Not that I have lost any hope. All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn’t die. I don’t know why we should expect it to. It seems fairly obvious that two sides of a mirror are required before one … [ Read more ]
Author: John Steinbeck | Subjects: Concepts, Good & Evil
Life is a game with many rules but no referee. One learns how to play it more by watching it than by consulting any book, including the Holy Book. Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.
Author: Joseph Brodsky | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
We give nothing so freely as advice.
Author: François de La Rochefoucauld | Subjects: Advice, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.
Author: Norman Vincent Peale | Subjects: Life & Society, Material Possessions, Personal Improvement
Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn’t lock itself into darkness, that doesn’t dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow. Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed … [ Read more ]
Author: Pope Francis | Subjects: Hope, Personal Improvement
A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.
Author: Oscar Wilde | Subject: Psychology | Behavior
Part of the modern ideology of love is to assume that love and sex always go together. They can, I suppose, but I think rather to the detriment of either one or the other. And probably the greatest problem for human beings is that they just don’t.
Author: Susan Sontag | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Concepts, Love
All great truths are obvious truths, but not all obvious truths are great truths.
Author: Aldous Huxley | Subjects: Education | Scholarship, Insight, Intelligence | Knowledge
Transience makes a ghost out of each experience. There was never a dawn that did not drop down into noon, never a noon which did not fade into evening, and never an evening that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night. […] Out of the fiber and density of each experience transience makes a ghost. The future, rich with possibility, becomes a … [ Read more ]
Author: John O’Donohue | Subjects: Experience, Life & Society, Memory
Women explore for eternity in the vast garden of sacrifice.
Author: Céline (Before Midnight) | Subjects: Concepts, Feminism, Life & Society
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Author: William Butler Yeats | Subjects: Insight, Life & Society
Anger is often what pain looks like when it shows itself in public.
Author: Krista Tippett | Subjects: Insight, Pain & Suffering, Psychology | Behavior
There is an unfortunate myth that success is mainly determined by something called ability. But research indicates that our best measures of these qualities are unreliable predictors of performance in academics or employment.
Author: Janet Yellen | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
Don’t judge the value of higher education in terms of careermanship. Judge it for what it is — a priceless opportunity to furnish your mind and enrich the quality of your life.
Author: David Olgilvy | Subject: Education | Scholarship
The character traits which make people scholars in their youth are not the traits which make them leaders in later life.
Author: David Olgilvy | Subjects: Character, Education | Scholarship, Leadership, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior
An education is something we claim rather than something we get.
Author: Adrienne Rich | Subject: Education | Scholarship
To respond in a reactive culture, to marry firm moral conviction with a spirit of goodwill and the porousness necessary for appraising other perspectives in order to evolve one’s own, is a Herculean feat of character. And yet there are instances in which it is unsound to engage with another whose values are so antithetical to one’s own that the collision is bound to shatter … [ Read more ]
Author: Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subjects: Communication, Personal Improvement, Relationships
The task of education, John Dewey asserted […] is not “to teach every possible item of information [but] to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and opinions.”
Authors: John Dewey, Maria Popova | Source: The Marginalian (Brain Pickings) | Subject: Education | Scholarship
You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been … [ Read more ]
Author: Charles Mackay | Subjects: Life & Society, Personal Improvement
The world loves talent, but pays off on character.
Author: John Gardner | Source: PBS | Subjects: Character, Insight, Life & Society, Personal Improvement, Psychology | Behavior