stuff tagged with "perspective"

Suffering isn’t something I avoid. It’s something I love—I love what it brings, what’s on the other side of it. When we’re climbing Mt. Everest, we’re all suffering together, facing the same battle, chasing the same dream. Suffering makes the accomplishment that much more fulfilling.

— Elizabeth Rose

I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. A fire engine goes by, and I give them a thumbs up. I see a woman with a dog and I ask the woman what kind of dog that is. The moral of the story is we’re here on Earth to fart around.

— Kurt Vonnegut

My Taste Is Basic. So What?


🔗 a linked post to harpersbazaar.com » — originally shared here on

I can’t live in hell and make excuses for ravenously consuming a shitty reality show produced by a person I don’t know personally on a network I am unaffiliated with. You can use “I like it!” (the exclamation point is necessary) any time freaks question a regular-ass thing you enjoy, and it’ll swipe their legs out from under them every single time, and you can stand over their quivering body with your subpar tastes and laugh your face off.

Deploy it whenever you want, then sit back and watch judgmental friends splutter and try to choke out a response, because what people like that really want is to show off how much more cultured and evolved they are than you, and saying “I like it!” robs them of that opportunity.

It’ll all work out. Even if it doesn’t, it all works out.

— Cody Blades

Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.

— Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

One of the best secrets of a happy life is the art of extracting comfort and sweetness from every circumstance.

— Thomas Mitchell

How to Figure Out What People Want


🔗 a linked post to every.to » — originally shared here on

If you’re thinking, “Figure out the kinds of sequences that generate good responses,” you’re still looking for essences. You’re seeking a list of words that can make someone excited.

Instead, the process of making something that people want is the process of learning, through experiment and error, to be the kind of person who can generate needs, wants, and jobs in other people. 

This kind of person is one who notices that a new restaurant in their neighborhood has a line out the door. Instead of walking by, they walk in. 

They stop to notice the soft, earthy color palette of its interior decoration, one that evokes a coastal Mediterranean village. They see the way its menu layers in unexpected ingredients like za’atar, cinnamon, and chile as subtle references to other cultures and traditions. They notice the feelings that this sequence of experience evokes in them, the way it feels familiar and also pleasantly surprising. They know that if they linger on these feelings, they’ll be able to evoke them later—for themselves and for others—in a logo design or an article.

I’ve been trying to be more aware of things happening to me lately.

I know I can be in my head, a million miles away from reality unfolding before me. I feel more comfortable there, if I’m honest. Reality can be uncomfortable, not quite right for me.

As it turns out, when you retreat from reality too often, you start to forget that while it can be uncomfortable sometimes, its contents can be incredible.

I’m finding that the moments I am aware of what’s happening around me are when I am the happiest.

And it turns out, paying attention to reality with your own unique perspective can really make a difference for others.

Genius is the power of carrying the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say, the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society — things can look dark, then a break shows in the clouds, and all is changed, sometimes rather suddenly.

— E.B. White

I think a great way to go through a comedy career is to make yourself happy. If you stick to that, chances are that the worse thing that happens is you’ve made yourself happy.

— Conan O’Brien

Life feels simpler when we tell ourselves there is a single truth and everything else is a deviation from that truth–an error, a lie, an ‘untruth’. It’s disturbing to imagine that we can shape reality simply by choosing a different truth. The very idea of competing truths feels slippery, disingenuous, conniving.

— Hector Macdonald

We don’t stop playing because we grow old
 We grow old because we stop playing.

— George Bernard Shaw

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

— Louis L'Amour

The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.

— George Bernard Shaw

Despair is a failure of the imagination.

— Wade Davis

And remember this, that if you've been hated, you've also been loved.

— Henry James, “The Portrait of a Lady”

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.

— Native American Proverb

The grass is always greener on the side that’s fertilized with bullshit.

— Unknown

It never gets easier, you just get faster.

— Greg LeMond

Everything we have belongs to others; time alone is ours.

— Seneca

When you focus on the past, that’s your ego. When I focus on the future, that's my pride. I try to focus on the present. That's humility.

— Giannis Antetokounmpo

If you were to put your problem down on a table at the same time as others, odds are you’ll pick your own up pretty quick.

— Chris Bosh

They can’t kill you and they can’t eat you. Suit up.

— Len Fassler

It is important to draw wisdom from many different places. If you only draw wisdom from one place, it becomes rigid and stale. Understanding others, the other elements and the other nations, will help you become whole.

— Uncle Iroh, Avatar: The Last Airbender

We do not remember days, we remember moments.

— Cesare Pavese

Why can’t life’s problems hit us when we’re seventeen and know everything?

— A.C. Jolly

Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

— Susan Ertz

Some people will never learn anything for this reason: because they understood everything too soon.

— Alexander Pope

Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.

— G. Michael Hopf

I do it for a challenge. I look around and see that most of the people I went to school with are dead or seriously ill and think how lucky I am.

— 'Death Valley Jack' Dennis, oldest participant of the Badwater Ultramarathon

Every man dies, not every man really lives.

— William Wallace, Braveheart

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.

— George Moore

Time isn't the main thing. It's the only thing.

— Miles Davis

Everything you want is on the hard side of work.

— Tim Kennedy

Everything around you that you call "life" was made up by people that were no smarter than you. You can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

— