There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will

--- Epictetus, quoted by Leo Babauta in How to Deal with Your Family’s Bad Habits, from zenhabits August 26, 2015.

I couldn't find a citation for this quote, which appears everywhere on the web. It appears to be a paraphrase of a section in the Discourses; from the Project Gutenberg "A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion, translated by George Long":

HOW WE MUST EXERCISE OURSELVES AGAINST APPEARANCES ([Greek: phantasias]).—As we exercise ourselves against sophistical questions, so we ought to exercise ourselves daily against appearances; for these appearances also propose questions to us. A certain person's son is dead. Answer; the thing is not within the power of the will: it is not an evil. A father has disinherited a certain son. What do you think of it? It is a thing beyond the power of the will, not an evil. Cæsar has condemned a person. It is a thing beyond the power of the will, not an evil. The man is afflicted at this. Affliction is a thing which depends on the will: it is an evil. He has borne the condemnation bravely. That is a thing within the power of the will: it is a good. If we train ourselves in this manner, we shall make progress; for we shall never assent to anything of which there is not an appearance capable of being comprehended. Your son is dead. What has happened? Your son is dead. Nothing more? Nothing. Your ship is lost. What has happened? Your ship is lost. A man has been led to prison. What has happened? He has been led to prison. But that herein he has fared badly, every man adds from his own opinion. But Zeus, you say, does not do right in these matters. Why? because he has made you capable of endurance? because he has made you magnanimous? because he has taken from that which befalls you the power of being evils? because it is in your power to be happy while you are suffering what you suffer? because he has opened the door to you, when things do not please you? Man, go out and do not complain!

deep blue clarities of a delighting mind

--- Robert Conquest, quoted in the obituary by Charlemagne in The Economist, 15 August 2015.

From the column:

When the Soviet archives opened, his meticulous work was utterly vindicated. His books were published in Russia, and he brought out updated editions in English. Mulling a new title for “The Great Terror”, his pal Kingsley Amis suggested “I told you so, you fucking fools”. He preferred derision to self-righteousness, summarising Soviet Communism in a much-quoted limerick:

There was a great Marxist called Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in
That grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.

The kind of people who overlooked such trifles, he reckoned, were also willing to scrub their minds on other issues. He despised much modern literary criticism: it used “important” freely but shunned “beautiful”. For him, the great pursuit was the “deep blue clarities of a delighting mind”. He wrote: “Just as it is people who think they have discovered the laws of history who have, in our time, inflicted our major public catastrophes so—in a lesser field, or at least one in which the results are not so literally bloody—it is those who think they have discovered the laws of literature who have been the destroyers.”

Another lovely little poem quoted, "Sooner or Later", introduced as follows: "Having seen where grand designs led, he cherished scepticism and moderation."

What’s helpful? Not much. Nothing?
But to fill in the time
There’s little harm in clothing
Such nude truths with a rhyme.

with Moore’s law of technological progress comes Moore’s outlaw

--- Marc Goodman, interviewed in New Scientist, A cybercrime wave is coming – brace yourself, 8 April 2015

Quote in context:

In the old days, you buy a gun or a knife, you go hide in a dark alley until some sucker walks by and you say, “Give me your wallet”. Good business model, but you can only rob four or five people a day. However, with Moore’s law of technological progress comes Moore’s outlaw, and so we’re seeing a paradigm shift in crime. In one hack of the US retailer Target in 2013, over a third of Americans were victims, including tens of millions of people who had their bank details stolen. So one individual can now rob 100 million people. That has never been possible before and it’s because we’re all connected via vulnerable technology.

Another good quote:

The internet is about to get a whole lot bigger. . . . Every grain of sand on our planet could have its own internet address a trillion times over. Previously, I never had to worry about a hackable television, a hackable pacemaker, a hackable car, a hackable pet. But now all of this is possible. We’ve wired the world but failed to secure it.

