#truism

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? What thousand words? A thousand words from a lunatic, or a thousand words from Nietzsche? Actually, Nietzsche was a lunatic, but you see my point. What about a thousand words from a rambler vs. 500 words from Mark Twain? He could say the same thing quicker and with more force than almost any other writer. One thousand words from Ginsberg are not even worth one from Wilde. It’s wild to declare the equivalency of any picture with any army of 1,000 words. Words from a writer like Wordsworth make you appreciate what words are worth. 
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#genius #humor #humorist #maxism #nietzsche

People do more for their fellows than return favors and punish cheaters. They often perform generous acts without the slightest hope for payback ranging from leaving a tip in a restaurant they will never visit again to throwing themselves on a live grenade to save their brothers in arms. [Robert] Trivers together with the economists Robert Frank and Jack Hirshleifer has pointed out that pure magnanimity can evolve in an environment of people seeking to discriminate fair weather friends from loyal allies. Signs of heartfelt loyalty and generosity serve as guarantors of one s promises reducing a partner s worry that you will default on them. The best way to convince a skeptic that you are trustworthy and generous is to be trustworthy and generous. ↗

— Steven Pinker

#generosity #loyalty #trustworthiness #nature

Most men have always wanted as much as they could get; and possession has always blunted the fine edge of their altruism. ↗

— Katherine Fullerton Gerould

#always #blunted #could #edge #fine

We, all of us, could do a much better job of evoking what someone has called the universal principle of human altruism: the urge in us all to help others who are in danger. ↗

— Bart Starr

#better #better job #called #could #danger

Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy. ↗

— Erol Ozan

#empathy #helping #human-nature #life-lesson #life-lessons

I dislike guilt." the Morrigan said." it is regret and recrimination and despair over that which cannot be changed. It is like eating ashes for breakfast. It is the whip that clerics use on the laity, making the sheep slaves to whatever moral code the shepherds espouse. it is a catalyst for suicide and untold other acts of selfishness and stupidity. I cannot think of a more poisonous emotion!" ... "Why do you bother to feel it?" Atticus: "Because an inability to feel guilt points to sociopathic tendencies. ↗

— Kevin Hearne

#change

Your not reliable. You wouldn't be at all a comfortable sort of person to live with. ↗

— Agatha Christie

#death

I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy. ↗

— Kahlil Gibran

#gibran #giving #joy #life #service

Like, in general I think people have very complicated reasons for wanting things, and we often have no idea whether we’re actually motivated by altruism or a desire to hook up or a search for answers or what. I always get annoyed when in books or movies characters want clear things for clear reasons, because my experience of humanness is that I always want messy things for messy reasons. ↗

— John Green

#characters #desire #messy #experience

Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. ↗

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

#experience