#owl

Presque tous les malheurs de la vie viennent des fausses idées que nous avons sur ce qui nous arrive. Connaître à fond les hommes, juger sainement des événements, est donc un grand pas vers le bonheur." ("Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.") [Journal entry, 10 December 1801] ↗

— Stendhal

#reality #reality-check #self-knowledge #self-perception #unhappiness

If Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times and not in thee thyself; then art thou lost eternally. ↗

— Angelus Silesius

#religion #self-knowledge #art

Knowledge, like money and muck (manure), serves us best when spread evenly. ↗

— Stuart Aken

#money #muck #money

Ever, we are not defined by our things. It's not the clothes we wear, the cars that we drive, the art we acquire - it's not where we live - but how we live that defines us. It's our actions that are remembered long after we're gone. ↗

— Alyson Noel

#inspirational #shadowland #art

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality. ↗

— James George Frazer

#generalisation #knowledge #science #art

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people. ↗

— Isaac Newton

#ignorance #knowledge #wisdom #nature

Whereas life separates meaning from emotion, art unites them. Story is an instrument by which you create such epiphanies at will, the phenomenon known as aesthetic emotion...Life on its own, without art to shape it, leaves you in confusion and chaos, but aesthetic emotion harmonizes what you know with what you feel to give you a heightened awareness and a sureness of your place in reality. ↗

— Robert McKee

#art #awareness #chaos #confusion #emotion

Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding ↗

— Jacob Bronowski

#knowledge #nature #power #understanding #wisdom

One had to live a long time to know a man's true nature. ↗

— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

#man #nature #personality #love

When a man has a gift in speaking the truth, brute aggression is no longer his security blanket for approval. He, on the contrary, spends most of his energy trying to tone it down because his very nature is already offensive enough. ↗

— Criss Jami

#approval #authority #blanket #brute-force #brutes