Jewish is not a religion, it is an opportunity to travel

--- Ilya Kaminsky, quoted by Breyten Breytenbach in Dancing in Other Words, 'n Nabetragting van 'n Klein Reis, Versindaba, May 2014

Source:

Ilya says : « Jewish is not a religion, it is an opportunity to travel. »

The blog this is taken from appears to be a record of the 2014 "Dancing in Other Words" poetry festival near Stellenbosch, South Africa; see e.g. http://slipnet.co.za/view/event/dancing-in-other-words-2/.

Jy moet diffuus wees soos kladpapier

--- Breyten Breytenbach, in Dancing in Other Words, 'n Nabetragting van 'n Klein Reis, Versindaba, May 2014

In context:

Dis die tussen-inne wat tel, die gleuwe, die voeë en die voue, die kreukels, die epentese in woorde, die amperse epigrawe en die epiloë en die epitawe en die epsomsout, die insetsels en (tot ‘n mate) die byvoegsels.

Wat bly oor wanneer jy jou tussen wêrelde/ideologië/geskiedenisse/tale/stoele bevind ? Nog net beweging en ‘n absolute sin van syn. Oftewel, dat jy jou aanmekaar moet posisioneer. Die gat sal moet leer om van draad te hou.

Maar wat is die dissipline ? Hoe word dit gedoen ?

Dis om die fokus net effens te verskuif, om laterale visie te ontwikkel, om te hoor sonder om te luister in watter boom uit watter kloof die nagtegaal sing. Die beweging wat jy dan optel, die stoornis, is met verwysing na die sentrale fokuspunt, sê maar die doelwit, die bekende of die verwagte. Die betekenis…

Jy moet diffuus wees soos kladpapier. Die belange-hiërargie van wat jy waarneem moet ontdaan en ongedaan gemaak word.

The centre must no longer hold in order for new shapes to emerge.

It is an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.

--- Tor Nørretranders, in Altruism, https://edge.org/response-detail/25500

A few excerpts:

What needs to go away is the basic idea behind the concept of altruism: the idea that there is a conflict of interest between helping yourself and helping others.

The starting point is neither selfishness nor altruism, but the state of being bound together. It is an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.

Therefore a simple rules applies: Everyone feels better when you are well. You feel better when everyone is well.

Difficult is life for the modest one

--- Dhammapada 18.245, via Daily Words of the Buddha for September 27, 2013

Hirīmatā ca dujjīvaṃ
niccaṃ sucigavesinā,
alīnenāppagabbhena,
suddhājīvena passatā.

Difficult is life for the modest one
who always seeks purity,
is detached and unassuming,
clean in life, and discerning.

View Pāli on Tipitaka.org

There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things

--- Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1532), Ch. 6, transl. George Bull., Penguin Classics, fourth printing (1995), pg. 19

Quote in context:

There is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.  For the reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.  This lukewarmness arises partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the law in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.

See also Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm

You must respect the means at your disposal

--- Breyten Breytenbach, in Dancing in other words: Die Nabetragting van ‘n Klein Reis, Versindaba, May 16th, 2014
Quote in context

You must have confidence and a knowledge of self in order to engage the non-self, so as to do away with the self step by step. The self is a way of being, of interacting with the non-self. You must respect the means at your disposal – the movements of interaction – and treat these with understanding and compassion, learning how to listen to the soft rubbing away of skin by skin, so as to be effaced. Being is migration.

Admiration, reflection, comparison with other works—the things that perpetuate a book are the very things that flatten or equalize it

--- Maurice Blanchot, quoted by Ammiel Alcalay in Perplexity Index (1986), a review of Golden Doves with Silver Dots by José Faur (1986), collected in Alcalay's Memories of Our Future: Selected Essays 1982-1999 (2001)

Quote in context

Maurice Blanchot has written of “exchanging a few emotional words” with Georges Bataille after “being convinced (over-whelmed to the point of silence) at what was unique” about one of Bataille’s works: “I spoke not in the way you talk to an author about a book of his you admire, but in order to make him understand that such an encounter was enough for my entire life, just as the fact of having written the book should have been enough for his.” But Blanchot goes on to say: “Admiration, reflection, comparison with other works—the things that perpetuate a book are the very things that flatten or equalize it.” Herein, it seems to me, lies the raw, even aching problematic occupying the margins of Faur’s remarkable work.”

All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’

--- Pat Conroy reporting his mother's saying, quoted in Why Southern writers still captivate, 55 years after 'To Kill a Mockingbird', Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2015

Quote in context:

In fact, for many contemporary writers, the old traditions of the South have become burdensome clichés. Pat Conroy, author of “The Prince of Tides,” joked in 1985 that his mother, “Southern to the bone,” once told him, “All Southern literature can be summed up in these words: ‘On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.’ ”

gedigte is eintlik maar net intieme korrespondensie, berigte of briewe aan enkelinge gerig

--- Breyten Breytenbach, in Klein Reis (ex Africa, ex nihil…), Versindaba, January 10th, 2014; datelined Gorée, October/November 2013

Context:

Desperate mense probeer vlug uit die ellende. . . . Ek wens ek kon vir jou sê ek weet hoe hierdie dinge werk – die angs, die aanvaarding, die byna klewerige weerstand wat verhoed dat mense afstand kan neem, die verskriklike kontradiksie (en dis ‘n verskrikking) dat die menselewe tegelyk die opperwaarde is en as van geen belang geag word nie. Dit waartoe ons in staat is, die dun lagie van wete (van self of van die ander)…  Al hoe meer dink ek gedigte is eintlik maar net intieme korrespondensie, berigte of briewe aan enkelinge gerig, en dat dit so gelees en ‘verstaan’ word. Eintlik is dit ook die enigste manier om die ander, die jek, te leer ken. Of deur die kors te breek. Terwyl ‘n narratief of ‘n verhaal tog meer gemeenskaplik is en ʼn huid oor die chaos span.

if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong

--- T.S. Eliot (1927), quoted by Jason Harding in "T. S. Eliot's Shakespeare", Essays in Criticism, 65 (2) pp. 160-177 (2015)

Eliot quote:

About anyone so great as Shakespeare, it is probable that we can never be right; and if we can never be right, it is better that we should from time to time change our way of being wrong.

many of the secrets of 'style' could ... be shown to be matters of tone

--- I.A. Richards, in Practical Criticism: A study of literary judgment (1930), p. 207, on Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard"

Quote in context:

Gray, however, without overstressing any point, composes a long address, perfectly accommodating his familiar feelings towards the subject and his awareness of the inevitable triteness of the only possible reflections, to the discriminating attention of his audience. And this is the source of his triumph, which we may misunderstand if we treat it simply as a question of 'style'. Indeed, many of the secrets of 'style' could, I believe, be shown to be matters of tone, of the perfect recognition of the writer's relation to the reader in view of what is being said and their joint feelings about it.

Religion is man’s way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat

--- Leszek Kolakowski, in an essay titled “The Revenge of the Sacred in Secular Culture” (1973), quoted by Jack Miles in "Why God Will Not Die", The Atlantic, December 2014

The Kolakowski passage quoted in Miles's essay:

Religion is man’s way of accepting life as an inevitable defeat. That it is not an inevitable defeat is a claim that cannot be defended in good faith. One can, of course, disperse one’s life over the contingencies of every day, but even then it is only a ceaseless and desperate desire to live, and finally a regret that one has not lived. One can accept life, and accept it, at the same time, as a defeat only if one accepts that there is sense beyond that which is inherent in human history—if, in other words, one accepts the order of the sacred.

Why is it that when people begin to relinquish the world, the first thing they relinquish is common sense?

--- Sri Aurobindo. Quoted by Robert A. Johnson, Inner Work (1986, ppbk 1989), p. 109.

mense met ʼn aptyt / vir vuurvreet sal vonke skyt

-- TT Cloete, in Karnaval en Lent (2014), quoted by Andries Visagie in an interview/review with Ilse Salzwedel on Skrywers en Boeke, 30 April 2014, around time code 19:09 ff.; also quoted in the the Versindaba review by Zandra Bezuidenhout, 17 March 2014

if we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly, if we carry it around with us and turn it over and over, something almost always comes of it

--- C. G. Jung, "The Aims of Psychotherapy," 1933. In The Collected Works of C.G. Jung; Read, H.,
Fordham, M., Adler, G., McGuire, W., Eds.; Hull, R.F.C., Trans.; Princeton University Press:
Princeton, NJ, USA, 1954; Volume 16. Para 86. Quoted by Caifang ZHU in "Jung on the Nature and Interpretation of Dreams: A Developmental Delineation with Cognitive Neuroscientific Responses," Behav. Sci. 2013, 3(4), 662-675; doi:10.3390/bs3040662.

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand

--- Putt's Law, from Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat (1981)

The book apparently also draws Putt's Corollary, "Every technical hierarchy, in time, develops a competence inversion." The wikipedia entry glosses this as incompetence being "flushed out of the lower levels" of a technocratic hierarchy, ensuring that technically competent people remain directly in charge of the actual technology while those without technical competence move into management.

What is most difficult to resolve and cure is the patient’s practice of self-cure

--- psychoanalyst Masud Khan, in The Privacy of the Self, quoted by Adam Phillips in Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, p. 194

In context (Phillips):

‘What is most difficult to resolve and cure,’ the psychoanalyst Masud Khan wrote in The Privacy of the Self, ‘is the patient’s practice of self-cure. To cure a cure is the paradox that faces us . . .’ Symptoms are always a form of self-cure; you first hear about your problem from your proposed solutions to it. The alcoholic is suffering from whatever conflict alcohol was initially a solution to, and then the solution becomes the problem. The real question is not, how can someone stop drinking, but rather what was the alcohol a self-cure for in the first case?

anxiety makes people jump to conclusions

--- Adam Phillips in Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life (2012), p. 175

In context:

It becomes more and more difficult to be ‘originally’ mad; to avoid having a recognizable condition (and when we use the word ‘mad’ we don’t mean idiosyncratic). It is both comforting and confining — and can, indeed, be life-saving – when people in the know claim to know what we are suffering from. But mad people, as all these plays dramatize, make people jump to conclusions about them (anxiety makes people jump to conclusions); madness tempts people to be more knowing than they are. It certainly makes people work because they have something about someone that has to be dealt with (the mad are trying to make themselves impossible to ignore and impossible not to want to ignore).

Big Data (n): A system for documenting statistical coincidences

--- Martin Geddes, tweet, 21 March 2015

A ritual acts on us in a way that is deeper than words, deeper even than conscious thought.

--- Benjamin Dueholm, in "The host", Aeon Magazine, 25 November 2014

In context:

A ritual acts on us in a way that is deeper than words, deeper even than conscious thought. The words and thoughts change, after all, the scholars of religion tell us. As it is in the history of a religion, so it is in the course of a human life: the etiologies, the just-so stories, the philosophical and ideological layering all arrive late and leave early. The act itself somehow lingers underneath it all. Like a pebble in the shoe or a warm bath, it changes our minds despite our minds.

Another excerpts:

Whatever else one wishes to claim for this ritual, it is a communing with the dead. Every religious ritual is. It’s a way of putting on a self we can never be, of identifying with people otherwise lost to us, of inhabiting a past we can probably never understand. That might be the last radical lunge of this shrunken supper in a life that is starved for, if not love, then at least for connection.

If the goal of the United States is to be “ending tyranny in our world”, then is encouraging “the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture” the best way to go about it?

--- John Lewis Gaddis, in "Ending Tyranny," The American Interest, vol. 4, no. 1, Sep 1, 2008

In context

If that’s right, then President Bush may have proclaimed a doctrine for the 21st century comparable to the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and to the Truman Doctrine during the Cold War. Only historians not yet born will be able to say for sure. Even that possibility, however, should earn Bush’s memorable sentence greater scrutiny than it has so far received. For it raises an issue that future administrations—whether those of Obama, McCain or their successors—are going to have to resolve: If the goal of the United States is to be “ending tyranny in our world”, then is encouraging “the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture” the best way to go about it?

A few more excerpts from the piece:

The objective of ending tyranny, therefore, is as deeply rooted in American history as it is possible to imagine. President Bush, in a time of crisis for the future of democratization, followed Lincoln’s example in a much greater crisis for the future of the Union: He looked back for guidance to the Founders.

Spreading democracy suggests knowing the answer to how people should live their lives. Ending tyranny suggests freeing them to find their own answers. The Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin best explained this distinction half a century ago in his great essay “Two Concepts of Liberty.”

 But was it ever likely that democracy would root itself in those parts of the world where people fear anarchy more than they do authority? Where the struggle to survive is a more urgent priority than securing the right to vote? Where the immense power of the United States gives rise to greater uneasiness than it does reassurance?

Every gift is a demand, usually for love

--- unknown. I saw it in a piece by Martin Geddes where he said,

As a wise person once told me, “every gift is a demand, usually for love”. 

He also tweeted it a couple of times:

second in January 2015: "@nntaleb "Every gift is a demand, usually for love", so a wise person once told me."

first in May 2014: "@NurtureGirl Every gift is a demand, usually for love... Sayeth a friend's therapist."

You get more done if you don't have to take the credit

--- I learned this from Dennis Stevenson.

However, similar quotes are ascribed to a variety of people according to Quote Investigator, S/he lists four basic versions, and assigns them as follows

A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it: In a diary entry for 1863, ascribed to a Jesuit Priest named Father Strickland.

This was the opportunity for a man who likes to do a good thing in accordance with the noble maxim … “Never mind who gets the credit.” Published 1896, and the phrase “Never mind who gets the credit” was dubbed the noble maxim of Edward Everett Hale.

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them: Published 1905, ascribed to Benjamin Jowett, though later reassigned by one of the authors to a "Jesuit Father".

There is no limit to what a man can do who does not care who gains the credit for it: Used by Charles Edward Montague in 1906, who didn't take credit for it, ascribing it to a friend who often used it.

For a full discussion with references, see http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/21/doing-good-selfless/.

[re Google Street View] The German reaction is, ‘Oh my God, how can they do that?’

--- John Emerson, US ambassador to Germany, quoted on the Christian Science Monitor, "Europe pivots between safety and privacy online", 18 January 2015

Quote:

“What’s the first thing an American says when [he or she] sees Google Street View?” he says on a recent day at the US Embassy next to the Brandenburg Gate. “An American will go, ‘Hey, there’s Billy in the front yard.’ The German reaction is, ‘Oh my God, how can they do that?’ ”

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought... and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit

--- Ecclesiastes 2:11, King James Bible

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.

Whatever you do, something about it should give you goose bumps. That's what gets me up every day.

--- Phillip Sheppard, quoted on twitter by Commerce+Creativity, 8 Jan 2015.

The 100th person at Google, no matter what you did, was better off than the average founding CEO of the average venture-backed startup in Silicon Valley

--- Peter Thiel, in an interview by Peter Slen on C-SPAN's Communicators, October 13, 2013

Peter Slen. Peter Thiel, what is the power law you talk about? 

Peter Thiel. [14:30] Well, the power law is this distribution in the size of these technology companies. If you look at the tech industry in the U.S., the top dozen tech companies have a market capitalization of abut $2 trillion, and they’re probably as big or bigger than all other tech companies combined. You end up with these radically unequal outcomes in terms of company sizes. Unlike the U.S. declaration of independence where all men are created equal, in the case of business not all companies are created equal and some end up being vastly more successful than others. As a venture capital investor, it’s typically the case that your single best investment ends up being worth more than all of the others combined. This is a very strange dynamic, and it’s worth thinking through a great deal. 

[15:20] An application of the power law to entrepreneurs, and to founders, is that it’s perhaps not always the right thing to start a company. You may be much better off joining a company that’s going to be very successful. The 100th person at Google, no matter what you did, was better off than the average founding CEO of the average venture-backed startup in Silicon Valley. We sometimes privilege founding companies too much, and we undervalue the potential scale and so we overvalue founding, undervalue scaling. It is always worth thinking really hard about whether you will be able to build a great company or whether you might be better off joining another company that is doing something truly great.

Minder weet, meer wonder

--- Poet Wilma Stockenström in her collection "Hierdie Mens" (2013).

Dit wil-wil
Noudat die somer sy laaste asem,
goud en bruin, uitblaas oor die stad
skrik ek vir die kennis wat ek dra,
al aan die een kant, en gaandeweg
hel ek oor na inval by wending.
Dis goed om op te ruim, feite,
die dooie vlieë, met die skoppie
uit te gooi. Minder weet, meer wonder.
Dit wil-wil winter word.

NodeXL is like a point-and-shoot digital camera for social media

--- Marc Smith in an interview with Kirk Englehardt, Unraveling the Mysteries of Your Twitter Network,  Dec 3, 2014.

Full quote

NodeXL is like a point-and-shoot digital camera for social media: it quickly takes a photo of the crowds that have formed in online spaces

Most of my portraits would have been better if had removed the figures

--- Andrew Wyeth, recording from the Meryman Archive, quoted by Charles Brock in his essay Through a Glass: Windows in the Art of Wyeth, Sheeler, and Hopper, in the exhibition volume Andrew Wyeth: Looking out, looking in, D.A.P. / Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., 2014.

In context, from p. 67 as cited above:

Wyeth ultimately came to believe that his urge to create an art that could somehow articulate the dualities and paradoxes of his experience was constrained by his portrait practice concluding that, “Most of my portraits would have been better if had removed the figures.” [footnote 85 citing Meryman Archive] Interiors and exteriors without figures and mediated by windows alone proved to be a more effective vehicle for expressing the strange admixture of realism and abstraction, presence and detachment, connection and disconnection, intimacy and alienation that Wyeth sought.

Every action in social media creates a machine-readable edge

--- Marc Smith at 2014 Retail & Consumer Goods Analytics Summit (RCAS 2014), September 12, 2014, quoted by @CGTMagazine.

Source tweet: https://twitter.com/CGTMagazine/status/510547198917242880.

Great museums are like great cities: seen from without, their grandeur impresses, from within they are villages, , minuscule patches where a personal adventure can spring up and spread its wings

--- Christian Durieux, An Enchantment, Louvre Collection 2013.

Quote in context

In Watteau's paintings, there's the landscape, and mythology isn't far away either, but there's the intimate, the intimacy of two bodies seeking one another, whispering to one another. When I dreamt of the Louvre to create a story about it, I dreamt of intimacy in the grand theater décor. Great museums are like great cities: seen from without, their grandeur impresses, from within they are villages, minuscule patches where a personal adventure can spring up and spread its wings. And I dreamt of the great, intimate adventure in that grand décor. 

recognize the imagination, both as a kind of mind muscle, and also as a place

--- Michéle Roberts, Weinrebe lecture, Wolfson College, Oxford, March 7, 2013 at 13:12 (podcast)

Let me recognize the imagination, both as a kind of mind muscle, and also as a place, sometimes inner and sometimes outer, kind of a translucent bubble, often the only place I felt I truly existed.

Also , "invent comes from the Latin invenio, to come upon"

Don’t be motivated by achieving the ideal. Be motivated by compassion for yourself and helping others.

--- Leo Babauta, in The Frustratingly Slow Pace of Making Changes, June 6, 2014

Advice from the blog post:

Give up on the results. Instead focus on the step in front of you.
Give up on the fantasy. Instead be curious about what it’s really like when you try it.
Don’t be motivated by achieving the ideal. Be motivated by compassion for yourself and helping others.
Don’t be caught up in quick results. Savor the slow change.
Forget about the happiness of the outcome. Instead find happiness in the learning.
Don’t worry about perfect execution. The entire point is to learn about yourself.

