9 insights from a brilliant writer forgotten by history

Austin O'Malley's life story sounds like a movie plot. He was a 19th century eye surgeon who became an English professor. He married a woman 20 years younger than him who poisoned him with arsenic. He also wrote a book of aphorisms. In this Memo, discover his 9 best insights 👇

On the strange nature of Memory: “Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.” What is crucial to our conscious self may be thought trivial by the subconscious and forgotten; what seems ridiculous to the conscious brain, the subconscious may hold onto.

Against white lies: “Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.” People like to mock this concern as a slippery slope fallacy, but as the mountaineers who lose their grip and the drug addicts very well know, the slippery slope is very much real.

Sometimes it’s better to be blind than to see everything: “There is an opportune blindness which is more valuable than vision.” So much of life is noise. False feedback, overwrought mental games, endless distraction. And opportune blindness is just another name for “focus.”

Shearing v/s Skinning: “The statesman shears the sheep, the politician skins them.” This framework applies everywhere from ecology to success. We must shear the environment, not skin it. For success too, our potential must be cultivated and sheared patiently; not recklessly skin.

Permanent skepticism is the definition of always moving your goal-posts. O’Malley writes: “You cannot knock a man down who will not stand up, nor argue with a skeptic.” A productive dialogue, like a productive journey, can’t happen without at least some destination in mind.

Full light leads not to full vision but full blindness: “To see clearly in the physical and moral world you must temper light with shadow.” A shadow is light’s interaction with the world. Always consider how actions & ideas bounce off of the actual world: what shadows they throw.

We must be prepared for “good luck”: “If you sit by the wayside waiting for Success, your knees will be too stiff to follow her when she passes.” Luck likes the ready, the eager, and the restless - not the idle waiter.

The true intuitives among us grasp truths faster: “Saints and poets are hills touched with the dawn whilst the valley is in darkness.” We should pay attention to the warnings, and other signals, of those whose eyes seem capable of seeing the future before everyone else.

A book as an act, a book as mere talk: “There is a form of literature that is a deed, and a form that is only talk, and the latter passes away like a conversation.” A book can attack & challenge - or be weightless like the words exchanged between two strangers waiting for a bus.