• sunaurus@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    I’m a simple man:

    “What day is it?” asked Pooh.

    “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

    “My favorite day,” said Pooh.

  • electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

    Anatole France

  • TTH4P@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

    • FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      When working on an office, it’s great and all that you have “the power of accurate observation” but god our Debbie downer is insufferable.

  • Unmapped@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

    • H.G. Wells
  • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This too shall pass.

    No matter how good or bad your life is, there will ways be change.

      • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’m paraphrasing but it was something along the lines of

        ‘Something that will make me sad when I am happy and happy when I am sad’

        • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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          8 months ago

          The story goes, or the way that I was told, there was a king that always felt too high and then he felt too low. And so he called all his wise men to the hall, and he begged them for a gift to end the rises and the falls. But here’s the thing—they came back with a ring. It was simple, and was plainly unbefitting of a king, and engraved in black—well it had no front or back, but there were words around the band that said “just know this too shall pass.”

  • fjordbasa@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    ”A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts.” Alan Watts

    I think it’s just a reminder of the pointlessness of overthinking. I find it poignant because I spend a lot of time lost in rumination, myself

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Alan Watts is so fun. He used words like that monk lady in the marvel movies that slaps people out of their bodies.

      He’s masterful with words. So masterful he makes it look easy.

      So many teachers like “beyond this point words fail”, and they’ve got a good point, but Watts goes “let me give it a shot” and then conveys things in words that can take years to grasp through the brute force method of direct perception.

      People shit on words, and with very good reason, but they are the chutes and ladders that make enlightenment in a single lifetime possible if one’s lucky enough to have a teacher like Watts.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    David Foster Wallace: You’ll stop worrying* what others think about you when you realize how seldom they do.

    * It might ‘caring’ rather than ‘worrying’, I’m not sure, and can’t be bothered finding the book to check it.

    It’s also possible that DFW didn’t coin this phrase.

  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know.

    • Socrates
  • habitualcynic@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Comparison is the thief of happiness.

    I have many favorites, but this comes to mind often.

    Fear shrinks the brain.

    Is another good one.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Haha but really my favorite quote is

      Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

      Really helps me feel better about the fact that I’m a 28 year old man who exclusively watches anime

  • heatermcteets@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    From Frank Herbert’s Dune

    Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test that it’s a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.