Fortune cookie wisdom part IV

It’s that time again, where I’ve accumulated far too many of those little scraps of paper wisdom from fortune cookies. Before reading these little Confucian tidbits, you may want to check out parts I, II, and III (which are all examples that I eat far too much Asian food ;)).

Anyway, here are the ones from the past few weeks:

• They say you are stubborn; you call it persistence.
• There are a lot of bumps on the road to easy street.
• Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected.
• Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.
• Those who can endure most are rewarded most.
• The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek.
• Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.
• Our life is the creation of our mind.

I thought that these ones provided a good mix of existentialism, Eastern philosophy, and internal versus external perspective. The first one is something that I say all the time when discussing doctoral programmes–you don’t need to be intelligent, you just need to be stubborn (or the more nicely connoted “persistent”). I am particularly fond of the penultimate one though, as I have found it to be true throughout my own life, and sometimes personal anecdote turns something sterile and cold into something rich and warm.

Cheers,
Zach