#praise

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise. ↗

— Marcus Aurelius

#anything #asks #beautiful #beauty #better

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty. ↗

— Augustine of Hippo

#deserve #doing #duty #ought #our

As to judging our own time, and thereby gaining some basis for a judgment of future possibilities, we are doubtless not only too close to it to appraise it but too much formed by it and enclosed within it to do so. ↗

— Emily Greene Balch

#basis #close #doubtless #enclosed #formed

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like. ↗

— Walter Benjamin

#because #books #buy #could #dissatisfied

Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration to be dead. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#consideration #dead #either #eulogy #person

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I’m a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child’s life, and in a child’s level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad. ↗

— Dan Pearce

#arguing #break #child #children #dads

It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

#eat #i #insisting #me #possible

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours. ↗

— Lao Tzu

#cannot #cast #covet #doth #even

Oasis are not just influenced by the Beatles; they actually take stuff. Then they get praised. ↗

— Lenny Kravitz

#beatles #get #influenced #just #oasis

From the cave to the skyscraper, from the club to weapons of mass destruction, from the tautological life of the tribe to the era of globalization, the fictions of literature have multiplied human experiences, preventing us from succumbing to lethargy, self-absorption, resignation. Nothing has sown so much disquiet, so disturbed our imagination and our desires as the life of lies we add, thanks to literature, to the one we have, so we can be protagonists in the great adventures, the great passions real life will never give us. The lies of literature become truths through us, the readers transformed, infected with longings and, through the fault of fiction, permanently questioning a mediocre reality. Sorcery, when literature offers us the hope of having what we do not have, being what we are not, acceding to that impossible existence where like pagan gods we feel mortal and eternal at the same time, that introduces into our spirits non-conformity and rebellion, which are behind all the heroic deeds that have contributed to the reduction of violence in human relationships. Reducing violence, not ending it. Because ours will always be, fortunately, an unfinished story. That is why we have to continue dreaming, reading, and writing, the most effective way we have found to alleviate our mortal condition, to defeat the corrosion of time, and to transform the impossible into possibility. ↗

— Mario Vargas Llosa

#in-praise-of-reading-and-fiction #nobel-prize #reading #dreams