#if

I'm a sucker for good black skirts and pretty little shirts and kooky tops. I have to admit that shopping satisfies my craving for immediate gratification. ↗

— Sophie Ellis Bextor

#black #craving #good #gratification #i

A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him. ↗

— Jostein Gaarder

#joker #loneliness #stranger #king

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53) (Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.) ↗

— Huston Smith

#generosity #gift #giving #non-attachment #practice

Perhaps it's more merciful to forget the dead instead of remembering them. ↗

— Jose Bergaman

#forget #instead #merciful #more #perhaps

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#lifelong-learning #intellect

When my now ex wife said she wanted a separation, I was horrified. So I said, “You want me to wear a condom?!”
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#failure #false-conclusion #horrified #horror #mistake

That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe. ↗

— John Berger

#beautiful #believe #course #crystal #deeply

Alan, you seem to think we won't like you unless you do things just like everyone else. Have you ever thought we might like you because you're different? ↗

— Tamora Pierce

#identity #identity

I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social. ↗

— Woody Allen

#misanthrope #social-anxiety #socialism

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement. Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory. ↗

— Yukio Mishima

#elegance #inaction #indifference #japan #passivity