Archive: June 2007

Why are we always beginning everything all over again? Millions of people already play the violin much better than I do. Millions have already mastered French and Spanish. Millions more already know all there is to know about wine tasting and baseball card collecting.

Following in other people’s footsteps is fine, as long as I’m big enough to fill their shoes. But why start from scratch if all I can ever hope to do is scratch the surface? Because our mistakes make us interesting. Like DNA recombination — each iteration introduces slight inaccuracies, which in turn produce the astounding variation we experience as originality.

“Let no one say that I have said nothing new”, French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal averred. “The arrangement of the material is new. When playing tennis, both players hit the same ball, but one of them places it better.” In the margin for error lies all our room for maneuver.

This essay originally appeared in the July/August isue of Ode Magazine.

Robert D. Dangoor has been in the property business for 30 years, and in the aphorism business for 25. He’s written some 600 aphorisms, contained in eight editions of his book, The Way It Is.

Ten of his sayings were put on the back of sugar sachets and distributed all over the U.K. His aphorisms have been quoted in the U.K. national press, and The Oscar Wilde Society said of him: “Robert Dangoor, like Oscar Wilde, has an uncanny understanding of life and a very skilled way of writing about it.” He’s lived surrounded by books all his life, first as a bookseller, then in publishing, and now as a writer.He’s also written a book of letters, Lifelines.

Mr. Dangoor comes from an Iraqi Jewish background and lives in London. Writing aphorisms “has been like a full time hobby for me,” he says. “I like my aphorisms to be inspirational and make people think about the lighter side of life.” A selection of his sayings:

When you don’t have a friend in the world, befriend yourself.

Don’t ride on your pride.

Better to teach someone who knows nothing than someone who knows everything.

You have to sacrifice something to get everything.

Nothing is free except what comes within you