Ellen, I hope you’ll excuse the title. I couldn’t bring myself to title the post “Maxims with which you don’t agree.” Hey, it’s a blog, right?
The last few years I’ve gotten fond of collecting aphorisms, particularly when they seem to resonate with dharma. I came across the following Mark Twain quote recently:

Don’t part with your illusions; when they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
(from Following the Equator, ch. 66, “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar,” 1897)

Twain certainly provoked me. He points to something I’ve been a little conflicted about, because on some level his words really reasonate with my experience, and at the same time they seem rather adharmic (undharmic, that is). I thought that when we parted from our illusions, we ceased to exist, and began to live!

I suppose Twain’s quote resonates with me because I do feel like I’ve always drawn a lot of vitality from my illusions, fantasies, reveries, flights of fancy—the whole gang. When I part from them, life does in fact often seem flat. Do I simply need to part a little more? Or part with more subtle, less fun illusions?
And then there’s advice I think I’ve heard from teachers who’ve said we don’t need to give up our illusions, we just need to recognize them as such. I think I can do that sometimes. Sort of. Uh, maybe.
So I’m sitting with this one.
Are there any popular maxims that completely rub you the wrong way?