2016.

- ISBN 978-606-658-229-2 I. Bunoaica, Dana (trad.)

821.135.1-84=111

2

* I would make a harp from my nerves, but I'm afraid I will not be able to play it as I would like.

3

* To get closer to the truth, you must admit the existence of contrary opinions.

4

* Usefulness of marriage You have a person handy to discuss politics without risks and winning the feeling that the issue is already resolved.

5

* Why don’t we repent for what we are?

6

* During the war, the Germans were singing Lili Marlene and the Russians Kalinka.

Warlike songs are preached during the peacetime, for preparing the war.

7

* Man is free if he understands his limitations.

8

* I feel guilty for the shadow I leave on earth. So, I strive to decrease it as I can. I succeed at noon, but it lengthens again in the evening.

9

* When we judge a religion, we must think not so much about its legends, myths, or cosmogony, but about its effects on the moral, social, psychological sides.

10

* Few theologians were sincerely as faithful as some scientists.

Newton among them.

11

* When writing memoirs, the author reconsiders his life, he re-forms his own conscience.

12

* Is absolute freedom the way to paradise?

13

* According to the second Gรถdel's theory, every person needs another person to understand himself, a person in his turn. . .

Whom

14

should

we

trust?

* The dictum "Verba Volant, scripta manet" should be updated. It was correct to highlight the persistence of writing and the volatility of speech. Today the situation has changed; one can capture not only the words but also the image of the speaker.

15

* Rummaging in the life and unpublished notes of famous people is insolence.

16

* Pluperfect exists only in grammar; it is only in our imagination, not in reality.

17

* Alternatives: The pessimist: I found nothing, because others said the same thing before me; The optimist: other people said the same as me, so they confirmed that I figured out correctly.

18

* Almost all vices are attributed to men. Perhaps that's why women claim equal rights.

19

* Talented is the one who performs right / well / nicely something that no one taught him how to do.

20

* To ‘misunderstood’ artists Like priests, you must recommend to viewers to believe in your art, possibly to pray, not to like.

21

* Once, it was impolite to send a typed letter. Today it is polite not to oblige the reader to torment himself by deciphering your handwriting.

22

* How to wean hygiene? Simply: watching American movies, where the hero – a civilized man - throws the suitcase on the bed as a sign that he just entered into a hotel. The Romanian peasant wouldn’t do such a thing. He knows that the bed has clean linen, which should not be polluted with dirt accumulated on the suitcase in stations and trains, inherently dirty.

23

* We know that people who practice their intellect are protected from Alzheimer's disease. Consequently, I agree with their attempts of preserving their health, but I do not understand why they bore us with their exercises.

24

* At old age, what matters is the attitude.

Happiness itself depends on it.

25

* God Mercury gave to the mankind the philosopher's stone, after he liquefied it.

26

* As truth is complex, only a part of it is revealed to us. Which part? That depends on the teacher, who can be a philosopher, a priest, or a political propagandist.

27

* If I was wrong, continuance can only be another mistake.

28

* For many people, freedom is similar to the feeling of children truanting from school.

29

* At a first glance, Romanians are not very communicative but sullen, while Americans are talkative and cheerful. (They welcome you with all their teeth.)

After changing a few words, the situation is reversed: Romanians are communicative and sentimental, while Americans become pragmatic.

30

* Children following art schools are not guilty. Their parents sent them there.

31

* The lack of people's culture is due to the ignorance of those who should cultivate it.

32

* The main purpose of the hair is to hide the head.

Even partially.

33

* Religion is part of the history of civilizations, with its good and bad deeds.

34

* Expecting something different from politicians is like watching several times the same movie, hoping for a different ending.

The same mechanisms produce the same effects, until they break down.

35

* When I am alone, I sometimes have disputes with myself, but I finally settle amiably the differences.

36

* Making the top of first 10 donkeys whom I met in my life, I do not think of those who caused me the greatest inconvenience, but to those who betrayed my expectations.

They left a wound in my soul.

