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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 321accc | How quickly all the advantages of technological civilisation are wiped out by a domestic squabble. At the beginning of human history, as we struggled to light fires and to chisel fallen trees into rudimentary canoes, who could have predicted that long after we had managed to send men to the moon and aeroplanes to Australasia, we would still have trouble knowing how to tolerate ourselves, forgive our loved ones and apologise for our tantrums.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 966e0a8 | Rage is caused by a conviction, almost comic in its optimistic origins (however tragic in its effects), that a given frustration has not been written into the contract of life. | Alain de Botton | ||
| c1882cc | as the determinants of high status keep shifting, so, too, naturally, will the triggers of status anxiety be altered. | status | Alain de Botton | |
| 46fd189 | What we encounter in works of art and philosophy are objective versions of our own pains and struggles, evoked and defined in sound, language or image. Artists and philosophers not only show us what we have felt, they present our experiences more poignantly and intelligently than we have been able; they give shape to aspects of our lives that we recognise as our own, yet could never have understood so clearly on our own. They explain our co.. | philosophy poetry self-knowledge | Alain de Botton | |
| f2a6f40 | It follows that the more people we take to be our equals and compare ourselves to, the more people there will be to envy. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 11f994e | the word "snobbery" came into use for the first time in England during 1820s. It was said to have derived from the habit of many Oxford and Cambridge colleges of writing sine nobilitate (without nobility) , or "s.nob", next to the names of the ordinary students on examinations lists in order to distinguish them from their aristocratic peers. In the word's earliest days, a snob was taken to mean someone without high status, but it quickly as.. | snob snobbery | Alain de Botton | |
| d6b99db | Insofar as we appreciate order, it is when we perceive it as being accompanied by complexity, when we feel that a variety of elements has been brought to order--that windows, doors and other details have been knitted into a scheme that manages to be at once regular and intricate. (p184) | building chaos complexity order | Alain de Botton | |
| d4fa769 | Our sense of identity is held captive by the judgements of those we live among. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 31290d5 | Belittling others is no pastime for those convinced of their own standing. There is terror behind haughtiness. It takes a punishing impression of our own inferiority to leave others feeling that they aren't good enough for us. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 73599aa | Beneath the pleasure generated by the juxtaposition of order and complexity, we can identify the subsidiary architectural virtue of balance. Beauty is a likely outcome whenever architects skilfully mediate between any number of oppositions, including the old and the new, the natural and the man-made, the luxurious and the modest, and the masculine and the feminine. | Alain de Botton | ||
| dabf65b | She is the only rose that doesn't smell of plastic | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 702fa03 | Idiots don't know they're idiots, which is unfortunate. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| ce0b20d | That's the thing people can't see when they're explaining to your butt what's going on and how you messing up. They can't see that you knew it long before they did. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| a695b48 | There ain't no time for foolishness now. You in it now. You got to stay in it. | James McBride | ||
| 50e667d | I was so sorry, deep in my heart I was sorry, but all your "sorrys" are gone when a person dies. She was gone. Gone. That's why you have to say all your "sorrys" and "I love yous" while a person is living, because tomorrow isn't promised." -- | James McBride | ||
| ee5543b | I come to the understanding that maybe what was on the inside was more important, and that your outer covering didn't count so much as folks thought it did, colored or white, man or woman. | the-good-lord-bird true-self | James McBride | |
| 8a641a3 | Apocalyptic explosions, dead reactors, terrorists, mass murder, death-slugs, and now a blindness plague. This is a terrible planet. We should not have come here. | explosion mass-murder plague planet space-exploration terrorists | James S.A. Corey | |
| 89e6881 | Every empire grow until its reach exceeds its grasp | power | James S.A. Corey | |
| c8e90eb | The sex," he said. "I just wanted to make sure that we were okay. That things were all right between us." "Well," she said, "orgasm does release a lot of oxytocin, so I'm probably more fond of you than before." | oxytocin sex | James S.A. Corey | |
