#wisdom

Every morning the gazelle wakes up knowing she must run faster than the lion or will be dead. Every morning the lion wakes up knowing he must run faster than the gazelle or he'll starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun rises you better start to run. ↗

— Mia Couto

#life

I'm not trying to tell you," he said "that only educated men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with--which, unfortunately, is rarely the case--tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are MEREly brilliant and creative. ↗

— J.D. Salinger

#education #wisdom #education

Always blow your own trumpet, blowing someone else’s is unhygienic ↗

— Benny Bellamacina

#life #life-lessons #philosophy #wisdom #life

Don't ya wanna hear the secret?' his eyes were narrow and mean, despite the glaze of rum. Louer drained his glass and slammed it to the bar. 'You get happy by learnin' to say 'yes' to what life offers you, but stay happy by rememberin' when to start sayin' 'no'. ↗

— T.B. McKenzie

#life

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129) ↗

— Hilary Austen

#conventional-wisdom #effort #extreme-originality #genius #journey

You have to be ill if you want to get better. ↗

— Colin Firth

#wisdom #life

Books of the sages of the ages reflect upon in stages; like honey their words on the tongue give due savour.” {Source: A Green Desert Father} ↗

— Richard Mc Sweeney

#esoteric #fashion #freedom-of-thought #ireland #irish-poet

Wisdom—seems to the rabble a kind of escape, a means and a trick for getting well out of a wicked game. But the genuine philosopher—as it seems to us, my friends?—lives "unphilosophically" and "unwisely," above all imprudently, and feels the burden and the duty of a hundred attempts and temptations of life—he risks himself constantly, he plays the wicked game. ↗

— Friedrich Nietzsche

#wisdom #life

Life, said Samuel Butler, is like giving a concert on the violin while learning to play the instrument—that, friends, is real wisdom. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#life

What deep wounds ever closed without a scar? The hearts bleed longest, and heals but to wear That which disfigures it. ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#pain #wisdom #love