35. Better a witty fool than a foolish wit

Spoken by Feste, the “fool” in Twelfth Night. The fool is the lowest of Shakespearean society – someone to be scorned, pitied, someone destined never to be in charge of his own destiny. The wit was at the other end of the social spectrum, the smart, savvy gent set for great things. The pun here is on the word “wit” – to be a fool, a peasant, with your wits about you is preferable to being an outwardly advantaged man whose smart exterior hides an essential stupidity. And in Shakespearean and Jacobean drama, it is often the “fools” who come out intact, while all the so-called wits fall over each other and are undone in their scrambles for success. Feste himself sidles in and out of the play, using his low status to influence the action with near impunity – almost to the point of omniscience.

34. There's an exception to every rule

...Except this one.

33. Physician, heal thyself

Concerning yourself with other people’s shortcomings is far easier than addressing your own. That’s why people go into politics, journalism, medicine and the law. That’s why society is defined by gossip and fast judgements, why tabloids outsell broadsheets, why we salivate over shots of celebrity cellulite and lap up “Real Life” features (“I married my brother’s killer”, “My wedding day botox hell”).
Which is not to say it’s always a bad thing. You could even say that sometimes it’s one of the best things. If it leads some people to self-righteousness, snobbery and snitching, it leads others to play the Good Samaritan, to cover for, look out for, lend a hand to their fellow human beings. But perhaps we should remember that if we’re going to concern ourselves with the lives of others, we best do so remembering that we too are riddled with faults and flaws, we too have weaknesses and secrets and failings. By all means help others, heal others – but do so without judgement, lest you be judged yourself.

32. If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need

In Once There Was A War, John Steinbeck’s collection of dispatches filed for The New York Herald Times during the early 1940s, the writer remembers the peculiar enthusiasm for gardening that swept “Dig For Victory” Britain:
“On the edges of American airfields and between the barracks of troops in England it is no unusual thing to see complicated and carefully tended vegetable gardens… It is fairly common now that a station furnishes a good part of its own vegetables and all of its own salad greens.
“The idea, which had as its basis, probably, the taking up of some of the free time of men where there were few entertainment facilities, has proved vastly successful. The gardens are run by the units and worked by the groups, but here and there a man may go out on his own and try and raise some strange seed which is not ordinarily seen in this climate. In every unit there is usually some man who knows about such things who advises on the planting…
“Men who are homesick seem to take a mighty pleasure in working with the soil…
“Lettuce, peas, green beans, green onions, potatoes do very well here, as do cabbages and turnips and beets and carrots. The gardens are lush and well tended. In the evenings, which are very long now, the men work in the beds. It does not get dark until eleven o'clock, there are only so many movies to be seen, English pubs are not exciting, but there does seem to be a constant excitement about the gardens, and the produce that comes from them tastes much better than that purchased in the open market.”

31. It's better to burn out than fade away

The 10 highest-earning dead celebrities of October 2007 – October 2008, as calculated by Forbes magazine:
Elvis Presley - $52 million
Charles M Schulz - $33m
Heath Ledger - $20m
Albert Einstein - $18m
Aaron Spelling - $15m
Dr Seuss - $12m
John Lennon - $9m
Andy Warhol - $9m
Marilyn Monroe - $6.5m
Steve McQueen - $6m

30. A happy life consists in tranquility of mind

Where do we look for the answers to the only question that really matters, the question that all other questions lead to, or from? Where do we look for the answer to the question: how can I be happy? In self-help books (“Chapter 1. Don’t look for off-the-shelf fixes...”)? On TV? In church? In the bottom of the glass? All these places lead to more questions.
The philosopher Cicero thought the answer lay in a “tranquillity of mind”. He didn’t spend his days sitting by a river contemplating the mysteries of existence; he didn’t teach theory in an ivory tower or preach repentance in the temple. He got out there and got dirty. He lived. He survived civil wars and Julius Caesar, championed the Republic, introduced the Romans to Greek philosophy and ended his life decapitated by the soldiers of Mark Antony. His tranquillity was not the peace of perfect stillness, but a clear-headed surety of purpose. Knowing what you want – that’s at least the start of the answer to the question.

