1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3078
3079
3080
3081
3082
3346
3522
5443
5619
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2078530 | They therefore have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification which the less privileged endure, and which, for all its apparent unpleasantness, has the incalculable benefit of allowing people to know and fall deeply in love with paintings in Dresden, hats, dressing gowns, and someone who isn't free this evening. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 16eec07 | Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be prepared to give up the passivity of simply hurt to take on the responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 61a9e84 | We should forever forswear the masochistic process wherein we seek another's approval before we have even asked ourselves whether that person's views deserve to be listened to. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 5e2d0de | We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 38e9d52 | Our best chance of contentment lies in taking up the wisdom offered to us in coded form through our coughs, allergies, social gaffes, and emotional betrayals, and avoid the ingratitude of those who blame the peas, the bores, the time, and the weather. | Alain de Botton | ||
| e09118a | the greater part of our anxieties stems from an exaggerated sense of the importance of our own projects and concerns. We are tortured by our ideals and by a punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 77136d9 | Lovers cannot remain philosophers for long, they should give way to the religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith, as opposed to the philosophic impulse, which is to doubt & inquire. They should prefer the risk of being wrong and in love to being in doubt and without love. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 5e064ab | When you feel sad, you are participating in a venerable experience, to which I, this monument, am dedicated. Your sense of loss and disappointment, of frustrated hopes and grief at your own inadequacy, elevate you to serious company. Do not ignore of throw away your grief | self-help | Alain de Botton | |
| 32bd2b1 | All lives are difficult; what makes some of them fulfilled as well is the manner in which pains have been met. Every pain is an indistinct signal that something is wrong, which may engender either a good or bad result depending on the sagacity and strength of mind of the sufferer. Anxiety may precipitate panic, or an accurate analysis of what is amiss. A sense of injustice may lead to murder, or to a ground-breaking work of economic theory... | Alain de Botton | ||
| aca55da | News organizations are coy about admitting that what they present us with each day are minuscule extracts of narratives whose true shape and logic can generally only emerge from a perspective of months or even years -- and that it would hence often be wiser to hear the story in chapters rather than snatched sentences. They are institutionally committed to implying that it is inevitably better to have a shaky and partial grasp of a subject t.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 48e4969 | There are two ways to make a man richer, reasoned Rousseau: give him more money or curb his desires. | Alain de Botton | ||
| a70e830 | Good listeners are no less rare or important than good communicators. Here, too, an unusual degree of confidence is the key--a capacity not to be thrown off course by, or buckle under the weight of, information that may deeply challenge certain settled assumptions. Good listeners are unfussy about the chaos which others may for a time create in their minds; they've been there before and know that everything can eventually be set back in its.. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 601d067 | Our bodies smell, ache, sag, pulse, throb and age. They force us to fart and burp, and to abandon sensible plans in order to lie in bed with people, sweating and letting out intense sounds reminiscent of coyotes calling out to one another across the barren wastes of the American deserts. Our bodies hold our minds hostage to their whims and rhythms. | Alain de Botton | ||
| d9d5b52 | chTwr mytwn Gm r nshn dd bdwn ynkhh tmmy adm r frgyrd? | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8009af8 | The incident emphasizes once more that beauty is something to be found, rather than passively encountered, that it requires us to pick up on certain details, to identify the whiteness of a cotton dress, the reflection of the sea on the hull of a yacht, or the contrast between the color of a jockey's coat and his face. | Alain de Botton | ||
| d395bc0 | Rather than struggling to become bigger fish, we might concentrate our energies on finding smaller ponds or smaller species to swim with, so our own size will trouble us less. | Alain de Botton | ||
| 8f63c39 | What makes a Samaritan good is the possibility of the lunge. | Leif Enger | ||
| c3c85ad | We found James standing in front of the crypt, leaning against the side nonchalantly, like it was no big deal--like he hung out in cemeteries every day. Of course, working for Douglas, he probably had. | Lish McBride | ||
| 4046323 | Sometimes it seemed like the truth was a bandy-legged soul who dashed from one side of the world to the other and I could never find him. | James McBride | ||
| b2a05d4 | Wonderful," he said. "Tell me. Which books in the Bible do you favor?" "Oh, I favors 'em all," Pa said. "But I mostly like Hezekiel, Ahab, Trotter, and Pontiff the Emperor." The Old Man frowned. "I don't recollect I have read those," he said." | James McBride | ||
