#i

Do not enter where too much is anticipated. It is the misfortune of the over-celebrated that they cannot measure up to excessive expectations. The actual can never attain the imagined: for to think perfection is easy, but to embody it is most difficult. The imagination weds the wish, and together they always conjure up more than reality can furnish. For however great may be a person's virtues, the will never measure up to what was imagined. When people see themselves cheated in their extravagant anticipations, they turn more quickly to disparagement than to praise. Hope is a great falsifier of the truth; the the intelligence put her right by seeing to it that the fruit is superior to its appetite. You will make a better exit when the actual transcends the imagined, and is more than was expected. ↗

— Baltasar Gracián

#art

You had hoped that smarter creatures would be wiser ones. ↗

— Peter Watts

#smarter #wisdom #intelligence

We become adolescents when the words that adults exchange with one another become intelligible to us. ↗

— Natalia Ginzburg

#intelligence

Sad but true: individual intelligence probably peaked in the Upper Paleolithic, and we have been self-domesticated creatures ever since ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#intelligence #intelligence

I am Emma Woodhouse. I feel for her, of her and in her. I have a different sort of snobbism, but I understand her snobbism. Her priggishness. I admire it. I know she does wrong things, she tries to organize other people's lives, she can't see Mr Knightley is a man in a million. She's temporarily silly, yet all the time one knows she's basically intelligent. Creative, determined to set the highest standards. A real human being. ↗

— John Fowles

#intelligence #jane-austen #mr-knightley #snobbery #intelligence

You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#thought-provoking #intelligence

The money… will talk?' said Mr Spools carefully. 'Imps,' said Moist. 'They're only a sort of intelligent spell. They don't even have to have a shape. We'll print them on the higher denominations. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#money #intelligence

The outgrowth of conservation, the inevitable result, is national efficiency. ↗

— Gifford Pinchot

#efficiency #inevitable #national #outgrowth #result

You can manage 50 people through the strength of your personality and lack of sleep. You can touch them all in a week and make sure they're all pointed in the right direction. ↗

— Mark Pincus

#lack #make #manage #people #personality

Every gift which is given, even though is be small, is in reality great, if it is given with affection. ↗

— Pindar

#affection #even #every #gift #given