#con

If we wish to know about a man, we ask 'what is his story--his real, inmost story?'--for each of us is a biography, a story. Each of us is a singular narrative, which is constructed, continually, unconsciously, by, through, and in us--through our perceptions, our feelings, our thoughts, our actions; and, not least, our discourse, our spoken narrations. Biologically, physiologically, we are not so different from each other; historically, as narratives--we are each of us unique. ↗

— Oliver Sacks

#human-condition #humanity #individuality #uniqueness #perception

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to. ↗

— Simone de Beauvoir

#daughters #expectations #fathers #ideals #perception

There's not a liberal America and a conservative America - there's the United States of America. ↗

— Barack Obama

#conservative #liberal #states #united #united states

So, what can't you take? Decide which of the two options is harder, and do the other. That way, no matter how hard your choice turns out to be, at least you can find comfort in knowing you're avoiding something even worse. ↗

— Josephine Angelini

#decision-making #comfort

As the connections have been broken by the fragmentation and isolation of work, they can be restored by restoring the wholeness of work. There is work that is isolating, harsh, destructive, specialized or trivialized into meaninglessness. And there is work that is restorative, convivial, dignified and dignifying, and pleasing. Good work is not just the maintenance of connections - as one is now said to work "for a living" or "to support a family" - but the enactment of connections. It is living, and a way of living; it is not support for a family in the sense of an exterior brace or prop, but is one of the forms and acts of love. (pg. 133, The Body and the Earth) ↗

— Wendell Berry

#living #love #wholeness #work #art

On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#dr-watson #mystery #sherlock-holmes #art

Baseball is the only field of endeavor where a man can succeed three times out of ten and be considered a good performer. ↗

— Ted Williams

#baseball #considered #endeavor #field #good

We're consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don't concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra... ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#crime

You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#mistakes

He owned an expensive camera that required thought before you pressed the shutter, and I quickly became his favorite subject, round-faced, missing teeth, my thick bangs in need of a trim. They are still the pictures of myself I like best, for they convey that confidence of youth I no longer possess, especially in front of a camera. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#photography #photos #pictures #youth #youth