37

* At home, sitting in the armchair, I feel like I am a bird, flying with the thought far away. I am a hawk who sees the world from above, judging it.

When I am travelling, I feel that I crawl. Even the airplane goes too slowly and, from the contact with the world, I hardly collect fragments, sometimes potsherds.

38

* In most cases, the great people recorded in the official history finished a period of glory and did not create it. The real creators remained anonymous.

39

* When we think that we are important persons, we should think of midge fly Drosofila, which tries to understand the mechanisms of the world in its short life, whose "big bang" started when someone pulled out the cork of a vessel containing something in full fermentation and will end once the cork will cover the vessel again.

40

* Beware of the games of powerful men.

They always win.

41

* When I am tired and I want to relax, I take care of some minor housework. Then, my wife says I am an industrious husband.

42

* Modern society is moving towards a different kind of culture than the classic one. It is a sign that somewhere we were wrong.

We should find out where were wrong, otherwise the new culture will be another failed experiment.

43

* A society is characterized by the areas in which people know how to associate.

44

* Light cannot be seen. We realize its existence by its effect, when it is reflected on objects.

45

* A really refined man should have alcohol flowing through his veins.

46

* How long is one minutes? It depends on which side of the restroom door you are.

47

* All those who try to improve a system are repressed by those who take advantage from the errors of the system.

48

* Every woman wants to become the better half of her man.

49

* I quit smoking. It was not easy.

I had to fight with myself. Now, I am happy and proud that I won. If I had never smoked, I would have not known this joy.

We need to pass through trials to enjoy life.

50

* Stalin: "How many divisions has the Pope?"

51

* I understand that you don’t understand, but I don’t understand how you can talk about something you don’t understand.

52

* The symbol of the number 2 derives from the response to the first question: 1 + 1 =?

Meanwhile, people invented more sophisticated symbols for our growing perplexities.

53

* To understand also had the original meaning of including (with your mind). That does not mean that you must understand all you include.

54

* Every action produces an opposite reaction.

Any idea gives birth to at least one opposing idea. (And we'll never know which of the two ideas were better.)

55

* On the Annunciation (March 25) the storks come; they are those who bring ready made children.

56

* No one can steal your past. It is there when you want and when you do not want. Close your eyes to see it.

Open them carefully!

57

* Stupidity is more evident in rich men. The poor ones, in their struggle for existence, get a skill which makes them look smart.

58

* Every great demagogue was first a small liar.

59

* Eve is more important than the feast itself, because in the day before, during preparation, we are closer to the sacred. During the feast, we often forget what we celebrate.

Moral: do so that every tomorrow should be a holiday; you will be glad that today is its eve.

60

* Beauty is superficial; Ugliness doesn’t.

61

* We cannot appreciate the talent of a future writer from the quality of his penmanship during the primary school.

The idea is valid for all fields.

62

* Every institution is organized to solve defined problems, determined a priori. It is not ready to solve new problems.

Confronted to it, officials are reluctant.

63

* A strong economy covers the blunders of politicians and the population continues to have confidence in administration.

In a weak economy, the effects are dramatic, people no longer have the motivation to work, centrifugal tendencies appear and the fall is widening.

64

* Education begins with childhood tales. The adaptation to a society with other traditions, other customs, namely with other tales, explains the negative psychological effects, common in today's society.

Similar is the situation of the elderly, who have not noticed the changing of customs in time.

65

* Each doctrine contains the seed of the contrary doctrine: rationalism gave birth to socialism and communism.

66

* People unite in the face of an imminent danger. The good separates them in every situation.

67

* The newest goal: fighting for human rights.

Every fight for his right, against another's right.

At fight, guys !!!

68

* Mud baths are good; they accustom the body with the earth.

69

* Social changes are like the movement of a flock. Any turning must be done slowly, in wide curves. A sudden change is not possible, because the animals would trample.

70

* It is time for us to unite in joys as sorrows did it enough.

71

* The one who usually deceives others is suspicious. He thinks that others want to deceive him as well.

