• Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it. -Mahatma Gandhi
• I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice. -Abraham Lincoln
• It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. -Somerset Maugham

Link to : Muriel Barbery: An Elegant Quill

Had a great time at the jazz festival and drinks last evening.
Here's a very nice review of "Elegance of The Hedgehog"

As the two characters' lives overlap, Paloma comes to discover Renée's secret gifts, and to appreciate her self-effacing elder as having "the elegance of a hedgehog: a real fortress, bristling with quills on the outside . . . deceptively sluggish, ferociously independent, yet terribly elegant."

From "Elegance of the Hedgehog"

• Thus the television in the front room, guardian of my clandestine activities, could bleat away and I was no longer forced to listen inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam
• With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.
• I have read so many books.... and yet , like most autodidacts, Iam never quite sure of what I've gained from them. There are days when I feel I have been able to grasp all there to know in one single gaze, as if invisible branches suddenly spring out of nowhere, waving together all the disparate strands of my reading - and then suddenly the meaning escapes, the essence evaporates, they seem to flee further with each subsequent reading.
• Nothing is harder or more unfair than human reality: humans live in a world where its words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is the mastery of language. This is a terrible thing because basically we are primates who've been programmed to eat, sleep, reproduce , conquer and make our territory safe, and the ones who are most gifted at that, always get screwed by the others, the fine talkers. This is a terrible insult to our animal nature, a sort of perversion or a deep contradiction.
• Because in town it is the dogs who have their masters on a leash. though no one seems to have caught on to thew fact.If you have voluntarily saddled yourself with a dog that you'll have to walk twice a day, come rain wind or snow, that is as good as as having a leash around your own neck.
• From the very start Colombe and I have been at war because as far as Colombe is concerned, life is a permanent battle where you can win only by destroying the other guy. She cannot feel safe if she hasn;t crushed her adversaries and reduced their territory to the meanest share. For some obscure reason Colombe, who most of the time is totally insensitive to what's going on with other people, has figured out that what I dread more than anything else in life is noise. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence: this is something she is not capable of understanding, because her inner space is as chaotic and noisy as the street outside. But in any case she figured it out so all day long she makes noise. Since she can't invade anything else, she invades my personal auditory space, and ruins my life from morning to night.
• and then, for the price of sixty-three euros, I had some fillets of mullet in curry and then for thirty-four euros, the least evil thing I could find on the menu: a bitter chocolate fondant. Let me tell you: at that price, I would have preferred a year';s subscription to McDonald's. At least its in bad taste without being pretentious.
• Teas and mangas: something elegant and enchanting, instead of adult power struggles and their sad aggressiveness.
• But never again will I see those I love, and if that is what dying is all about, then it really is the tragedy they say it is.
• I understood I was suffering because I couldn't make anyone else around me feel better. I understood that I have a grudge against Papa, Maman and above all Colombe because I'm incapable of being useful to them.
• I was having breakfast and looking at the bouquet on the kitchen counter.I don't believe I was thinking of anything.I was alone, and calm, and empty. So I was able to take it in. There was a little sound, a sort of quivering in the air that went "shhh" very very very quietly: a tiny rosebud on a little broken stem that dropped onto he counter. The moment it touched the surface it went "puff", a "puff" of the ultrasonic variety, for the ears of mice alone, or for human ears when everything is very very very silent. .. and I have been lucky because this morning all the conditions were ripe: an empty mind, a calm house, lovely roses, a rosebud dropping. Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. Its the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment when you can see both their beauty and their death.
• What is the purpose of intelligence if not to serve others? And I'm not referring to the false servitude that high-ranking state - employed flunkeys exhibit so proudly, as if it were a badge of virtue: The facade of humility they wear is nothing more than vanity or disdain.
• Instead privilege brings with it true obligations. If you belong to the closed inner sanctum of the elite, you must serve in equal proportion to the glory and ease of material existence you derive from belonging to that inner sanctum.
• I have always been fascinated by the abnegation with which we human beings are capable of devoting a great deal of energy to the quest for nothing and to the rehashing of useless and absurd ideas. I spoke with a young doctoral candidate in Greek patristics and wondered how so much youth could be squandered in the service of nothingness. When you consider that a primate's major preoccupations are sex, territory and hierarchy, spending one's time reflecting on the meaning of prayer for Augustine of Hippo seems a relatively futile exercise.
• Literature for instance serves a pragmatic purpose. Like any for of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable.
• Truth loves nothing better than simplicity of Truth: that is the lesson Colombe Josse ought to have learned from her medieval readings, but all she seems to have gleaned from her studies is how to make a conceptual fuss in the service of nothing. The fact that the middle classes are working themselves to the bone, using their sweat and taxes to finance such pointless and pretentious research leaves me speechless. Every gray morning, day and after gloomy day, secretaries, craftsmen employees , petty civil servants , taxi drivers and concierges shoulder their burden so that the flower of French youth, duly housed and subsidized, can squander the fruit of all that dreariness upon the altar of ridiculous endeavours.

Every instinct..

By Nathalie Thomas

BILLIONAIRE US investor Warren Buffett has said he intends to bide his time before taking up his option to buy a further $5 billion worth of Goldman Sachs shares, despite calculations that he stands to make a significant profit from the transaction. Buffett secured warrants to buy more Goldman stock last September when his investment vehicle Berkshire Hathaway snapped up $5bn worth of preferred shares in the banking giant.

Although the move helped to inject some confidence in the sector at a time, analysts later questioned its wisdom after Goldman's shares fell below $48 in November.

But last week the stock hit $165.45, prompting speculation that Buffett would exercise his right to increase his stake. Under the terms of the deal, he has until 1 October 2013 to buy a further $5bn of common shares at $115 each but he told a US television channel that he intends to delay even though the warrants are currently valued in excess of $2bn.

"Every instinct in my body tells me that we will want to hold those warrants until they're very close to their expiration date," he told Fox Business Network.

Points from Klarman's "The Value Of Not Being Sure"

• Financial markets are manic and best thought of as an erratic counterparty rather than as an arbiter of the accuracy of one's investment judgements.
• Historically, little volume transacts at the bottom or on the way back up and competition from other buyers will be much greater when the markets settle down and the economy begins to recover. Moreover the price recovery from a bottom can be very swift. Therefore, an investor should put money to work amidst the throes of a bear market, appreciating that things will likely get worse before they get better.
• Process, Not Outcome :The only things one can really control are investment philosophy, investment process and the nature of clients. Controlling your process is absolutely crucial to long-term success in any market environment/.
• James Montier, recently pointed out that when athletes were asked what went through their minds just before competing, the consistent response was a focus on process, not outcome.
• Success virtually requires that a process be in place that enables intellectual honesty, rigor, creativity and integrity.