Constant idleness should be included in the tortures of hell, but it is, on the contrary, considered to be one of the joys of paradise.
~ Charles de Montesquieu
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Idleness →
Generous silence →
Generous silence provides space for the other person to be with their own self, for you to be with them for presence to show up. It allows them to take a breath. It whispers, “this is an interesting place to be. Let’s hang out here for a moment.” […] Generous silence can allow the delicate insights of a conversation to blossom and bloom.
~ Michael Bungay Stanier
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Gravy →
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
~ Bette Davis
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Miracles →
A person who is lucidly aware of the miracles that surround him, who has learned to bear up under the loneliness, has made quite a bit of progress on the road to wisdom.
~ M. C. Escher
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Love →
You want my opinion? We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.
~ Robert Fulghum
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Which are necessary →
Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one’s life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Simplicity →
Simplicity is the consequence of refined emotions.
~ Jean D’Alembert
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Then you read →
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was reading books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. An artist is a sort of emotional historian.
~ James Baldwin
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False dichotomies →
It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; A world where we are always moral and our enemies immoral.
~ Saul D. Alinsky
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Age-old struggle →
The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle—the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.
~ Douglas MacArthur
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