72

* Only diseases are transmissible, not health.

73

* The purpose of literature is to stimulate the reader, not to philosophize in his place.

74

* The peasant was right in his village, because he feared the judgment of the local public opinion, but he was no longer afraid after becoming "a townsman".

75

* Friend is the one you call without reason.

76

* You respect the enemy, because you recognize his qualities. He is your adversary in a dispute. If the dispute disappears, he might become a friend.

77

* A mistake made in the right direction can be a brilliant move.

78

* For some young girls, the beauty is like a gift, consisting of a ticket to a show. Once in, they are keen to expose their attire and escape the message of the show.

79

* "Every tyranny suffers from the disease of distrust in friends" says Aeschylus. Error!

On the contrary, depending on the interests, the tyranny creates strong relationships between individuals, either association or rejection, while freedom gives born to distrust, thinking that your friends may "steal" your ideas and business and may progress ahead of you.

80

* The sin of Greeks is not because they are as they are, but because they stiffen to remain as they are.

81

* We can know only some operational laws of nature, but not the program by which it generates itself.

82

* Geoffroy: "Man started out as worm."

Perhaps it was a beautiful butterfly, but it lost his wings.

83

* Life can reverse values.

Intelligent children are taught to become good professionals.

Those who are less gifted for science will become their managers.

84

* When I was young, the getting close to girls was difficult, because most of them had doubts about my good intentions. Today, they enter into discussion with me. I am considered harmless.

85

* You cannot understand other people's faith, if you try to interpret it in the terms of your faith.

86

* The evolution of ethics can be traced through the evolution of fashion.

87

* All men are equal at first sight.

The difference is seen at the second.

88

* People are equal before the law; not behind it.

89

* At old age, life is nice, if you have a sense of humour.

90

* The world moves forward.

But nobody knows where.

91

* Culture = a bunch of ideas constantly reinvented, written and unwritten, always retold and never completed.

92

* Snob is not related to nobility, but to the lack of it. The word comes from the abbreviation of the French phrase "sans noblesse".

93

* People with little knowledge easily make connections between different areas and can even suggest new ideas.

The precise information, however, are like boulders: do not link to each others.

94

* Teratology (study of monsters) is not taught in any college and that explains our failures in sociology.

95

* We are like Pygmalion; We love only our own creations.

96

* In the company of fellows troubles fade.

97

* The armchair seems to me one of the most damaging inventions. It is the cause of most diseases.

98

* It is said that London is the capital of subtle power, because of its financial influence.

Athens could compete for the title of capital of sterile power.

99

* In the Middle Ages, most doctors were notaries as well a very practical combination for drafting wills.

100

* "In vino veritas" That’s why it must drunk in moderation.

101

* The charm of certain women can be anything between vital and lethal.

102

* Today we regret the loss of valuable monuments, built in the past. I wonder which of our monuments will be regretted by our descendants? Which ruins will attract tourists?

103

* In Haydn's original version, the song that became the anthem of Germany, is sad.

104

* Confucius: "Speaking is to sowing; listening means collecting. " Paraphrase: you collect what you sowed speaking.

105

* Unanswered questions are often wrong questions.

106

* All men are equal.

Culture distinguishes them.

107

* Those who think they know all the answers have asked themselves too few questions.

108

* They say that ignorance is like night. It is true, even if for some it might be beautiful, with stars in the sky, excellent when you do not want or you can’t see the reality around.

109

* Many of those rushing to answer did not understand the meaning of the question.

110

* There are people with a remarkable biography. Others leave behind a remarkable work. Others have nothing.

They simply want to be remarkable. Usually, they succeed to be only simple.

111

* No matter how colourful paintings are, life is better rendered in sculpture. The cold and white marble catches the movement better.

112

* We have several words for the verb "to beat" (hit, fight and more) and only one for "love".

113

* In most cases, doctors will detect best diseases known to them and not the patients’ sufferings.

114

* Light coming from the past lights your way, your future.

