Some Quotes for January 2025 (#33)
Robert Johnson, Beryl Bainbridge, François de La Rochefoucauld, Matthew Yglesias, Sasha Chapin, Lindsay Gibson, Michael Prichard, Daniel Immerwahr, Linus Pauling
Link = source I've actually read/endorse. No link = random, out-of-context snippet I was able to track down on the internet. (Some of these are advice—others I just enjoy the language or sentiment.)
The world is run by those who show up. –Robert Johnson
The older one becomes the quicker the present fades into sepia and the past looms up in glorious technicolor. –Beryl Bainbridge
Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue. –François de La Rochefoucauld
From “How to Get Slightly Better at Things”: I’m a pretty unathletic person, but I’m a successful writer, so your intuition is probably to ask me for writing advice rather than fitness advice. But the fittest people, in my experience, are often the kind of people who genuinely enjoy exercising. It’s hard work for them, of course, just like I work hard at writing. But they enjoy it in much the way that I enjoy writing takes. They find it relaxing to get a good workout in. They genuinely feel bad if some happenstance prevents them from getting to the gym…If you’re trying to get a bit less schlubby, a bit more patient with your kid, develop a healthier eating habit, or teach a slower learner to read, you need to think hard about what’s sustainable. And you need to look at the people who are doing a bit better than they were before, not the people who are doing way better than everyone else. –
From “How to Like Everything More”: Sometimes after emerging from a film I enjoy, I’ll note the one or two things I didn’t find convincing, or mention what I would’ve modified if I were God and able to alter video files through instantaneous will. This is puzzling and annoying to some others, but I find that if I love something deeply, I end up loving it all the more if I locate its weak points. Often, this helps you find the necessary points of tradeoff that actually made the thing great. If conducted covertly, this particular mental habit allows you to love people more deeply and realistically, by noticing how the annoying thing about them and the great thing are fundamentally intertwined. –
If a person wants to understand what you’re saying, then it doesn’t matter how you say it. If the person doesn't want to understand you, it doesn't matter what you say. –Lindsay Gibson
No matter how rich you become, how famous or how powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather. –Michael Prichard
From “What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?”: The suspicion that all this is élite anxiety in the face of a democratizing mediascape deepens when you consider what the attentionistas want people to focus on. Generally, it’s fine art, old books, or untrammelled nature—as if they were running a Connecticut boarding school. Above all, they demand patience, the inclination to stick with things that aren’t immediately compelling or comprehensible. Patience is indeed a virtue, but a whiff of narcissism arises when commentators extoll it in others, like a husband praising an adoring wife. It places the responsibility for communication on listeners, giving speakers license to be overlong, unclear, or self-indulgent. When someone calls for audiences to be more patient, I instinctively think, Alternatively, you could be less boring. –Daniel Immerwahr
If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas. –Linus Pauling