Stuff About Things #20

"The painter will produce pictures of little merit if he takes the works of others as his standard."

     — Leonardo da Vinci

"A philosophy of life: I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure."

     — Paulo Coelho

"The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live."
     — Epicurus

"It is not so much our friends' help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us."
     — Epicurus

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance."

     — Epicurus

"There are more things... likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
     — Seneca

"The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is."
     — Kurt Vonnegut

"Don’t just resist cynicism – fight it actively. Fight it in yourself, for this ungainly beast lays dormant in each of us, and counter it in those you love and engage with, by modeling its opposite. Cynicism often masquerades as nobler faculties and dispositions, but is categorically inferior. Unlike that great Rilkean life-expanding doubt, it is a contracting force. Unlike critical thinking, that pillar of reason and necessary counterpart to hope, it is inherently uncreative, unconstructive, and spiritually corrosive. Life, like the universe itself, tolerates no stasis – in the absence of growth, decay usurps the order. Like all forms of destruction, cynicism is infinitely easier and lazier than construction. There is nothing more difficult yet more gratifying in our society than living with sincerity and acting from a place of largehearted, constructive, rational faith in the human spirit, continually bending toward growth and betterment. This remains the most potent antidote to cynicism. Today, especially, it is an act of courage and resistance."
     — Maria Popova

"It’s beyond strange that so many humans are clueless about how they should feed themselves. Every wild species on the planet knows how to do it; presumably ours did, too, before our oversized brains found new ways to complicate things. Now, we’re the only species that can be baffled about the 'right' way to eat. Really, we know how we should eat, but that understanding is continually undermined by hyperbolic headlines, internet echo chambers, and predatory profiteers all too happy to peddle purposefully addictive junk food and nutrition-limiting fad diets."
     — Mark Bittman and David L. Katz

"Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
     — Benjamin Disraeli

"Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen."
     — Benjamin Disraeli

"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct."
     — Benjamin Disraeli

"The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill-temper."
     — Nietzsche

"The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook."
     — William James

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
     — Thomas Jefferson

"The intelligent want self-control; children want candy."
     — Rumi

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-control."
     — 2 Timothy 1:7

"I love being a mom. I always wanted to be a mom, and I really feel so fulfilled. I'm so happy. I really feel like I worked really hard in my twenties and thirties, and struggling to make it, and Saturday Night Live, and I really killed myself with work. It was just work, work, work, work, work. Now I really feel like I've created a family, and I feel like I'm living my dream. This is all I've ever wanted. My mom died when I was little, when I was four, so for me, getting to be a mom and do all the things that she was never there for, it's very rewarding to me. It makes me feel so happy."
     — Molly Shannon, comedian, actor

"Human being are not born, once and for all, on the day their mothers give birth to them, but... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves."
     — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way."
     — Christopher Morley, journalist, writer

"If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock."
     — Arthur Goldberg, Supreme Court Justice

"Modern diplomats approach every problem with an open mouth."
     — Arthur Goldberg

"Keep your eye on the spirit, not on the scoreboard."
     — coaching advice from Phil Jackson