| f5828a9 | I love the period of rotation. Thirty hours. You can get in a full day's work, stay up getting drunk at the saloon, and still get a full night's sleep. I don't know why we didn't think of this back home. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 64c61cc | The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together--Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself--was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started--only started--to.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3d48829 | You want a beer?" Amos asked. "You're having beer for breakfast?" "Figure it's dinner for you," Amos said. The man was right. Miller needed sleep. He hadn't managed more than a catnap since they'd scuttled the stealth ship, and that had been plagued by strange dreams. He yawned at the thought of yawning, but the tension in his gut said he was more likely to spend the day watching newsfeeds than resting. "It's probably breakfast again," Mill.. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 4e45762 | Figure two-, three-hundred-kilometer-an-hour winds, lightning, torrential rains. You're far enough inland to avoid the three-kilometer-high tsunami." "Basic wrath of God package, minus drowning," | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 10f1b1b | Did he kill anyone?" Erich asked. When neither guard answered, he said, "Then he's still being polite." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| beef11e | That's what peace is, right? Postponing the conflict until the thing you were fighting over doesn't matter. | conflict-resolution fighting peace politics | James S.A. Corey | |
| 8d1d6f4 | and no one had so far been able to offer any scientific conclusions more compelling than Hmm. Weird. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| bb778e9 | It was strange how a person could be so vitally important in your life, and yet you had nothing to say to them when they weren't sharing the same air. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7dd98ff | It was easy to make fun of the marines when they weren't listening. In Holden's navy days, making fun of jarheads was as natural as cussing. But four marines had died getting him off the Donnager, and three of them had made a conscious decision to do so. Holden promised himself that he'd never make fun of them again. | marines military sacrifice | James S.A. Corey | |
| c828496 | The problem with living with miracles was that they made everything seem plausible. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 4516949 | That's what it's come to, Miller thought, rubbing a hand across his chin. Pogroms after all. Cut off just a hundred more heads, just a thousand more heads, just ten thousand more heads, and then we'll be free. | killing revenge war | James S.A. Corey | |
| 8a662a2 | I didn't switch sides. I stopped playing. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 3fc2d02 | For another thing, we're under martial law, so I can do very nearly whatever the fuck I want. Including march through your precious little ship there towing you along behind in a ball gag and lacy underwear. So your warrant bullshit? You can roll that up and fuck it. Now tell me why I'm here." "You know just 'cause you can do something, it doesn't mean you should. I don't look great in frills." | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 9f2a8cf | It's not I don't trust, it's that I don't trust blind. People are people. Fucked up like we all are, it amazes me when we can even make a sandwich. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a81337a | A person can fail the people they love just by being who they are. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 27aa5c0 | Captain," Amos said with mock surprise. "Have you actually learned from your past? Is this a new thing you do now?" | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 732b0fb | I keep warning you. Doors and corners, kid. That's where they get you. Humans are too fucking stupid to listen. Well, you'll learn your lessons soon enough, and it's not my job to nursemaid the species through the next steps. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 7545ad9 | He remembered the old-timers from his navy days. Grizzled lifers who could soundly sleep while two meters away their shipmates played a raucous game of poker or watched the vids with the volume all the way up. Back then he'd assumed it was just learned behavior, the body adapting so it could get enough rest in an environment that never really had downtime. Now he wondered if those vets found the constant noise preferable. A way to keep thei.. | military navy ptsd trauma | James S.A. Corey | |
| 54cb594 | The circle of life on Ceres was so small you could see the curve. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| a399952 | Every great nation, they said, was founded on a knife and a lie. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| c92dd40 | Thing about civilization, it's what keeps people civil. You get rid of one, you can't count on the other. | James S.A. Corey | ||
| 2f7d43c | They yoked themselves to a car and drew her all the long way through dust and heat. Everyone admired their filial piety when they arrived and the proud and happy mother standing before the statue prayed that Hera would reward them by giving them the best gift in her power. As she finished her prayer the two lads sank to the ground. They were smiling and they looked as if they were peacefully asleep but they were dead. (Biton and Cleobis) | cleobis hera myth mythology | Edith Hamilton | |
| 8f6f2a4 | Kiss me yet once again, the last, long kiss, Until I draw your soul within my lips And drink down all your love. | Edith Hamilton | ||
| 339ff18 | Love came to me, but it Just wasn't for me. It touched my heart and left it Lying on the shore, and Love smiled at me, but it Just wasn't for me. It glanced my way with pity, but I soon knew it had other plans. Once again my heart was broken; I was all alone to Mourn. --Carmen, singing the reprise to "Love Has Flown Away" | Walter Dean Myers |