There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
Author: Alexandre Dumas | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. … [ Read more ]
Author: Jim Morrison | Subjects: Love, Pain & Suffering, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Love-besotted men and women show all the basic symptoms of addiction. Foremost, the lover is stiletto-focused on his/her drug of choice, the love object. The lover thinks obsessively about him or her (intrusive thinking), and often compulsively calls, writes, or stays in touch. Paramount in this experience is intense motivation to win one’s sweetheart, not unlike the substance abuser fixated on the drug. Impassioned lovers … [ Read more ]
Author: Helen Fisher | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love, Psychology | Behavior
We know the self is constructed because it can be so easily deconstructed — through damage, disease, and drugs. It must be an emergent property of a parallel system processing input, output, and internal representations. It’s an illusion because it feels so real, but that experience is not what it seems. The same is true for free will. Although we can experience the mental anguish … [ Read more ]
Author: Bruce Hood | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Strong minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Weak minds discuss people.
Author: Socrates | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Man’s brain lives in the 20th century; the heart of most men lives still in the Stone Age. The majority of men have not yet acquired the maturity to be independent, to be rational, to be objective. They need myths and idols to endure the fact that man is all by himself, that there is no authority which gives meaning to life except man himself. … [ Read more ]
Author: Erich Fromm | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Insight, Life & Society, Psychology | Behavior
The so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. […] The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people … [ Read more ]
Author: David Foster Wallace | Subject: Life & Society
…technology’s just gonna get better and better and it’s just going to get easier and easier and more and more convenient and more and more pleasurable to sit alone, with images on a screen given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. And that’s fine, in low doses. But if it’s the basic main staple of your diet, you’re … [ Read more ]
Author: David Foster Wallace | Subjects: IT | Technology, Life & Society, News | Media | Publishing, Personal Improvement
Whether ’tis better in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them…
Author: William Shakespeare | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Author: George Bernard Shaw | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
In the affairs of life or of business, it is not intellect that tells so much as character — not brains so much as heart — not genius so much as self-control, patience, and discipline, regulated by judgment.
Author: Samuel Smiles | Subjects: Business, Education | Scholarship, Life & Society
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, you are unlikely to step up and take responsibility for making it so.
Author: Noam Chomsky | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Most of the problems in life have two causes: we act without thinking or we think without acting.
Author: Unknown | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
Circumstances do not make the man they reveal him.
Author: James Allen | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Author: Margaret Young | Subjects: Happiness, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Dignity exists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Author: Aristotle | Subject: Life & Society
Adversity will make the strong stronger and the weak weaker.
Author: Cus D’Amato | Subject: Life & Society
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
Author: Charles Bukowski | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society
When you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have it expands.
Author: Lynne Twist | Subjects: Consumerism, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
Author: Marcus Aurelius | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement