excerpts from Eric Hoffer's notebooks (from Harper's July 2005 issue)

WHAT OTHERS THINK
It is not good for our efforts at self-realization to know the opinions other people have of us. It is difficult or perhaps impossible to be ourselves if we are known. 1951

BROODING
I am more and more convinced that taking life overseriously is a frivolous thing. There is an affected self-dramatizing in the brooding over one's prospects and destiny. The trifling attitude of an Ecclesiastes is essentially sober and serious. It is in closer touch with the so-called eternal truths than are the most penetrating metaphysical probing and the most sensitive poetic insights. 1952

PLENTY OF TIME
The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time-not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me. 1952

THINKING AND WAITING
Thinking with me is like looking for a person whose address I don't know. I stand on a street corner all day long waiting for him to pass by. Certainly there are more efficient ways of locating a person whose address you don't know. But if you have a whole lifetime to wait and enjoy watching things go by, then waiting on street corners is as good a method as any. If you don't find the person you are looking for, you might meet someone else. 1953

THERE ARE BUT A FEW YEARS
The most important point is-and remains-not to take oneself seriously. There is no past, and, certainly, no future. There are but a few years-ten at the most. You pass your days as best you can, doing as little harm as possible. Let the desires be few and treat expectations as weeds. You read, scribble as the spirit moves you, hear some new music, see every week the few people you are attached to. Again: guard yourself, above all, against self-dramatization, a feeling of importance, and the sprouting of expectations. 1954

Here is "Passionate State of the Mind" by Hoffer, from Harper's Magazine 1954