Stuff About Things #6

"Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow."
     — Steve Jobs, in his final words before his death, according to his sister Mona Simpson's eulogy

"Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."
     — Tagore

"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it."
     — Ursula K. Le Guin

"I don't have stage fright, I have life fright."
     — comedian Ben Hoffman

From Men's Health magazine: "Practice, practice, practice. That's the message of ongoing research.... 'Students think talent is all that matters,' one study notes, 'Because they rarely see other people practice, but nearly all famous people say that practice is what led to their success.' And 'deliberate practice' is not play or performance time but rather activities designed to improve specific aspects of performance. It means working on your weaknesses, working that sweet spot at the edge of your abilities. It involves frustration, concentration, repetition, and feedback."

"Consistency on the fundamentals is the pathway to mastery."
     — Robin Sharma

From Men's Health magazine: "Learn to be optimistic. Gritty people are optimistic people. When optimistic people suffer setbacks, they think of them as temporary and limited in scope. They think with just a bit more effort, they can get over the hump. Pessimists, on the other hand, attribute bad events to big, overpowering causes that have not ruined everything forever and ever. They 'catastrophize.' And whether it's entirely their fault or not, they blame themselves."

"Warning! You think about 60,000 thoughts a day. It's up to you to make sure that you don't use up 59,999 of them with negative, cynical thinking."
     — internet meme

"The question is not what we can scorn, or disparage, or find fault with, but what we can love, and value, and appreciate."
     — John Ruskin

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
     — William James

"I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God."
     — Abraham Lincoln

From Wikipedia: "Before he became an actor, Steve Buscemi was busy rescuing people as a New York firefighter from 1980 to 1984. The day after 9/11, he showed up at his old firehouse to volunteer, working twelve-hour shifts for a week, digging through rubble, looking for survivors, bodies, missing firefighters."

"I went to China as one of the members of the Tibetan delegation at the Congress of the People's Republic of China. The parliament in Peking was very disciplined. I noticed that all the members barely dared make a suggestion. They would make a point, but only little corrections in wording [laughs]. Nobody really discussed meaning. Then, in 1956, I had the opportunity to come to India. And here, too, I had the opportunity to visit Indian Parliament. I found big contrast. In Indian Parliament, lots of noise. No discipline. This was a clear sign of complete freedom of expression. Indian parliamentarians, they love to criticize their government. So I realized, this is the meaning of democracy - freedom of speech."
     — Dalai Lama

"Whenever we face a problem, we must dialogue. That's the only way. For that, we need inner disarmament."
     — Dalai Lama

From Yoga Chicago magazine: "We are called upon to cope with hiccups and hurricanes in our lives... to navigate disruptive, unwanted changes.... Occasionally we have to respond with grace under pressure to troubles and tragedies.... The way we can bounce back from everyday disappointments and extraordinary disasters is through resilience - capacities innate in the brain to respond to the inevitable twists and turns in life flexibly and adaptively. Modern neuroscience is revealing how we can harness these capacities - called neuroplasticity - to rewire our habitual patterns of response to strengthen what are called the 5 C's of coping:
1. Calm: Staying calm in a crisis
2. Clarity: Seeing clearly what's happening, your internal response to what's happening, what needs to happen next, and possibilities from different perspectives
3. Connection: Reaching out for help as needed, learning from others how to be resilient, connecting to resources that expand your options
4. Competence: Calling on skills and competencies learned from previous experiences
5. Courage: Strengthening your faith to persevere in until you come to resolution or acceptance of the difficulty

"Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world."
     — Jean Paul Richter

"As I've gotten older, I've had more of a tendency to look for people who live by kindness, tolerance, compassion, a gentler way of looking at things."
     — Martin Scorsese

"If you don't get physically ill seeing your first rough cut, something's wrong."
     — Martin Scorsese

From Men's Journal magazine: "Doug Peacock has barely hunted, or even fired a gun, since his days in Vietnam. He experienced enough killing there, he says, to last several lifetimes. He was 27 when he came home, racked with PTSD, back before there was a name for it. Peacock thought he was alone back then; he didn't know that every soldier experienced some version of this. Once home, he wandered the West... in solitude for weeks at a time. Now no one knows wild grizzlies better.... For nearly his entire adult life, Peacock has been out with the bears - in their country, watching and learning. "It's the one animal out there that can kill and eat you anytime it chooses to - even though it seldom does," he says. "It stands as an instant lesson in humility." Peacock's diplomatic skills are less than zero, but his feist quotient exceeds any known scale of measurement. An iconic eco-warrior and spiritual godfather of monkeywrenching, he's the author of five books.... 'Doug is a real hero to me,' says author Carl Hiaasen, a longtime fly-fishing buddy of Peacock's. "He is the complete American renegade hero — outraged, badass, and deeply, unshakably moral. I've never met anyone quite like him. We should all wage life with a purpose so pure."

"I like to be learning something... I like things that take me out of my head."
     — Edward Norton, answering the question, "When are you most happy in your life?"

"Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier."
     — Albert Schweitzer

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable."
     — Moliere

"The smallest good deed is greater than the grandest intention."
     — Unknown

"All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action."
     — James Russell Lowell

"There's always got to be a struggle. Sure. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else, do you? I mean if there is, tell me about it."
     — Van Morrison