Humans are not very typical mammals, but they are quite typical birds

--- Hanna Kokko, quoted in New Scientist sidebar to the story "The father enigma: Why do nature's devoted dads care?", vol. 222, no. 2973, 14 June 2014

Excerpt

"Humans are not very typical mammals, but they are quite typical birds," quips Hanna Kokko at the Australian National University in Canberra. In about 90 per cent of mammals, the male's role in reproduction stops at fertilisation – he couldn't care less what happens after that. "Birds, in contrast, have pair bonds, extra-pair copulations (as we call them politely) and divorce. They have all kinds of complicated social relationships, not so unlike humans," says Kokko.

... to be put right when the curtain gets up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time ...

--- Sybille Bedford, from "A Compass Error", quoted by Candia McWilliam in her Weinrebe lecture at Wolfson College, Oxford, (podcast)

Quote from http://www.sybillebedford.com/life/:

When one is young one doesn’t feel part of it yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not for good; everything is a rehearsal. To be repeated at lib, to be put right when the curtain gets up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance.

Knowing what thou knowest not is in a sense omniscience

--- Piet Hein, Danish poet/scientist/architect

One of his grooks, see http://www.leptonica.com/cachedpages/grooks/grooks.html

Knowing what
thou knowest not
is in a sense
omniscience

there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people

--- Michel de Montaigne, Essays II:1, transl. M. A. Screech, The Complete Essays, Penguin 1991 (p. 380)

We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.

We must leave Christ for Christ

--- attr. to St Philip Neri, an Italian priest noted for founding a society of secular clergy called the "Congregation of the Oratory".

Meaning of the quote according to a pamphlet by Raleigh Addington of the London Oratory, pdf, cited by wikipedia:

When summoned to hear confessions or to see someone who had called, he came down instantly with the words “We must leave Christ for Christ”. Philip was a mystic of the highest order, a man of ecstasies and visions, whose greatest happiness was to be alone with God. Yet at the call of charity he gave up the delight of prayer and, instead, sought God by helping his neighbour. His whole life is that of the contemplative in action. 

Here's another anecdote from Addington:

Some young men were playing games in the warm Roman sunshine outside Philip Neri's room. When Baronius, the learned Church historian intent on his writing protested at the noise, Philip told them to go on. “So long as they don't sin”, he said, “they can chop wood on my back”.

the aim of regulation [should not be] to minimize interference [but] to maximize output

--- Ronald Coase, "The Federal Communications Commission," Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 2 (1959), p. 27, doi:10.2307/724927

Quote in context:

It is sometimes implied that the aim of regulation in the radio industry should be to minimize interference. But this would be wrong. The aim should be to maximize output. All property rights interfere with the ability of people to use resources. What has to be insured is that the gain from interference more than offsets the harm it produces. There is no reason to suppose that the optimum situation is one in which there is no interference. 

To photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude

--- Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 46; via Mullainathan & Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (2013)

To thrive in sustained intimacy requires learning to provide not what we think someone else wants, or should want, but what actually makes him or her happy.

--- Kathryn Schulz, in her essay What Is It About Middlemarch?, in Vulture, January 13, 2014

Quote in context:

One of the oldest and most universal moral precepts is the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want them to treat you. . . .

It is also, on reflection, a little weird. For a guideline about how to treat others, the Golden Rule is strikingly egocentric. It does not urge us to consult our neighbors about their needs; it asks us only to generalize from ourselves—to imagine, in essence, that everyone’s idea of desirable treatment matches our own. . . .

Middlemarch breaks with this tradition. Morality does not start with the self, Eliot insists; it starts when we set the self aside. “Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world?” she asks. And then: “I know no speck so troublesome as self.” What a killer line, and what a memorable image. We dwell in moral myopia; literally and figuratively, we are too close to ourselves.

