Some Quotes for February 2025 (#34)
Ann Landers, John Stuart Mill, C. S. Lewis, Alexander Chee, Lauren Groff, John Maynard Keynes, John le Carré, Ecclesiastes
Link = source I've actually read/endorse. No link = random, out-of-context snippet I stumbled on, usually online. (Some of these are advice—others I just enjoy the language or sentiment.)
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them. –Ann Landers
Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. –John Stuart Mill
From “The Inner Ring”: The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. –C. S. Lewis
Your imagination needs to be broken in, I think, to become anywhere near as weird as the world. –Alexander Chee
From “Between the Shadow and the Soul”: Oh, but she hadn’t wanted to leave him, not really, had she. She had just wanted to know what it was like to brush up against the dazzling future again. She felt the part of her that the lush spring had stirred to life go dormant, deep in her, once more. She knew that it would not awaken again in her lifetime. She opened her arms to her husband and waited. –Lauren Groff
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking. –John Maynard Keynes
A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world. –John le Carré
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to uproot the planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to tear down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to shun embraces;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time for war, and a time of peace.
–Ecclesiastes 3:1-8