Light coming from the front only blinds you.

115

* The truth is in the kernel, not in the bloom.

116

* Art sponsored by Mecena and others progressed; the statesponsored art decades.

And not only art.

117

* I read what Xxxx wrote, but I remember nothing; why would I keep his name in memory?

118

* In Egyptian mythology there was a god of truth. Thoth was his name.

Some useless ideas were abandoned.

119

* Plato's philosophy was founded on the failure of democracy.

But we do not learn anything from Plato, because he was platonic.

120

* Seeking beauty is like the oscillations of a pendulum. If it stopped, it does not mean that we reached perfection.

Our creativity is guilty; it has ceased to spur oscillations.

121

*

When gods want to punish you, they fulfil your desires someone said.

The Stoics say that you should wish nothing to avoid suffering.

The priests say you have to fulfil only the gods’ wishes. The politicians, some lesser gods, have descended the heaven on the earth and want us to listen only to their wishes. The democrats want leaders to listen to common people's wishes.

Isn’t there any rational way?

122

* A party of drunkards would be difficult to set up, but the idea that in a certain party they are approved would bring more votes.

123

* Any idea - as stupid it would be - catches, if behind it is an institution (party or whatever) sufficiently well organized.

124

* We are happy with what we know and are grateful to those who have taught us what we know. That's very nice! But we don’t blame them for what they didn’t teach us but we ought to learn, because we do not know what we ought to know.

125

* Some speak to us about God, others about the love of fellow, as if they all want to detach us from the real world.

126

* The most durable friendship is that in which we accept and even adore reciprocal ironies, as proofs of spirit.

127

* You need to find the intersection between what you want, what you can and what others want from you.

128

* Only grass feels the taste of earth. We feel the taste of grass, if it is properly cleaned.

129

* The early Christians were the last ones. The following were bought by politicians and used as instruments of manipulation.

130

* Culture: veil or content?

131

* You are someone only when people stumble on you.

132

* Major political decisions are taken in the evenings; then, the shadow is larger and policymakers believe they are more important persons.

133

* Children learn all sorts of useless activities like biking, rollerblading and others even more dangerous, instead of walking with a stick, the only useful support at old ages.

134

* Monarchs’ interests are not identical to those of major financial magnates; monarchy needs stability.

Stability can bring money; money alone does not bring stability. On the contrary!

135

* Evolution: A few years ago, searching in Internet with "Levi-Strauss", we could learn about Claude LĂŠvi-Strauss, an anthropologist, father of structuralism.

Now, the name of the great scientist is covered by advertisements for jeans.

136

* Countries trying to approach the principles of genuine democracy fail to overcome underdevelopment. The advanced ones, however, know how to juggle with it.

137

* Ancient Greek - a dead language - is more alive than the modern one; in the scientific world, it has more readers.

138

* I am a talented chef, but I do not know how to cook.

Seriously!

139

* Poetry has sparks.

Prose wants to make light.

Philosophy too wants to make light, but it lacks the spark to start.

140

* Some friends accuse me that I do not have a good memory.

It is not true.

I do not remember having forgotten something.

141

* Postmodernism is more awesome than modernism, just as in politics, post-communism is a newer form of communism.

142

* Almost anything can be considered as having aesthetic valences, while it is not regarded up close.

143

* If everything is prescribed, as some religions claim, it means that I can do whatever crosses my mind, because it is prescribed. I am not guilty.

144

* Soviet theory: man can be reduced to what he eats. In the winter of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, over 7 million people were massacred by famine.

They were completed reduced.

145

* Enjoy what is happening to you. It is up to you whether it will be or not auspicious.

146

* A great scholar said that "we like to flatter women in the area where the men wore a sword. There seems to be a reflex: we want to ensure that the sword is missing. "Poor naive! A sword always exists, but not where you look for it.

And yet at a woman‌

147

* Romanism: I read somewhere that love would be the state in which the lover sees with the eyes of the loved. Touching!

But, what happens if the lover secretly loves someone else?

