#toi

One person couldn't feel all that, they'd explode!" said Ron. "Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have," said Hermione. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#hermione-granger #ron-weasley #stoic #emotion

Each action we take is an act of self-expression. We often think of large-scale or important deeds as being indications of our real selves, but even how we sharpen a pencil can reveal something about our feelings at that moment. Do we sharpen the pencil carefully or nervously so that it doesn’t break? Do we bother to pay attention to what we’re doing? How do we sharpen the same pencil when we’re angry or in a hurry? Is it the same as when we’re calm or unhurried? Even the smallest movement discloses something about the person executing the action because it is the person who’s actually performing the deed. In other words, action doesn’t happen by itself, we make it happen, and in doing so we leave traces of ourselves on the activity. The mind and body are interrelated. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#ki #meditation #mind #mind-and-body-unification #nakamura-tempu

Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart? ↗

— Jane Austen

#duty

In Japan, a number of time-honored everyday activities (such as making tea, arranging flowers, and writing) have traditionally been deeply examined by their proponents. Students study how to make tea, perform martial arts, or write with a brush in the most skillful way possible to express themselves with maximum efficiency and minimum strain. Through this efficient, adroit, and creative performance, they arrive at art. But if they continue to delve even more deeply into their art, they discover principles that are truly universal, principles relating to life itself. Then, the art of brush writing becomes shodo—the “Way of the brush”—while the art of arranging flowers is elevated to the status of kado—the “Way of flowers.” Through these Ways or Do forms, the Japanese have sought to realize the Way of living itself. They have approached the universal through the particular. ↗

— H.E. Davey

#budo #do #efficiency #flowers #ikebana

For with all that is grand, grander is the expansion of the mind. ↗

— Nancy B. Brewer

#historical #mystery-suspense #romance #victoiran #historical-romance

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt. ↗

— Max Beerbohm

#done #doubt #fine #self-sacrifice #toil

It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you. ↗

— Phillips Brooks

#great #life #little #meaning #patiently

Well, in Japan, I have got a group of musicians that I have worked with a lot, that concentrate just on the hardcore stuff, say, that Naked City has been working on. We have like a repertoire of sixty songs now. ↗

— John Zorn

#city #concentrate #got #group #hardcore

We called him Tortoise because he taught us. ↗

— Lewis Carroll

#called #him #taught #tortoise #us

Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car, and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar, and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it, an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened. ↗

— Eugene Chadbourne

#breaking #car #case #cause #dog