Stuff About Things #25

"Hard work works."
     — Denzel Washington

"Gratitude works." 

"Some people are so poor all they have is money."

"Demonstration is better than instruction."

"Life is a classroom, and the lessons are often quite simple."

"Eagles don't flock."

"Life is a series of moments called now."

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."
     — Albert Einstein

"What we call reality is a subset of accessible spaces."
     — Luis Villalobos

"Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life."
     — Anthony Bourdain

"The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."
     — Eden Phillpotts

"It's simple, but simple isn't the same as easy."
     — John Scalzi

"The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.... A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness.... The role is easy; there is none easier..."
     — Theodore Roosevelt

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena... who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat… There is little use for the being whose tepid soul knows nothing of great and generous emotion..."
     — Theodore Roosevelt

"A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist."
     — Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Behold the turtle. He makes progress only when he sticks his neck out."
     — James B. Conant

"Pay no attention to the critics. Don't even ignore them."
     — Samuel Goldwyn

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
     — Winston Churchill

"It is God's kindness to terrify you in order to lead you to safety."
     — Rumi

"Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions."
      ― Hafiz

"Don't let your throat tighten with fear. Take sips of breath all day and night."
     — Rumi

No mirror ever became iron again;
No bread ever became wheat;
No ripened grape ever became sour fruit.
Mature yourself and be secure from a change for the worse.
Become the light.
     — Rumi

"One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star."
     — Nietzsche

"If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?"
     — Rumi

"Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.... The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.... In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.... I have not written a novel for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon. It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure.... All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."
     — George Orwell, Why I Write, 1946