#rio

Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning. The quest quotient has always excited me more than the intelligence quotient. ↗

— Eugene S. Wilson

#intelligence #learning #obstacles #quest #resolute

Harriet was silent. She suddenly saw Wimsey in a new light. She knew him to be intelligent, clean, courteous, wealthy, well-read, amusing and enamoured, but he had not so far produced in her that crushing sense of utter inferiority which leads to prostration and hero-worship. But she now realised that there was, after all, something god-like about him. He could control a horse. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#hero-worship #horses #love #riding #superiority

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. ↗

— George Orwell

#bound #disregard #fair #fair play #hatred

Envy suggests inferiority. ↗

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

#inferiority #jealousy #jealousy

We like to stress the commonness of heroes. Essences seem undemocratic. We feel oppressed by the call to greatness. We regard an interest in glory or perfection as a sign of mental unhealthiness, and have decided that high achievers, who are called overachievers, owe their surplus ambition to a defect in mothering (either too little or too much). We want to admire but think we have a right not to be intimidated. We dislike feeling inferior to an ideal. So away with ideals, with essences. The only ideals allowed are healthy ones -- those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#ambition #democracy #egalitarianism #equality #essence

Children are notoriously curious about everything, everything except... the things people want them to know. It then remains for us to refrain from forcing any kind of knowledge upon them, and they will be curious about everything. ↗

— Floyd Dell

#curiosity #education #youth #education

Inventory: "Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#contentment #curiosity #doubt #envy #foes

We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#exploration #explore #land #mysterious #mystery

If you're going to do something, strive to do it better than anyone else. Do it all the way. If you're going to half-ass it, why bother? ↗

— Ashly Lorenzana

#effort #extreme #goals #life #performance

The will of God is not something you add to your life. It’s a course you choose. You either line yourself up with the Son of God…or you capitulate to the principle which governs the rest of the world. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#life #priorities #life