#improvement

If you’re any good at all, you know you can be better. ↗

— Lindsay Buckingham

#excellence #improvement #maturity #practice #maturity

Certainly the most destructive vice if you like, that a person can have. More than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins - is self pity. Self pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive. It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred, and I think actually hatred's a subset of self pity and not the other way around - ' It destroys everything around it, except itself '. Self pity will destroy relationships, it'll destroy anything that's good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. And it's so simple to imagine that one is hard done by, and that things are unfair, and that one is underappreciated, and that if only one had had a chance at this, only one had had a chance at that, things would have gone better, you would be happier if only this, that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true. But, to pity oneself as a result of them is to do oneself an enormous disservice. I think it's one of things we find unattractive about the american culture, a culture which I find mostly, extremely attractive, and I like americans and I love being in america. But, just occasionally there will be some example of the absolutely ravening self pity that they are capable of, and you see it in their talk shows. It's an appalling spectacle, and it's so self destructive. I almost once wanted to publish a self help book saying 'How To Be Happy by Stephen Fry : Guaranteed success'. And people buy this huge book and it's all blank pages, and the first page would just say - ' Stop Feeling Sorry For Yourself - And you will be happy '. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings, and that's what the book would be, and it would be true. And it sounds like 'Oh that's so simple', because it's not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself, it's bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves, it's what Genesis is all about. ↗

— Stephen Fry

#depression #depression-humor #happiness #marriage-advice #morality

There are significant human rights abuses in China. In some areas, the situation is worse today than in the past. In other areas, there have been improvements. We will recognize the latter, and be critical of the former. ↗

— Max Baucus

#been #china #critical #former #human

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself. ↗

— Alexander Graham Bell

#credit #developments #discoveries #due #feel

It is difficult for me to believe that quantum mechanics, working very well for currently practical set-ups, will nevertheless fail badly with improvements in counter efficiency. ↗

— John S. Bell

#believe #counter #currently #difficult #efficiency

The negative patterns that form as a result of this self defeating behaviour actually symbolize the negative belief that we nurture. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#mind-body-spirit #mind-power #money #motivational #new-age

Exercise is the chief source of improvement in our faculties. ↗

— Hugh Blair

#chief #exercise #faculties #improvement #our

We're the largest home improvement company today, and we did $30 billion last year, or less than 10 percent of the total amount of building materials sold in the U.S. So when people ask, how much runway left does Home Depot have, it's an awful lot. ↗

— Arthur Blank

#ask #awful #billion #building #company

Ancient Rome was as confident of the immutability of its world and the continual expansion and improvement of the human lot as we are today. ↗

— Arthur Erickson

#ancient rome #confident #continual #expansion #human

Again, Be careful to make a good improvement of precious time. ↗

— David Brainerd

#be careful #careful #good #improvement #make