148

* Greece’s age is almost equal to the US’s. Only 45 years apart.

US gained independence in 1776 and Greece in 1821. I did not found other similarities.

149

* Wherever I travelled, I noticed that the sun sets on the same day when it rises. Let someone say that I do not have the sense of observation . . .

150

* The difference between tradition and prejudice is given by the angle on which you look.

151

* With the bipedal walking, the man raised his head to the sky towards gods.

Unfortunately, he rises too little above the bushes.

152

* Some love fade, as the partners know each other better and get bored. Others strengthen, especially when the two form a team. Not success unites them, but the common struggle with hardships.

153

* Fairness relates to a code of laws, rules, customs available in a community.

We fall into error considering unfair those of another social environment. They have a different code.

154

* "Man is in the highest degree a historical being." Obviously, this Berdiaev’s expression envisages the real history.

I think, how would have man looked like if he had been a product of the books of history?

155

* The waves of applause encouraged the dictator to believe himself brilliant.

156

* A good book raises questions.

Beware writers who give answers to unspoken questions.

157

* At the beginning of his stay in Paris, Constantin Brancusi was a sexton at the church "Holy Archangels" on 9a Jean Le Beauvais str.

As he could not become a priest, he became famous.

158

* St. Augustine admitted that the earth is round, but he imagined it as a sphere, floating on the water, of which only a third lies above and can be inhabited. He was not too much wrong. Now, it seems that the ball has started to spin.

159

* The "cunning" of the good teacher: he gives you, without you giving him. Only much later you realize that what he gave you was a kind of Trojan horse, because he inoculated you his way of thinking, maybe he made of you his epigone.

160

* Eastern religions require the faithful to execute the requirements of his faith, to apply them to his own life. He does not pray for God to do what he doesn’t and to forgive him for what he does against God's will, as Christians’ practice.

161

* It's important what you know, not how much you know; therefore, the main quality is selection. To know what to forget not to burden your memory with irrelevant information.

162

* A con with its top down and base up can not stay in this position.

The leadership of the few by the many - as socialists see human society - is an absurdity.

163

* Literary topics are - by their nature - dynamic. Heroes evolve, some grow old or even die.

In art, paintings, statues are static. They are appearances of certain ideals.

164

* Gioconda's smile is interesting only with her eyes. Their association is the one that gives to the viewer an ambiguous sense, which creates anxieties.

She is like someone who seen and knows a lot, knows us very well sympathizes with us for absurd claims.

has she and our

165

* Moses’ walking stick was the idea. Leaving Egypt, he was still young, vigorous, he did not need a cane to walk. The gnarled wood that he used to wear had a symbolic value. He struck the stone, making a spring.

166

* A ring with stone symbolizes the stigma that Prometheus was forced to wear after unchaining: it represents the chain with which Prometheus was bound by the stone of the mountain.

The wedding ring - a ring without stone - it's only a chain. Without the stone, it does not bind you to anything; but it prevents you from running.

167

* Narcissus died of grief, because he could not touch upon what he loved: his own face reflected in the mirror of water, which disturbs itself by touch.

With the invention of the mirror, we should be immortal, but we invented other pains.

168

* If the original paradise was lost through knowledge, we have the opportunity now, in the third millennium, to find it again, through the ignorance to which we are heading to.

169

* God did not create us; we've created God to justify our existence.

170

* Theft was sentenced since prehistory. Any legislation, since with Hammurabi’s one, had special provisions against it. For all that, they steal today more than ever. It's clear that we do not need laws, but common sense.

171

* In diffuse drawing of Impressionists’ paintings, the eye of mind sees better, deeper than in the realistic ones, which are very accurate.

172

* The purpose of literature is to stimulate thinking.

173

* We rehabilitate man placing him among animals.

174

* In chaos, man created order; including the maze.

175

* The illusions do not disappear.

Not even get older, along with us. They just dull.

176

* For the normal man, the world is a natural commonplace.

Only idiots find it full of incomprehensible oddities.

