Stuff About Things #14

"No wonder that Alexander carried the Illiad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics."
     — Henry David Thoreau

"Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind."
     — Thoreau

"I did not know we had ever quarreled."
     — Thoreau, when asked if he'd made his peace with God, in his final days before death to illness

"I can tell you from experience, the effect you have on others is the most valuable currency there is."
     — Jim Carrey

"My philosophy is you should be nice and helpful to everyone.... (My wife and I) have everything we need. I'm very comfortable with my dented old Volkswagen Golf. I would feel embarrassed if I bought a fancy-looking car or a new home. It would just reflect poorly on me somehow.... Our version of buying a Lamborghini and owning a giant house is that we give away a lot of money to help others.... I bought a house for my mom.... The most important thing for me about having money is that it takes away most of the anxiety I've lived with my whole life."
     — Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter and now a billionaire

"Ideas don't come out fully formed, they only become clear as you work on them. You just have to get started."
     — Mark Zuckerberg

"Our brains are constantly being shaped, most often unwittingly."
     — Health magazine

"Happiness is a skill. Skills must be learned."
     — Matthieu Ricard

"Why is it that some people can bounce back from a tough event, while others struggle to get their mojo back? Resilience comes more easily to some of us than others, but anybody can learn to be more emotionally hardy. Resilience – the capacity to respond and recover when life wallops you upside the head – is a pretty essential ability. Being able to handle minor daily setbacks helps prime us for bigger-picture curveballs such as a job loss or the death of a loved one. We need stress to grow. It's like working out: You're not going to get stronger unless you stress the muscle. And if you don't work out, you'll atrophy.... When you get bad news, don't jump to extreme conclusions. Resilient people steer clear of catastrophic thinking, which causes downward spirals and blocks purposeful action. A major step toward resilience is recognizing that we are the authors of our lives. You can't always control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude and enact change when bad times hit. Resilient people have an internal locus of control. They don't take losses personally or lump defeat into bigger, scarier patterns. They realize a setback can be a challenge and an opportunity. They know crisis can lead to a breakthrough, while success is often an obstacle to learning."
     — Health magazine

"I started to notice the tumult that my self-important, future-focused thinking brought on. When my thoughts run the show and I do the first thing that comes to mind, I have the mental finesse of a brakeless freight train. I become the guy who treats his work commute like Daytona. I fire off regrettable emails.... (But) I've come to realize that impulses, thoughts, and emotions are temporary. I don't have to act on them. About a year ago I was driving and listening to a podcast explaining that if you take all of time that we know of and put it on a yearlong scale – called the cosmic calendar – all of recorded history shows up on December 31 at about 11:59 p.m." (Yes, in the grand scheme, things are quite temporary.)
     — Men's Health magazine

"Research shows that 85% of things people worry about actually end up having a positive or neutral outcome."
     — Health magazine

"I've learned yoga and breathing techniques to deal with anxiety. It's really simple, but it's true. Just breathe."
     — Julia Stiles

"Whatever it is that's making you nervous, try to find the joy in it because as soon as you do that, it takes a little bit of that pressure off."
     — Cote de Pablo

"Before you have to do that thing that makes you so nervous, clench your fists and tighten everything in your body for 10 seconds, and then let it go."
     — Cheryl Hines

"When someone gestures while talking, the observers show more auditory cortex activity. Movement helps a listener listen better. ... So at your next presentation, do what great comedians do: Move. Gesticulate. Stay lively."
     — researchers at UCLA / Men's Health magazine

"'That's where a lot comedians go wrong. They're not genuine,' (says Kevin Hart) ... Mimicry leads to mediocrity. Maybe one of your colleagues is great at long stories with triumphant punch lines. Unless that strategy comes naturally to you, don't do it. Your humor should be specific to you. Perhaps that means witty observations, or something subtler, like facial expressions. Whatever is you, run with that.... 'You've got to be cool missing the big laughs,' Hart says. Everybody - even the great comedians - tell bad jokes. But then they move on. They don't stop to explain their punch lines. You've seen this: The awkward dinner-party moment where some guy finds himself lost in the weeds of his own long story. He doubles back, trying to fill holes, introduce more characters, add more heroism. 'Just pull out,' Hart says. 'Your attitude has to be You boo me today, but you'll clap me tomorrow. It's not cockiness. It's about counting your losses and moving on.' So if your rambling story about a sleazy car salesman stalls, deploy a segue. Just say, 'Anyway, I'm glad I don't sell cars.' Then change the subject entirely - to your job, the weather, the bean dip. The sooner you bail, the sooner people will forget."
     — Men's Health magazine.

"High finance touches – ruins – the lives of ordinary people.... And yet, ordinary people, even those who have been the most violated, are never left with a sense of how they've been touched or by whom. Wall Street, like a clever pervert, is often suspected but seldom understood and never convicted."
     — Michael Lewis

"Discipline equals freedom."
     — Jocko Willink

"Wind extinguishes a candle but fuels a fire."
     — Nassim Taleb, from his book Antifragile

"Today Captain Cleveland and I paid a call on the Captain of the whaling ship Nor, which is cooking carcasses in the harbor, thus supplementing the work of the overloaded shore factory. This skipper was a rough-and-ready Norwegian, whose manner gave no indication of any particular esthetic sensitiveness. Yet when we entered his commodious cabin, we found that it was a conservatory of potted and blossoming plants. The whole upper half was covered with racks, from some of which vines had extended to the skylight. A flowery taste seems to be characteristic of Norseman, for Nordenhaag's cabin is full of roses, separated only by window panes from the blizzards that howl outside."
     — Robert Cushman Murphy, from his awesome Logbook for Grace, I love plants and have too many of them, and other guys do too, it seems, not sure where that affinity comes from for those of us afflicted, but we do have 'Norseman' / Swedish ancestry in this family

"By some chance, we fell to talking about ancient surgery in Hawaii and South America, where it is alleged that broken skulls were repaired with pieces of scraped coconut shell or plates of silver. At this, Mr. Alves, a native of Brava (and island in Cape Verde), showed us a slightly bulging scar on his bald dome, above the forehead, and stated that the frontal bone had been trephined (operated on with a hole saw to remove a circle of bone) and a chunk of it replaced by calabash shell. When eight years old, he had fallen off a high wall, knocking a hole through his skull, and a Portuguese surgeon had performed the successful operation."
     — Robert Cushman Murphy, Logbook for Grace, 1912

"A whale ship was my Yale College and my Harvard."
     — Ishmael in Melville's Moby Dick

"I understand him better now, understand the pounding his character endured in that defining time overseas.... A lot of men were damaged deep inside by the killing and dying of wars, then tried to heal themselves with... sour mash and self-loathing."
     — Rick Bragg, All Over but the Shoutin'

"Yeah, we could arrest Proctor. But I got a feeling that the cartel's gonna want a few words with him about their dead men. And when they come, I'd just as soon he was as far away from the police station as possible, if you take my meaning. Time and experience, son, time and experience. So you go write up that bullshit report so I can sign it. Thanks for the coffee." 
     — Sheriff Brock Lotus, Banshee ... Time and experience, son, time and experience

"I gotta be me."
     — Lucas Hood, Banshee