Such is our proclivity for error and our vulnerability to reversals of fortune, we are all on the verge of needing someone to come to our imaginative aid. And therefore, if for no other reason, we have a duty to remain constant providers of generous interpretations of the lives of others. We must be kind in the sense not only of being touched by the … [ Read more ]
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Personal Improvement, Relationships
Even when they do not know any of the details, generous onlookers must make a stab at picturing the overall structure of what might have happened to the wretched being before them. They must guess that there will be sorrow and regret beneath the furious rantings, or a sense of intolerable vulnerability behind the pomposity and snobbishness. They must intimate that early trauma and let-down … [ Read more ]
Author: Alain de Botton | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
One of the most damning paradoxes of our condition is that, again and again, we withhold from others the loving sympathy and empathic understanding we demand for ourselves. When we lose the reins of our own character, when we lash out or sulk or act from a small dark place, we hasten to rationalize our actions as situational — we were too tired, too triggered, … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Psychology | Behavior, Relationships
Never judge yourself by the standards of the owner of the boot presently on your neck.
Author: Ta-Nehisi Coates | Subjects: Concepts, Freedom | Liberty, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
In much wisdom there is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
Author: Andrei Tarkovsky | Subjects: Concepts, Insight, Life & Society, Pain & Suffering, Wisdom
Worshiping at the altar of the individual ignores the important role of the collective.
Author: Jeff Blum | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction – purpose and dignity – that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, … [ Read more ]
Author: Robert F. Kennedy | Subjects: Economics | Economy, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Politics & Public Policy
Any nation with a great unemployment wave becomes a seedbed for -isms.
Author: Harrison Jones | Subjects: Life & Society, Politics & Public Policy
Love may be sanctified and ennobled by its commitment to the unconditional horizon of perfection, but what makes love real in the human world seems to be our moving, struggling conversation with that wanted horizon rather than any possibility of arrival. The hope for, or the declaration of a purely spiritual, unconditional love is more often a coded desire for immunity and safety, an attempt … [ Read more ]
Author: David Whyte | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love
Friendship is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to … [ Read more ]
Author: David Whyte | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Relationships
Either write something worth reading about, or do something worth writing about.
Author: Benjamin Franklin | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Good & Evil, Love
A man of genius is unbearable, unless he possess at least two things besides: gratitude and purity.
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
It is not the strength, but the duration of great sentiments that makes great men.
Author: Friedrich Nietzsche | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: History, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
Author: Charles Kingsley | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
What we’re taught when we grow up is that our outcome is 100% correlated to our effort. If I study hard for a test or work hard on a project, I’m going to get a better grade than if I don’t try. So I’ve always just assumed that when things aren’t going well, I just need to work harder. It’s ingrained a lot of habits, … [ Read more ]
Author: Ayo Omojola | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Life & Society, Personal Improvement
The lives we live are bridges across the immense river of possibility, suspended by two pylons: what we want and what we make. In an ideal life — a life of purpose and deep fulfillment — the gulf of being closes and the pylons converge: We make what we want to see exist.
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Consumerism, Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement
Knowledge is good and ignorance is evil: to this principle the lover of the world can admit no exception. Nor is it power in and for itself that is the source of danger. What is dangerous is power wielded for the sake of power, not power wielded for the sake of genuine good.
Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Concepts, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge, Life & Society, Power
It is only in so far as we renounce the world as its lovers that we can conquer it as its technicians. But this division in the soul is fatal to what is best in man.
Author: Bertrand Russell | Subjects: Environment | Sustainability, Insight, Life & Society