Over and over in Middlemarch, Eliot urges us to refocus. When Rosamond Vincy, arguably the most self-absorbed character in the book, dismisses another woman as “so uninteresting,” the much kinder Mary Garth counters her: “She is interesting to herself, I suppose.” The problem Dorothea faces in her marriage is not how to support her husband, as she yearns to do, nor how to liberate herself from his thin tyrannies, as readers often yearn on her behalf, but how to accept that he has “an equivalent centre of self, whence the light and shadows must always fall with a certain difference.” That self is not like Dorothea’s; no two selves are, not even so-called soul mates. That’s one reason why marriage lies beyond the reach of the Golden Rule: As Dorothea learns to her dismay, other people do not necessarily crave the treatment we expect them to appreciate. To thrive in sustained intimacy requires learning to provide not what we think someone else wants, or should want, but what actually makes him or her happy.

Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full

--- C. G. Jung, CW, 9i, para 587, quoted by James Hollis, What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life, p. x

From Jung’s A Study in the the Process of Individuation in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Volume 9, p. 335 (Google Books)

On the days following, the patient was overcome by feelings of self-pity. It became clear to her how much she regretted never having had any children. She felt like a neglected animal or a lost child. This mood grew into a regular Weltschmerz, and she felt like the “all-compassionate Tathagata” (Buddha). Only when she had completely given way to these feelings could she bring herself to paint another picture. Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full. 

Quote in Hollis's context:

In the midst of writing this book. I lost my beloved son, as have many other patients and parents. The sentences above were written long before. I can either curl up and die from grief or live toward the values he and I shared. Jung challenges us directly: “Real liberation comes not from glossing over or repressing painful states of feeling, but only from experiencing them to the full.” 

When change occurs, and especially change for the better, the principal motivating forces are to be found within the country

--- Derek Tonkin, from an article in the Myanmar Times, Myanmar and South Africa: Comparisons are fortuitous, but instructive, 13 December 2013

Quote in context:

There is an eternal truth which needs to be recognised in the experiences of both South Africa and Myanmar. It is that when change occurs, and especially change for the better, the principal motivating forces are to be found within the country. Change is rarely the result primarily of external pressures, however much the international community may claim to have been influential and to have adopted determining policies. 

You never get used to the cold, but you get used to being cold

--- NBC commentator (I think it was Troy Aikman) during NFL wild card game in Green Bay on Sunday Jan 5, 2014 between the 49ers and Packers

It would seem to be a truism that could/should apply to many discomforts and sufferings in life - not that I've got used to any of it, myself.

I am in a state of excessive indignation about everything, from which I deduce old age and hardening of the arteries

--- Isaiah Berlin, letter to Mary McCarthy in 1964 when he was aged fifty-five, quoted in "Learning a Lot About Isaiah Berlin" by John Banville, a review of Building: Letters 1960–1975 by Isaiah Berlin, edited by Henry Hardy and Mark Pottle

He who gives food, gives longevity, pleasant complexion, happiness, stamina and intelligence

--- Gotama Buddha, Bhojana Sutta, Panchaka Nipata, The Fives,  Anguttara Nikaya, cited in the liturgy (pdf) of Hunger No More: An Interfaith Convocation of Prayer and Commitment, June 5, 2005, Washington National Cathedral.

Quote as cited:

Monks, he who gives food, gives longevity, pleasant complexion, happiness,
stamina and intelligence.

The liturgy (pdf) includes a long list of "National Religious Leadership Statements on Hunger and Poverty," including this by Bhante M. Dhammasiri, President, Buddhist Vihara, Washington, DC:

Buddhism advocates generosity as one of the main virtues accumulated even by the potential
Buddha. Feeding poor people is one of the duties of a Buddhist. One who is capable of earning
more with ethical means shares his/her surplus with others. Food, clothing, shelter and medicine are four essentials that a person needs. Buddhism emphasizes the fact that everybody lives on food and that is the main requisite. The Buddhist generosity is culminated when one sacrifices his/her own life for the benefit of others. According to Buddhism, before asking the person to follow the teachings of the Buddha, one should check whether the person had enough to eat because the hungry cannot comprehend the essence of the teachings. The Buddha mentioned that hunger is the worst disease.

One possible source of the reference to not being hungry before receiving teaching may be the story cited in  Eat To Live, Not Live To Eat, in which the Buddha ensured that a poor man had been fed before starting his teaching, keeping many others waiting in the process.