177

* In ancient times, philosophy was accompanied by myths, stories as support for discussion, interpretation, philosophizing.

Nowadays, what is claimed to be philosophy is accompanied by doctrines, abstruse language etc. Philosophy itself if we can call it that - has become doctrine, without the possibility of philosophizing, of looking for wisdom.

178

* Criticism is welcome only if it comes from accepted people.

179

* The religious man alleges that faith was revealed to him, although he was just brainwashed.

The scientist can really claim that his ideas were revealed to him, because he was not indoctrinated, he did not learn them from others or from books, like the Bible.

180

* Man is in the absurd situation of wanting to master nature, even if he is inside it, part of it and subject to its laws.

181

* Creation mingles with destruction; they succeed each other.

182

* It's not enough to hear, you must listen, which requires effort.

183

* Through mythology, the Hellenes launched the taste for myths.

The Greeks of nowadays have launched the myth according to which there would be something important on their own.

184

* In Romania, the agrarian uprisings did not occur in 1904, when there was the worst drought in the last two decades. It occurred in 1907, when it was an extraordinarily fruitful year.

185

* For Marx, Lenin and the others like them, people were the manoeuvring mass for their political program and not people to whom they should be devoted.

186

* The major ideas, governing forms, religions should be judged by their effects. What have they produced? How long have they lasted? Why were they replaced?

187

* As the aspirations of dogs finish to the end of the chain, many of the humans’ ones end up in court.

188

* The hypothesis that man descended from monkeys is based on external and behavioural similarities. At a deeper analysis, we find that, among animals, the pig’s DNA is closest to man.

189

* He is a great illustrator. Since childhood, upset that some teachers despised his intelligence, he made an ambition from drawing a square with five angles. He didn’t succeed yet, but insists.

190

* Homer's Iliad and even Goethe's Faust did not have an ISBN code.

191

* We evolve from monkeys (or vice versa). The higher is the branch on which we climb, the better one can see our bottom.

192

* A statement about something that we did not see may be correct, but it is not "felt", it does not mark our affectively.

Conversely, as a result of receiving by the senses, any finding affects our feelings and our judgment becomes subjective.

193

* People (society) do not pursue you for what you are, but for what you can be useful to them.

194

* The Greeks consider themselves to be freedomloving, but they don’t know the mechanisms of life in freedom.

As a result, they don’t know how to live on their feet. After so many years of foreign occupation, they confuse freedom with anarchy.

195

* The shadow of the past - which presses some people - may be the torch that lights the way of others.

196

* Do not delude yourselves; the ridicule of jealousy is without bounds.

197

* In the past, number zero was not recognized by mathematicians. (They hardly did it in the 19th century.) Now it is. It means that nothing has become real.

Naturally: the one who, before, we called "a good-for-nothing fellow", today could be an important man in the state.

198

* I would leave philosophy but I am not a philosopher, so I can not leave what I do not own.

199

* In a journal you should write daily, “jour après jour”. But if you write from time to time, how should it be called?

200

* If we generally reject genetic engineering, we should eat only crab apples.

201

* The link between honours and honour is accidental.

202

* We invoke only Latin quotations and not Greek, although it is assumed that the majority of them belonged to the Greeks.

203

* It is said the tsunami, caused by an earthquake in Santorini, would have destroyed the Mycenaean culture. But the princes lived in the city, like that of Mycenae, who were not on the coast, but on the hills, far from the sea, unattainable by any tsunami.

204

* Bad deeds are those that generated the good laws.

205

* We differentiate by the way in which we use our leisure time.

206

* "Omnia mutantur, nihil Inter" (everything changes, nothing dies). Ovid wrote it in "Metamorphoses", over 2,000 years ago and 1,700 years before Lavoisier and Lomonosov.

207

* The only salvation is to not hope that you will be saved; you must take your fate into your own hands.

208

* From passion (πάθος), Greeks easily fall into error (λάθος).

209

* Contradictory discussions can take place only between smart people.