29. If you're not part of the cure, you're part of the problem

Standing by and tutting as everything goes to hell is not good enough. You have to get involved, you have a duty to help to try to put things right in some way. By doing nothing you’re implicitly siding with the offenders, your apathy lending weight and credence to their cause.
That’s the idea. But then, being a human idea, it’s exploited and twisted as much as it's employed by those with good intentions. It’s used as cheap justification and easy emotional blackmailer when trying to drum up support for just about any cause – even the outwardly virtuous ones. Take environmentalists. Don’t recycle? You’re part of the problem. Don’t switch your TV off standby? You’re part of the problem. Don’t drive an electric car? Part of the problem. Don’t live in a cave, eat carbon-neutral biodynamically grown vegetables and shit in a composting toilet? You, my friend, are not part of the cure, you’re part of the problem. Because of you, the planet is dying.
Meanwhile, certain right-wing religious groups in America use the slogan as justification for naked bigotry: according to them, AIDS is a disease sent by God to punish sinners. And if you don’t contribute to their hate-filled creed, if you don’t become a part of their “cure” by targeting homosexuals yourself... well then you’re part of the problem.
We’re all part of the problem, ultimately. The best we can do is limit that part to a walk-on.

28. If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor

But on the other hand... every time you see a beautiful woman, remember that somebody got tired of her.

27. The pen is mightier than the sword

Forget the old sticks and stones rhyme. If you want to take someone apart, if you want to open them up, if you want to pierce them, pin them, slice them and screw ‘em to the sticking point, don’t do it physically. They’ll just get someone bigger and handier to do the same back to you. Go for their minds. Destroy them mentally. Flesh heals, bones knit, blood renews. Words last forever. This is true on a personal level and it’s true on a civilizational scale. All the casualties of all the wars that have ever been fade into statistics, seas of red poppies, regiments of white crosses – and all the reasons and resentments, the slurs and prejudices, the lies and truths behind those wars remain. When opposing ideologies come to physical blows, history condemns them all: when they argue with words history continues the argument forever.

26. Forgive, don't forget

All those stupid things you’ve done. All the hateful words said and spiteful acts performed. All those poisonous thoughts. All those times you went to sleep with your bitterness gnawing away inside you like rats in the cellar... all those times you woke in a cold sweat with a lurch and a dread. Let them go. Move on. Don’t let all the mistakes you’ve made cripple your chances of doing things better in the future.
But don’t forget. Don’t forget how terrible, how utterly despicable you can be.

25. Money talks, bullshit walks

Estimated global cost of the 2008 Credit Crunch – £1.8 trillion
Amount of UK taxpayers’ money made available for the bailout of struggling banks – £50 billion
Average yearly wage of a UK taxpayer – £27,000
Projected City bonuses for 2008 – £3.5 billion

24. Work sets you free

Over the entrances to the Nazi concentration camps at Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz are three words: Arbeit macht frei – work sets you free. Adopted by the Nazis as a phrase extolling a belief in the purity and dignity of honest labour for the common good, the slogan was placed above the camps’ gates at the order of the SS.
At Dachau some 35,000 died in 12 years; in Gross-Rosen 40,000 in less than half that time. Sachsenshausen was not even intended as an extermination camp – though 100,000 died there between 1936 and 1945. Theresienstadt killed 33,000. At Auschwitz, the largest of the concentration camps, anything between 1.1 million and 4 million men, women and children were murdered. Their work did not set them free. The gates still stand to remind us.

23. Remember the Philosopher's Axe

It’s a paradox: a man has a favourite axe – after a while the head becomes notched and blunted and dull, so he replaces it with a new head. A few years later the handle splits… so he replaces the handle too. Is it still the same axe? It’s a conundrum that has recurred from Plutarch all the way to the rock band The Drifters – which continues to tour despite containing none of the original members. More recently, there is an episode of Only Fools and Horses in which Trigger proudly displays a medal he’s been presented for services to the community by sweeping the streets with the same brush for 20 years. “This old broom’s had 17 new heads and 14 new handles in its time,” he declares. When someone asks how he can call it the same brush, he points to a photo of him receiving his medal: “Well there’s the bloody picture! What more proof do you need?”

