At the ripe old age of 21, I took up smoking a pipe. This was 1965. It was just too cool. It kept going out if I didn’t puff on it enough.
A man of some years, Hoagie Barnes, father of a freind, had smoked a pipe all his life. I once asked him how he kept his pipe lit.
Answer “Well, I always carried a pack of matches.”
Thx, Hoagie… 
The best piece of advice I ever got came from a book about Magic: the Gathering written in 1995. It was about deckbuilding (paraphrased):
“The way you build a deck is, first you choose the main card in your deck, or the theme, or whatever. Outline your general strategy. Add as many of those cards as you can. Now, this strategy, it’s going to have positives and negatives. So what you need to do is add a bunch of cards that get rid of the negatives! But, of course, these cards you add will have negatives too, so be sure to account for those. If you do it right, by the end you’ll have a deck that’s all positives and no negatives.”
And that’s how I approach life. Decide what I’m going to do, figure out the negatives–either I don’t care (score!) or I do, in which case, figure out how to get rid of them.
Incidentally, I’ve since stopped playing M:tG. It’s still good advice.
Years ago I was sick at work and I had something to do and I wouldn’t go home because IT NEEDED TO BE DONE. My boss looked at me and said “if you were indispensable, we’d pay you more.”
“Son,” my Dad once told me, “if you turn on the light and see one rat, there’s ten.”
I’m sure he’s told me other wise things but that’s a metaphor I’ve found remarkably true.
From a former boss. “The most valuable thing you own is your reputation”
I walked out of a building downtown and encountered two scummy looking street people, a man and a woman, leaning against the side of the building. The man says “excuse me sir”. Without breaking stride, I responded that I didn’t have anything for him and walked away. While I was still within earshot, I heard the woman say to him “you didn’t even ask him for anything”. That moment of rudeness stays with me.
In my new job as a manager, the outgoing manager gave me some sound advice. She said “when the shit’s hitting the fan and people are stressed out, your job is to tell them that it will be ok”. That’s what I do. It always turns out ok.
Wow, I had that book.
Upon my graduation from college:
“I have one word to say to you…plastics”
If song lyrics count as something being “said” to me…
Love, love is a verb/ Love is a doing word
–Massive Attack
On raising a family – Pick your battles. It’s helped me through a lot of teenage drama.
Hair grows back. From bad haircuts, chemo, and spontaneous shaving of heads at the championship game.
I have been blessed with many pieces of sage advice from wonderful people.
Mom: If it’ll be funny when you look back on it, it’s funny now. Go ahead and laugh. People manufacture tragedies.
My sensei: If you don’t care whether you live or die, your opponent can’t win. If your opponent doesn’t care if he lives or dies, there is no cause to fight.
Also, Try to avoid a fight, but if a fight is inevitable, never hesitate.
My dad, by way of Churchill: If you’re going through Hell, keep going.
From an Andrew Vachss: There’s only one guaranteed way to win a fight: Keep getting back up.
From Mrs. FA: Go big or go home. Half assing it doesn’t get it done.
From my baby sister: Look at the best person in your group. If he or she looks up to you, you’re doing all right. (At a time when I was feeling particularly bad about myself)
And lastly, it wasn’t said, since I learned it from my dogs, but whether they’ve been gone a minute or a month, there is nothing in life better than seeing the person you love walk into the room.
From my Mom:
Your life will be happier if you just worry about what YOU’RE doing. (and not what other people are doing)
From my favorite boss:
What are they gonna do? Take away your birthday?
From Dad, as I was heading to college:
Everything in moderation, including moderation.
I think the best and most useful advice I will ever receive, though, is from Mom, and it’s about relationships:
When you love someone, you will know many things about them. When you fight with this person, because you know them so well, there will be things that you can say to hurt them very badly. You will want to say those things, to make the other person hurt as much as you are hurting at that moment. Don’t.
*I *like a smartass.
Priceless freakin’ advice. Jesus, this thread is a goldmine.
ETA: And their lives will be happier too. Everyone’s will. Just MYOB.
The Dad of a college friend once told me this:
“You are young and horny and won’t understand this right now, but as you go through life you will realize that the most overrated thing in the world is a good fuck and the most underrated thing is a good shit.”
So true!
This is the only Shakespeare quotation I’ve ever remembered:
And you were rude. I was going to tell you your zipper was down.
My grandmother (1902-2002).
Largely apolitical (I doubt she voted a day in her life), taught Sunday school in a Baptist church for 25 years but still drank, smoked like a chimney, played cards,
told off-color jokes and was otherwise a free, tolerant spirit, was divorced from an abusive husband in 1943 and supported 5 kids on her own as a working mom…helped raise me…damn, I miss her.
When Reagan was running for office in 1979-80, she happened to catch him on the t.v. …he caught her attention and she said (to me, who was a 14 or 15 yr old at the time) :
“If THAT MAN gets into office, I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer and we’ll go to war.”
That was her final (only) word on politics, but it left a huge impression on me, in retrospect. I think she summed it up better in two sentences than others have in multiple books, op-eds and articles.
She may have been apolitical, but she knew what side HER bread (and the bread of most people) was buttered on.
Yes, that’s GOOD. This is what true love consists of…overlooking and/or not employing as a weapon the weaknesses of those we love. How ELSE can people stay together for decades? 
We are all broken in some way…love saves us and makes us whole, if only in the eyes of those willing and able to see us as we SHOULD/WANT to be. 
Absolutely! along with, “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” 
From my mother, when someone had hurt my feelings when I was a child: “He probably didn’t mean it.” It took me a long time to get the wisdom of this. Most of the actions of others that hurt me are the result of indifference, not malice. Mom knew.
From my father: “Don’t try to drink it all, they’re making it while you sleep.” I should have listened.
From the former CEO of my company: “Find out what you’re not good at, and don’t do it.”
From a former boss on being a boss: “Find people who can do their job better than you can. And then let them do it.”