| 734fa53 | That was the danger of being old and a politician. Habits outlived the situations that created them. Policies remained in place after the situations that inspired them had changed. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 6506ed8 | Rebecca Byers, the comm officer on duty, could have been bred from a shark and a hatchet. Black eyes, sharp features, lips so thin they might as well not have existed. The story on board was that she'd taken the job to escape prosecution for killing an ex-husband. Holden liked her. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 6d7928a | Holden had once dated a Buddhist who said that death was merely a different state of being, and people only feared the unknown that lay behind that transition. Death without warning was preferable, as it removed all fear. He felt he now had the counterargument. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 54d3943 | We're like children," Anna said, pushing herself to her feet and lecturing down at him. "Who burn their hands on a hot stove and then think the solution is to blow up all the stoves." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| b82d4e0 | There was justice to be had. He just couldn't afford it. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| c456e1e | Plan? My plan is to die in a ball of superheated plasma. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 86dfbcd | There was a relentless forward motion to the man. The universe might knock him down over and over again, but unless he was dead, he'd just keep getting up and shuffling ahead toward his goal. Holden thought he had probably been a very good scientist. Thrilled by small victories, undeterred by setbacks. Plodding along until he got to where he needed to be. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a732a69 | Oh good," Amos replied. "Somebody got killed there. That's how we claim stuff, you know. This planet is officially ours now." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7f61359 | Time was supposed to heal all wounds. To Drummer, that was just a nice way of saying that if she waited long enough, none of the things that seemed important to her would turn out to matter | James S.A. Corey | ||
| e94ec2a | Because we're human, and humans are mean, independent monkeys that reached their greatness by killing every other species of hominid that looked at us funny. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| d21ba1f | You know," Naomi said, "if you're looking at hundreds of people burning to death as a problem solving itself, that may be more evidence that you're on wrong side." | murder sides | James S.A. Corey | |
| 01c59c1 | Stop making me fall in love with you, Cap, we both know it can't go anywhere. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 389df44 | Either help or give up. Right now devil's advocate is just another name for asshole. | irony practicality truth | James S.A. Corey | |
| f138e9e | You want a shadow, you got to have light and something to get in its way. | metaphor | James S.A. Corey | |
| b7f7950 | Your empire's hands look a lot cleaner when you get to dictate where history begins and what parts of it don't count. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 0f643cd | My love is a pure love," Alex said with a grin. "I wouldn't sully it by actually, you know, doin' anything about it." "The kind poets write about, then." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 0535e11 | The birds, on the other hand, were going crazy. They filled the air with chirps and trills and songs. It was probably sparrow for Holy shit, what's going on, we're all gonna die, but it sounded pretty. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| fa4aaaa | He's using you as his external, aftermarket conscience. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 80d64f0 | I'm not out here looking for no garbage cans to curl up in. I'm looking for the same good dreams everybody else is hoping for, but I don't see where they are. Or maybe I see where they are, but I don't see how to get there. | Walter Dean Myers | ||
| 84edf83 | Even jealousy is based on fantasies: a fantasy that someone else has what belongs to you. | Anna Deavere Smith | ||
| bd792fc | Science asymptotically approaches reality. | Philip C. Plait | ||
| 46be37e | Convention (is) so often a mask for injustice. | conformity conventional-wisdom education | Edith Hamilton | |
| 713560c | It means there are no obstacles which our Savior's love cannot overcome, and that to him, mountains of difficulty are as easy as an asphalt road! | Hannah Hurnard | ||
| 68cb3e8 | Whenever you are willing to obey me, Much-Afraid, and to follow the path of my choice, you will always be able to hear and recognize my voice, and when you hear it you must always obey. Remember also that it is always safe to obey my voice, even if it seems to call you to paths which look impossible or even crazy. | Hannah Hurnard | ||
| d1c01cd | Up from behind a sand dune close beside her rose the form of her enemy Bitterness. He did not come any nearer, having learned a little more prudence, and was not going to make her call for the Shepherd if he could avoid it, but simply stood and looked at her and laughed and laughed again, the bitterest sound that Much-Afraid had heard in all her life. | Hannah Hurnard |