Quotes I Like
In this post (which I will try to update from time to time), I very uncreatively steal thoughts and aphorisms that others have spent time carefully constructing. Hopefully you find them interesting.
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
— J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings
What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
— Eugene Gendlin
If the box contains a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box contains a diamond;
If the box does not contain a diamond,
I desire to believe that the box does not contain a diamond;
Let me not become attached to beliefs I may not want.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, The Meditation on Curiosity
The path of my life is strewn with cowpats from the Devil’s own satanic herd.
— Rowan Atkinson, Blackadder II
Vibes are sometimes the only thing we need in life. Good people, good vibes = good times.
— A friend I met at ESPR ‘21
Under the big sky it didn’t seem like the end of the world. Here he was, plodding along in the heat, and all his education and all his good prospects didn’t make him any less a human speck, inching across the wide, flat floor of Russia. After another while, he started to laugh. Let this be a lesson to you, Mr Economist, he told himself. Any time you get imperious, any time you start to mistake the big enclosing terms you use for the actions and things they represent, just you remember this. Just you remember that the world is really sweat and dirt.
— Francis Spufford, Red Plenty