Oscar Wilde
- A Dynamic Life
If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.
Imagine Dragons
- Lighting Before the Thunder
Just a young man, with a quick fuse. I was uptight, wanna let loose. I was dreaming of bigger things and wanna leave my own life behind. Not a "yes sir," not a follower. Fit the box, fit the mold, have a seat in the foyer, take a number. I was lightning before the thunder.
Reinaofthecid and Hank Green
- There was no side to side pt3
Because how did we get from nothing to infinitely dense? From immeasurably small to inconceivably immense? But before we get unmoored from the question at the start, let's take a breath and marvel at when math becomes an art. Because we don't have to understand it to know there was a time, when there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side.
Reinaofthecid and Hank Green
- There was no side to side pt2
There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. And furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state, there was no here, there was no there, because there was no space. And in this endless void which can't be thought of as a space, there was no time, and so no passing minutes, hours, days. Of all the paradoxes that belabor common sense, I think this one's the greatest: this time before events.
Reinaofthecid and Hank Green
- There was no side to side pt1
There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. There was no light, there was no dark, nor shape of any kind. There were no stars or planet Mars, or protons to collide. There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side.
Carl Jung
- Life
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. You are not what happened to you, you are what you choose to become. Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.
Carl Jung
- Gifted
If you are a gifted person, it doesn't mean you got something. It means you can give something away. If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely. Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
Old Millennial
- Typing class
I learned to type while I was in elementary school. Or rather, I was forced to learn. My whole class would go to a computer room and pick away at typing games that tracked your speed and with the keyboards covered so we had to memorize the letters. There were lots of kids in my class that could regularly type faster than 100 words per minute, but no matter what I did I couldn't make it that high. Years later, here I am again, only now my classmates are online.
Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Kyoshi's wisdom
But you didn't really kill Chin. Personally I don't really see the difference, but I assure you, I would have done whatever it took to stop Chin. I offer you this wisdom, Aang, only justice will bring peace.
NotaProf
- College Education
I've been thinking over my college education recently. I was accepted into really prestigious universities, Yale, that sort of thing. But I ended up graduating from the small local college. I remember at the time being afraid, of feeling like I would be swallowed up by the prestige, and made into something else. I now think it was probably not a very smart thing to do, but it was very possibly wise. Take that how you will.
Rent - Anthony Rapp and Tracie Thoms
- The Tango Maureen
Say something, anything. Test one, two, three. Anything but that. This is weird. It's weird. Very weird. Fucking weird. I'm so mad that I don't know what to do. Fighting with microphones, freezing down to my bones, and to top it all off, I'm with you. Feel like going insane, got a fire in your brain, and you're thinking of drinking gasoline? As a matter of fact! Honey, I know this act: it's called the Tango Maureen.
Morgan Housel - The Psychology of Money
- Enough
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have... enough."
Carmen Maria Machado
- Her Body and Other Parties
I took a step towards her. "It is my right to reside in my own mind. It is my right," I said. And isn't that how you become tender, vulnerable? The tissue softening marination of your own mind, the quicksand of mental indulgence?
Natasha Pulley
- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
He was not poor; he could afford ten candles and two baths a week. He wasn't going to throw himself in the Thames for the misery of it all and God knew most of London was worse off. All the same, he had a feeling that life should not have been about ten candles and two baths a week.
