#ss

It's failure that gives you the proper perspective on success. ↗

— Ellen DeGeneres

#success #perspective

That's what Jamie didn't understand: it was never just sex. Even the fastest, dirtiest, most impersonal screw was about more than sex. It was about connection. It was about looking at another human being and seeing your own loneliness and neediness reflected back. It was recognising that together you had the power to temporarily banish that sense of isolation. It was about experiencing what it was to be human at the basest, most instinctive level. How could that be described as just anything? ↗

— Emily Maguire

#loneliness #sex #connection

...nothing wonderful lasted forever. Joy was as fleeting as a shooting star that crossed the evening sky, ready to blink out at any moment. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#happiness #impermanence #joy #star #sky

And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#sadness #sky

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is. ↗

— Hugh Mackay

#experience

Don't. Tell me when, then. And before you say never, take a good look at me and tell me if you see a man who's easily deterred. ↗

— Sylvia Day

#gideon-cross #contemporary

As he stared back, he altered...as if a shield slid away fro his eyes, revealing a scorching force of will that sucked the air from my lungs. The intense magnetism he exuded grew in strength, becoming a near tangible impression of vibrant and unrelenting power. ↗

— Sylvia Day

#gideon-cross #contemporary

But far more numerous was the herd of such, Who think too little and who talk too much. ↗

— John Dryden

#loquacity #thoughtlessness #contemporary

But just in proportion as this process of extermination has acted on an enormous scale, so must the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record. ↗

— Charles Darwin

#conclusion-before-evidence #darwinism #evolution #fossil-record #fossils

Charm is the ability to insult people without offending them; nerdiness the reverse ↗

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#enfp-vs-intj #flirting #game #nerd #nerdiness