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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 60d1381 | I never forgot, never, that it had been he who, with two words, turned my deadliest flaw to a treasure beyond price. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| ac371f1 | No two sacrifices are the same, and yet all are, in the end. It is the commitment to belong, wholly, to that which claims one. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 3925d0e | If the greatest danger one faces as a slave is displeasing one's masters, this is the second: pleasing them. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 40426c6 | Avevo Joscelin, il mio Compagno Perfetto, la bussola su cui era fisso il mio cuore. | phèdre-joscelin | Jacqueline Carey | |
| 444c1e8 | Non sempre chi accondiscende e debole. | Jacqueline Carey | ||
| 3c650e9 | Quando l'Amore mi ha scacciata, e stata la Crudelta ad avere pieta di me. | fantasy | Jacqueline Carey | |
| bc51749 | At the heart of all truth lies a radiant cloud of unknowing, a glorious nugget of doubt, a shining core of impermanence. | James K. Morrow | ||
| 820b0fd | There is another important difference as well. Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one--which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 789b307 | But perhaps, in a world "older and more complete" than ours, there is a love that does not demand a reciprocal debt of need." | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 627429c | Had a person attempted to taste me so soon after we met, I would have been alarmed; but since Athena was an octopus, I was thrilled. Although we couldn't have been more different -- I, a terrestrial vertebrate constrained by joints and bound to air; she, a marine mollusk with not a single bone, who breathed water -- she was clearly as curious about me as I was about her. | curiosity mollusks octopus taste | Sy Montgomery | |
| 57f5917 | The word compassion means "with suffering." To have compassion is to willingly join in suffering--to show those you love that you will not let them suffer" | Sy Montgomery | ||
| f5cbec9 | Wholeness feels like gratitude. Gratitude that we are safe and happy and together. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 386e371 | at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium found a banana peel on the floor in front of the Shale Reef exhibit at 3 a.m. On closer inspection, the banana peel turned out to be a healthy, fist-size red octopus. The security officer followed the wet slime trail and replaced the octopus in the exhibit it had come from. But here's the shocking part: The aquarium didn't know it had a red octopus living in its Shale Reef exhibit. Apparently the octopu.. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 104eec4 | Bear-time seems slow to us, perhaps, because we do not have the patience for such a life. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| ce77316 | Perhaps an even more surprising case was reported in June 2012, when a security officer at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium found a banana peel on the floor in front of the Shale Reef exhibit at 3 a.m. On closer inspection, the banana peel turned out to be a healthy, fist-size red octopus. The security officer followed the wet slime trail and replaced the octopus in the exhibit it had come from. But here's the shocking part: The aquarium .. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 82d5480 | Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough. We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| a77cc89 | Unlike the supply of dogs, the supply of good names isn't limitless. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| b5863bd | Cambodia is the most heavily mined country on earth, with 4 to 8 million land mines, according to one estimate. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 7846041 | The ability to ascribe thoughts to others, thoughts that might differ from our own, is a sophisticated cognitive skill, known as "theory of mind." | Sy Montgomery | ||
| bce5ff4 | The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shamans and seekers eat mushrooms, drink potions, lick toads, inhale smoke, and snort snuff to transport their minds to realms they cannot normally experience. (Humans are not alone in this endeavor; species from elephants to monkeys purposely eat fe.. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 5af23f4 | I often wish I could go back in time and tell my young, anxious self that my dreams weren't in vain and my sorrows weren't permanent. I can't do that, but I can do something better. I can tell you that teachers are all around to help you; with four legs or two or eight or even none; some with internal skeletons, some without. All you have to do is recognize them as teachers and be ready to hear their truths. | how-to-be-a-good-creature inspirational learning love-for-animals self-growth | Sy Montgomery | |
| a017158 | There was a tank of special flounder about fifteen feet away from the octopus tank," he said. The fish were part of a study. But to the researchers' dismay, the flounder started disappearing, one by one. One day they caught the culprit red-handed. The octopus had been slipping out of her tank and eating the flounder! When the octopus was discovered, Scott said, "she gave a guilty, sideways look and slithered away." | Sy Montgomery | ||
| e191a5d | Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes--one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a "series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin following cold-water immersion." During this reflexive response, "blood pressure, heart rate, and the workload of the heart all increase, making the heart more susceptible to life-threatening rhythms and heart attack. Simultaneously," an onli.. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 7b001ec | Isn't this what we want to know about those whom we care about? What is it like, we wonder at each meeting, in shared meals and secrets and silences, with each touch and glance, to be you? | knowing | Sy Montgomery | |