22. Wisdom begins in wonder

A Socratic way of saying that we should approach learning like our children do. Children want to learn – teach me, they scream, what have you got? Give me more! Knowledge, all knowledge, is the goal. And knowledge, all knowledge, because it’s new, because it takes us somewhere we’ve never been before, because it opens doors, unfolds maps, shows us the way to yet more knowledge, is inherently full of wonder. Learn like children learn. Learn with mind open and eyes wide and mouth gaping. Learn widely, deeply, quickly, voraciously. Learn as much as you can as fast as you can. Learn with awe.

21. Routine is a link to the past

The spade with which I dig my allotment belonged to a friend of my wife’s grandmother. As a young man he would strap it on to the handlebar of his bicycle and pedal eight miles to his allotment each weekend. After digging all day, he’d lash it back on and cycle the eight miles home again for his tea. He did this every weekend for years – and always with the same spade across his handlebar.
The handle is pitted and cracked and loose around the join now; the blade is worn to half what it once was. But my wife’s grandmother remembers when it was new and shiny and insisted we take it. And if the handle eventually breaks and is replaced; if the blade is replaced too… it will still be the same spade in her eyes. There’s more English tradition soaked through that bit of wood and metal than you’ll ever find in a textbook. And one day, even if our grandchildren don’t end up using it to turn the soil on our particular allotment, wherever they are digging, they’ll be digging with that spade – countless new heads and new handles notwithstanding.

20. Trying to be cool is not cool

Cool is given, not created. The right clothes, the right views, the right tastes won’t make you cool if you’re not cool – and all the wrong clothes, views and tastes won’t matter if you are. Everyone wants to be cool. And the coolest thing of all is that it’s those who want it most who have it least, and those who want it least, who have it most.

19. A fool and his money are soon parted

According to statistics released in autumn 2008, 78 per cent of Britons don’t know the interest rate of their mortgage. One in two of us feel “mired” in debt. At least as many don’t know how they will afford to pay for Christmas. More than one in five feel their job is under threat – twice as many are worried their homes may be repossessed. The economy is shrinking. Unemployment is soaring, inflation is rising, property values are dropping. In the Abercromby area of Liverpool, 96 per cent of children are classed as living in poverty.
Meanwhile... McDonald’s have reported a record two million extra customers a month compared with a year before. Cadbury’s profits are up 46 per cent. High heels, lipstick and fake tan sales are up by more than half from last year. West End musicals took £470 million at the box office in 2007 and sales of video game consoles have doubled over the year to 17.3 million. And record numbers of us phone premium rate telephone lines to vote for talent show contestants to make a handful of very rich men even richer. Easy come, easy go.

18. As you have sown, so shall you reap

“And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

17. Art is never finished, only abandoned

So said Leonardo da Vinci. He managed to abandon some of the greatest works of art in the history of mankind, including the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, countless sketches, drawings and anatomical studies breathtaking in their accuracy and attention to detail, as well as working plans for helicopters, tanks, solar power, the double hull, the calculator and theories of plate tectonics centuries before the technology existed to realise those plans. He is almost certainly the most widely gifted person to have ever lived and was later described as having talents that “transcended nature”. If his assertion above is a way of saying that it doesn’t matter how high you aim, you’ll never quite achieve perfection, Leonardo himself is a reminder that no matter how good you ever think you are, you’re never going to be as good as he was.

16. Art is a reflection of life

Not only that – it’s a reflection of life at its most vital. Art is not about refined tastes and delicate sensibilities: it’s a celebration of the gloriously unrefined. Shakespeare didn’t write for scholars and libraries, Van Gogh didn’t paint for critics and galleries. And Mozart... well, Mozart may have appeared to follow the money, but everything he composed was rooted firmly in the feelings and failings of the common man. And if all of their work – if all art, in fact – is a soaring towards the divine, a glimpse of a higher plane – then that’s only because it has been created in reflection of this too-sullied life. “If there’s hope,” said Winston Smith in 1984, “it lies in the proles”. If there’s art, it lies there too. Art opens a door to the wonder and rapture of Heaven – by showing us the wonder and rapture in ourselves, even the lowest of us. It does so, in fact, precisely because of that.
In the slums and slurry of Elizabethan Bankside, the Globe theatre heaved with the filthy London proletariat, staring at the stage as if through a magic mirror, watching bright, negatively-exposed reflections of themselves express everything they ever felt or yearned for. The parts were of Kings and Princes: the truths were universal. And likewise the importance of those bold canvas splashes, those riots of pure sunlight and strokes dashed down as if in a hot torrent of creativity: that’s why Van Goghs provoke the same gasps, open the same aching chasms in the hearts of all who see them, regardless of station. And as for music...? Well we already know the devil has all the best tunes.

