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September 13, 2007
my own rules of conduct
* I have been in the habit of returning thanks to God for all that has happened to me. Both for the gracious favors he has bestowed me and in the very extremity of my suffering.
* My second noteworthy observation was that I ought ever to pray to know the purpose of God
* A third rule was that when I had lost, I should not be content merely to redeem the loss, but should always obtain something in addition. I am, no less, one of few men who enjoy experimenting with life as well as acting from carefully deliberated motives.
* I made it a practice that I should take the most careful account of my time. As I rode or are or conversed, or as I lay in bed sleepless, I was ever meditating upon something, for I had in mind that common adage: “The many small things soon make one size!”
* By a fifth rule I observed that it was well to cultivate the society of elderly men and be with them frequently.
* A sixth practice was to observe all things, and not to think that anything happened fortuitously in nature; whereby it has come about that I am richer in the knowledge of Nature’s secrets than I am in money.
* Always to set certainties before uncertainties has been a seventh guiding principle.
* My eighth axiom bids me never to be persuaded, for any reason whatever, to persist willingly in any course which is turning out for the worse.
* Unless I am at leisure, I undertake no particularly disputatious engagements, not only because it is more expedient, but because in this way I do not waste time.
* I never slash at a friendship that has proved faithless.
* Flee any occasion to let familiarity breed contempt.
* As far as I have been able, I have trusted less to my memory, and more to the written word.
Cardan - The Book of My Life
Posted by amin at September 13, 2007 1:47 AM