• @sunaurus@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I’m a simple man:

    “What day is it?” asked Pooh.

    “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.

    “My favorite day,” said Pooh.

  • The willow knows what the storm does not: that the power to endure harm outlives the power to inflict it.

    From the Magic: The Gathering card “Blood of the Martyr”

    • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      71 year ago

      Oi oi oi. Me gotta hurt in here. Me smell a ting is near. Gonna bosh, and gonna nosh, and then the ting will disappear.

      — Uthden Troll

    • HobbitFoot
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      31 year ago

      Those who will not follow are doomed to lead.

      From the Magic: The Gathering card “Anarchist”

  • @electric_nan@lemmy.ml
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    261 year 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
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    191 year ago

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

    • @FederatedSaint@lemmy.world
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      101 year 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.

    • MxM111
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      61 year ago

      Aren’t you confusing cynicism with skepticism?

        • @intensely_human@lemm.ee
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          -11 year ago

          When I was in high school, a friend of mine came from a Republican family. He once told me “You think that if it would be nice that a thing were true, that means it is true”.

          It took me a long time to understand what he meant, but I finally do, and he was spot on with how my philosophy worked.

  • @Unmapped@lemmy.ml
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    171 year 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
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    171 year ago

    This too shall pass.

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

    • Call me Lenny/Leni
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      71 year ago

      That works both ways though. Even the fable where the quote originated had that as a takeaway.

        • Call me Lenny/Leni
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          31 year ago

          I mean the “this too shall pass” part. When people say the quote, usually it’s the kind of person who sees the negative treated differently than they treat the positive.

      • slazer2au
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        21 year 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’

        • 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.”

  • SanguinePar
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    1 year 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.

  • @fjordbasa@lemmy.world
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    131 year 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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      41 year 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.

      • @uhmbah@lemmy.ca
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        31 year ago

        Yes!

        “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” Alan Watts

  • @habitualcynic@lemmy.ml
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    1 year 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.

  • @kromem@lemmy.world
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    101 year ago

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

    • Socrates
  • Rottcodd
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    91 year ago

    “You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.” - Marcus Aurelius

      • Rottcodd
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        51 year ago

        Sort of.

        More it’s just the way I’ve pretty much always been. Before I was even really aware of it, I apparently figured out that I couldn’t control the outside world but I could control how I reacted to it, so that was what I focused on. One could sort of say that I did it simply because it made sense to me, but even that makes it sound more conscious than it was. It’s more that it just never occurred to me to do things any other way.

        It was only much later that I discovered that there was a philosophy called “stoicism” that advocated that.