I’m Nguyen, and am interested in many things, ranging from the stock market and bánh xèo to paddleboarding and how to live to 150. I started this blog to document my progress in learning Chinese and Spanish, but will add other topics once I have a good grasp on these languages and can afford more time to write about other areas. These are tenets that I [try to] live by:
Đời tôi có thể tóm tắt trong hai chữ HỌC và VIẾT. Hai việc đó liên quan mật thiết với nhau gần suốt đời, tôi VIẾT ĐỂ HỌC và HỌC ĐỂ VIẾT.
– Nguyễn Hiến Lê
The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighbourhood. From this prison there is no escape. But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what the ancient author looked like and what type of person he was.
– Lin Yutang
True worth is in being, not seeming,—
– Alice Cary
In doing, each day that goes by,
Some little good—not in dreaming
Of great things to do by and by.
For whatever men say in their blindness,
And spite of the fancies of youth,
There’s nothing so kingly as kindness,
And nothing so royal as truth.
Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things, you just get used to them.
– John von Neumann
Never follow the crowd.
– Bernard Baruch
Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor and leverage.
– Charlie Munger
If life gives you lemons, sell them and invest the proceeds.
– me
Be like the turtle, slow yet steady in its forward march.
– me (or someone may have claimed this quote before me already?)
Some people view the glass as half-full, while others see it as half-empty. Me? I drink it when I’m thirsty.
– me
If the 10000-hour rule doesn’t work for you, try 20000 instead.
– me