A Quote by Tom Hodgkinson
In a world where you are constantly asked to be 'committed,' it is liberating to give yourself the license to be a dilettante. Commit to nothing. Try everything.
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You commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have, everything, absolutely everything.
For me, the moral dimension of life is that you are committed, to doing everything that you do, with a sense of excellence. That is the morality of writing, that you try and write as excellently as you possibly can. Or of teaching, or of childrearing, or of friendship. Of anything you do. And, I do try and live, as best I can, with all of the errors that I make, y'know, a value-driven life. And that is defining values as trying to give everything you do, everything you've got.
As a father, you find yourself telling this to your kids a lot. My son, when he didn't want to play baseball, I was like, "Buddy, try it. Try playing baseball and if you don't like it, that's fine. But I want you to try it. I want you to try as hard as you can at it. And then we'll talk about it." You kind of have to give yourself the same pep talk. As a 43-year-old, you're like, "You know what? Just, try it. Try as hard as you can, give it everything you got and then accept the results."
I try to take it as it comes. I'm constantly trying to please myself. That's why I've basically realised now, that nothing else in the world matters at all, just please yourself and the people you love and that's it.
Most people are just trying to get through the day. Be committed to learn to get from the day. Don't just get through it; get from it. Learn from it. Let the day teach you. Join the university of life. What a difference that will make in your future. Commit yourself to learning. Commit yourself to absorbing. Be like a sponge. Get it. Don't miss it.
In the material world, where everything is valued, when you commit yourself to God, beauty and love, it can be mistaken for extravagance.
Commit to what you love - that's important. Believe in yourself and try as much as possible to do everything you do from a place of love. Not labor, but love.
Once you are in it you are in it, you have to go all the way to the end because you commit yourself to such a level where there is no compromise. You give everything you have absolutely everything. Sometimes you find even more because you require more if you want to stay ahead and you want to win.
I don't mind the word 'dilettante.' A dilettante means someone who does what he loves.
We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you’re going to do my hair later you have to have a license ... We don’t require a license to own a firearm?
We should be licensing everybody with a gun. I have to have a license for my dog. I have to have a license for my car. If you're going to do my hair later you have to have a license... We don't require a license to own a firearm?
Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.
I am interested in study, reflection, philosophy - but always as a dilettante. I also consider myself a dilettante as a painter.
I think it's better to find somebody who's worse at everything than you. It just makes you constantly feel so good about yourself. And then, you can constantly talk about how good you are at everything, and how terrible they are at everything.
It's very rare to be in a state where there's nothing in, where you have no attachment to any idea or concept about yourself. In that state you've immediately raised the mind of compassion, because if nothing is in, everything is in, and you are now free to experience yourself as the world.
I'm just this committed dilettante. I think what I've found is that I've tried to do a lot of different things in my life and discovered I'm not as good at them as I'd want to be.
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