#or

Although initially only few in numbers, it seems my gray hairs have launched an effective peer-pressure campaign intended to convert the others. ↗

— Steve Maraboli

#funny #gray-hair #humor #peer-pressure #experience

The world never leaves one in ignorance or in peace. ↗

— Ouida

#peace #the-world #experience

It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#constitution #liberty #morality #usa #values

What does literature do better than anything else? It provides a detailed representation of the inner experience of being alive in a given time and place. ↗

— Elif Batuman

#neuro-lit-crit #theory #experience

Who me? God, no, I'm terrible . . . " Then, just as an experiment, I say, "And, besides, I don't think I'm good-looking enough to be an actor." Oh, that's not true! There are lots of actors who aren't good-looking . . . ↗

— David Nicholls

#experience

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#despair #immortality #wisdom #death

I am astonished at the pleasure one experiences in doing good; and I should be tempted to believe that what we call virtuous people have not so much merit as they lead us to suppose. ↗

— Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

#good-works #vicomte-de-valmont #virtue #experience

A man cannot impart the true feeling of things to others unless he himself has experienced what he is trying to tell of. ↗

— Jack Kerouac

#beat #early-stories-and-other-writings #experience-mistakes-wisdom #jack-kerouac #man

My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy. ↗

— George Eliot

#morality #experience

The more interesting life becomes, in other words, the more boredom we are doomed to experience. ↗

— Susan Maushart

#leisure #media #experience