15. Opium is the religion of the people

Aldous Huxley’s skewing of Karl Marx’s famous quote (“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”) is not just a smirking stoner catchphrase. Opium is a hallucinogenic drug, sure – but it’s also a painkiller, a sedative, and instrumental in combating cholera. If it’s a bad thing for society, it is also undeniably a good thing too. If it wastes lives in blissed-out visions of alternate reality at the expense of actual reality, it also saves lives that would otherwise fall as needless victims of wasting diseases. It destroys and it heals. And it does so with an effectiveness and on a scale comparable only to religion, that other great destroyer and grand healer.

14. The sun also rises

Walk through the city first thing in the morning. It’s beautiful. There’s an optimism about the streets in the watery summer dawn, pale and gleaming as if fresh from the shower, sluiced of all the sordidness and sin of the night before – there's an air there that can't fail to make you believe that hope always finds a way to fruition, that the sun will always rise... for an hour or two in the morning light the stones look clean, the roads sparkling, the pavement free of the usual jumble, the flotsam and jetsam and human remains. The shops roll back blinds and open doors with a yawn and a rub of the eyes, carpets and lino and shelves inside perfectly ordered, perfectly untouched, perfectly ready for the business of business, the old profit and loss. Cafes wait with tables ready set, chairs expectant, crockery gleaming in anticipation of the coffee, the croissants, the steam and crumb and spoons licked clean.
It's all so... alive with possibility. It's bursting with potential. Anything could happen; incredible things could be achieved. Everything's ready. It's a human ideal, unsullied as yet by the disappointment and dirt of the day. And every morning it happens again, this rebirth, this fresh start. The city in the morning... it's a wholly different place to the city at night. The throb and adrenaline, the danger and passion and furious energy of the dark hours are buried, forgotten as if they never existed at all; the night's vampires are banished and for those first few hours of daylight it feels like they'll never come out again. As if we'll never let them out again.
The people in the city in the morning radiate that same expectation, that same air of starting afresh. Even those who wear their night's activities like stains on their shirts, hurrying to work with ties askew and shaking with hangovers... their bodies are already forgiving them. We're going to give you another chance, their bodies say. Look how we're healing ourselves, look how we're working to make good all the bad that you did last night. We're giving you another chance because that's what we do. That's what we'll always do.
The city streets have been going through this daily rebirth every morning for centuries. And if every evening they once again slip into seductively bad old habits, picking up old vices, revisiting old sorrows and sins... there's never any bad feeling for it. Every morning it feels like the streets shrug it off again, start again. Cities are so beautiful because they're so human – and so incredibly forgiving of humanity. They are proof that the sun also rises.

13. The devil is in the details

Big ideas are easy. Listen to the politicians, the think tanks, the ideologians, they make it sound so simple: society must be fairer, safer, healthier, happier. People must be able to walk the streets in safety, to sleep easy in their beds at night. There must be freedom, equality, liberty and justice for all. These are the poll-winners, the approval-boosters, the headline grabbers. Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. Education, education, education. We will stand shoulder to shoulder. The problems come when the words are peeled back and the substance has to be filled in. The details – they’re never quite nailed. They can’t be pinned down: tricksy, squirming, wriggling around like lizards in a tin. And so they’re pushed aside, abandoned, at best implemented half-cocked and fudged... while another Big Idea is sought to divert attention from the last one. Big Ideas are easy – the devil is in the details. And so the details rarely get bothered with.