| b3fb17a | I wonder: Can a brainless animal feel curiosity? Does it want to play? Or does it only "want" toys or food the way a plant "wants" the sun? Does a sea star experience consciousness? If it does, what does consciousness feel like to a sea star? Clearly, I have entered a world I cannot" | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 0af3ad8 | For more than a year and a half, since meeting Athena, since coming to know Octavia and now Kali, each time I've reached into the tanks where we have brought these creatures into our world, I've longed to enter theirs. At last, in the warm embrace of the sea, breathing underwater, surrounded by the octopus's liquid world, my breath rising in silver bubbles like a song of praise, here I am. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| 4e103c2 | But I am also aware that in animals, as well as people, there is an inborn temperament, a way of seeing the world, that interacts with the environment, and that shapes personality. There's nobody else doing what I'm doing. It may be weird, but it's unique. | Sy Montgomery | ||
| b9d6c47 | Any blisters on your shoulder blades would weep painfully, as the weight of the pack went back on. Then somehow your mind would shut out the pain, for a while. Until, by the end of the march, your shoulders would start to wilt and cramp up as if they were on fire. | Bear Grylls | ||
| 7403dd9 | Tentative holds no power. | Bear Grylls | ||
| 92f0264 | Sometimes you have just got to tackle these mountains head-on. | Bear Grylls | ||
| 3d245e5 | Mr. Morris's poem is ushered into the world with a very florid birthday speech from the pen of the author of the too famous ,--a circumstance, we apprehend, in no small degree prejudicial to its success. But we hasten to assure all persons whom the knowledge of Mr. Swinburne's enthusiasm may have led to mistrust the character of the work, that it has to our perception nothing in common with this gentleman's own productions, and that his ar.. | geoffrey-chaucer literary-criticism poetry william-morris | Henry James | |
| 27ed843 | Fiona had never learned her mother's language and she had never shown much respect for the stories that it preserved-the stories that Grant had taught and written about, and still did write about, in his working life. She referred to their heroes as "old Njal" or "old Snorri." But in the last few years she had developed an interest in the country itself and looked at travel guides. She read about William Morris's trip, and Auden's. She didn.. | Alice Munro | ||
| ab24c3b | The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. -William Morris. | elevate everyday genuine happy hygge interest life secret | Louisa Thomsen Brits | |
| fcb7eb9 | Just let me get moving, I thought, and the pumping blood will shake the stiffness and pain from my back and feet. | Bear Grylls | ||
| 078c53f | A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. No one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of his soul. | facade persona personality society work | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| a8dc124 | Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother - well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| bb64147 | He refused tea, but Mrs. Crowley poured out a cup and handed it to him. 'You need not drink it, but I insist on your hoding it in your hand. I hat people who habitually deny themselves things. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 3523dcd | Passion doesn't count the cost. Pascal said that the heart has its reasons that reason takes no account of. If he meant what I think, he meant that when passion seizes the heart it invents reasons that seem not only plausible but conclusive to prove that the world is well lost for love. It convinces you that honour is well sacrificed and that shame is a cheap price to pay. Passion is destructive. It destroyed Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan a.. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 9c3a765 | He had few illusions, for here are some of the things that life had taught him: "Men hate those whom they have injured; men love those whom they have benefited; men naturally avoid their benefactors; men are universally actuated by self-interest; gratitude is a lovely sense of expected benefits; promises are never forgotten by those to whom they are made, usually by those who make them." -- | illusions | W. Somerset Maugham | |
| 3d33b74 | It speaks very well for human nature that with the masses of dear friends we have it's only to-day that one of them broke the news to us. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| fab82d4 | He accepted the deformity which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his character, but no he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. [...] Then he saw that normal was the rarest thing in the world... | personal-development | W. Somerset Maughamset Maugham | |
| 0283722 | Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. (Philip always pretended that he was not lame.) She restored his belief in himself and put healing ointments, as it were, on all the bruises of his soul. 'Why d'you read then?' 'Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable .. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 24700ae | Mr Harrington was a bore. He exasperated Ashenden, and enraged him; he got on his nerves, and drove him to frenzy. But Ashenden did not dislike him. His self-satisfaction was enormous but so ingenuous that you could not resent it; his conceit was so childlike that you could only smile at it. | W. Somerset Maugham | ||
| 501ecb1 | I do not mind odious young men; it is when they are charming that I button up the pockets of my sympathy. | young-men | W. Somerset Maugham |