210

* In Brasov, there is an intersection, dubbed by locals "the bad hour", because of the public clock, which was not going very well, and the restaurant behind, where clients could sometimes lose the feeling of time. (Sorry, the bad hour, what can you do?!)

Well, just there, the Soviet conductors decided to rename the intersecting streets as K. Marx and F. Engels. What an inauspicious meeting! Evil hour‌ 211

* Internet is a reflection of the real world in cyberspace.

212

* In the past, as today, important people were ignorant, some of them even illiterate. The scribe was a servant. So was the jester, although he was an intelligent man and sometimes was even a subtle master’s counsellor.

213

* In the family and among friends you can not be well appreciated. Only enemies can show who you really are.

214

* In memories, we often forget what we were in favour of what we could be if ‌

215

* When I was of 40-50 years old, I learned that some younger colleagues used to call me “old man". Today, nobody does it, a sign that I already am old.

216

* How to use things can be very different. You can read a book or to use it, page by page, for burning the fire.

217

* Some ancient writings have been preserved, recorded on stone, papyrus etc. Modern records are lost within a few years, due to the continuous modernization of recording technology.

218

* Reading a text stimulates critical sense, while watching images facilitates the thoughtless acquisition of suggested messages.

219

* Educated people do not make inappropriate statements.

That‘s why, the discussions with them are flat. Instead, the uneducated ones are more productive. By their nonsense, they generate controversy, raise questions, demanding answers.

220

* I would not have the patience to write a book in which everything is thought beforehand, and all I have to do is to put the right words on paper. Like art, writing is - at least for me – a creative process. Therefore, the result may be different from the original intention. With each phrase, with each spot of colour I am tempted to write or paint something different from what I had intended.

221

* As children, we are taught how to succeed in life. Nobody tells us much about how to overcome failures.

The coaches in judo schools are smart enough to teach the beginners how to fall, so that not to hurt themselves and be able to quickly return to the battle. Professional educators do not do it.

222

* Even if we are good people, religion requires us to be even better.

This way, life becomes a perpetual punishment.

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* The prodigal son represents life. His brother is just a milestone meant to distinguish between an active man, entrepreneur and a passive one.

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* In Las Vegas, the landscape that real deserves your admiration is the human one.

All people - mostly tourists look at each other. You look at them, they look at you, because you are part of the landscape as well.

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* Those who have few but fixed ideas succeed in life. Smart people can be brilliant, but ultimately they lose in face of the former, because they lose themselves in details.

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The author’s other books • • • • • • • • • •

U.S.A. '95, (in Romanian language) Singur printre americani (in Romanian language) America After America (in English language) Între două idealuri (in Romanian language) Tradiţie sau liberul arbitru? (in Romanian language) Where Is My Way? (in English language) Remanenţe informatice (Scientific researches, in Romanian language) Memoriile unui căţel adult (in Romanian language) asFORisme - un fel de cugetări (in Romanian language) A Kind of Thoughts (in English language)

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• • • • • • • • • •

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Un genre de réflexion (in French language) Filosofia unui bolovan (in Romanian language) Grecia - note de călătorie (in Romanian language) America after America, JustFiction Edition, Germany, 2012, (in English language) Scrisori din Atena, Editura Pastel, 2012 (in Romanian language) A Boulder’s Philosophy, Bibliotastic, New York, 2012, (in English language) With Love from Athens, 2012, (in English language) Anastasia, 2013, (in Romanian language) Anastasia, 2013, (in English language) asFORisme 2 - Un fel de cugetări, 2013 (in Romanian language)

• • • • • • •

Eseuri vesele şi triste, 2014, (in Romanian language) Căutări, 2014, (in Romanian language) Dicţionar roman-grec de verbe pentru începători, 2015, (in Romanian language) După 50 de ani, 2015, (in Romanian language) Memoria timpului pierdut, 2016, (in Romanian language) A Kind of Thoughts 2 (in English language) asFORisme 3 - Un fel de cugetări, 2016, (in Romanian language)

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