12. The devil has all the best tunes

Well before Elvis swivelled his hips and sparked a thousand vinyl bonfires, the devil was laying claim to the most exciting, thrilling, immediate music. How far back do you want to go? Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads in the 1920s in exchange for fame as the greatest blues guitarist of his day? How about Mozart? The 18th century composer was whispered to have dark inspirations – and in Don Giovanni created a terrifying masterpiece too visceral for divine origins. A few thousand years before him, classical images of the Greek God Pan – he of the panpipes – later morphed into what we now recognise as Satan. The devil really does have the best tunes – and, it would seem, has done for at least 2,500 years. Good Christian men and women should accordingly eschew all such pleasures, just in case. A life without music may be grey and flat, emotionless and pallid and without warmth or humanity... but it’s necessary if you want to stay pure. Because life, after all, is not about pleasure, is it?

11. Winners don't abuse drugs

You do want to be a winner, don’t you? How can you not want to be a winner? Everyone wants to be a winner. Everyone wants to win. The slogan used to read “Winners don’t use drugs” – it was pioneered in the 90s by the FBI as part of the US Government’s War on Drugs and appeared on the opening and closing screens of video games through that decade. Except, at some stage, someone realised that winners were using drugs. Winning athletes, winning rock stars, winning actors, winning politicians... they were all at it. Success and drug use, it seemed, were easy bedfellows, or at the very least kissing cousins. So much so that statistically, at least, there was a good case to be made for the link between winning and drugs to be a positive one. Winners do use drugs. Hardly the right message to send to ver kids, though – especially not the sort who spend their money on Golden Axe, Donkey Kong or Street Fighter. So, quietly, with a minimum of fuss, “use” was upgraded to “abuse”. Fair play, they seemed to be saying, some winners do use drugs. We can’t argue with the numbers. But what they don’t do is abuse drugs. They know what they’re doing. They can handle it. Because they’re winners, right?

10. There’s more to life than books, you know. (But not much more.)

There is a world outside libraries, beyond the bookshelves. The problem is it’s a messy world full of misery and nastiness and brutality, where things don’t come right and people aren’t interested and anything you do, for the most part, turns out to be utterly inconsequential. It is too tempting to retreat into the warm embrace of literature, to envelop ourselves in its womb of learning and sensitivity, to wallow in its emotional swell. Books teach us about love and about death – and make no mistake, all literature, all prose, all poetry, is an attempt to define love and understand death. Books teach us what it is to be human: from the extremes to the minutiae. They teach it beautifully, passionately, carefully, extravagantly. A life without books is all but worthless. And yet... it is still life. And it is still better to grit your teeth and plunge into it every once in a while. Books can teach us everything about life, about living, but the experience itself: and without the experience it all just remains theory.

9. Luck is more important than talent

Right now there are a million amazing musicians in this country who will never be properly heard. There are a million extravagantly gifted sportsmen and women who will never represent club or country. There are a million supremely sensitive actors who will never set foot on a stage and there are a million writers who will never be read. Their talent has nothing to do with it. Their lack of opportunity, of contacts, of luck, has everything to do with it. It is simply not enough to be very good at something – you have to be noticed, given a leg-up, get in ahead of all those who are simply quite good, or better-than-average, or even just okay – but who have stumbled across a lucky break and exploited it well. Spotting your chance and taking it is far more important than working on your talent alone. Average men run the world – leaving the lonely geniuses performing to their own four walls, shouting into the wind, unheard.

8. Dreams never end

The point about dreams is that they’re not supposed to come true. So you’ve never had a dream come true... you’re not supposed to. That’s not what dreams do. That’s not what they’re for. Dreams are impossible, unattainable, unachievable – they show us what could be, what might have been; they show us an ideal. And because it’s an ideal, because it’s perfect, it will remain forever just out of reach. It has to. If your dreams come true, you’ve nowhere left to go, you’ve nothing left to dream. Sad? Yes. But also full of hope. For if that’s the sad thing about dreams, it’s also what makes them beautiful. They’re never realised, they’re never achieved – and so they remain pure and whole, untouched and untainted. They remain shining goals towards which we can strive, or simply hope; they remain lights in the darkness, a belief that there is something worth keeping going for. Dreams don’t come true – and dreams never end. It’s their tragedy and their redemption.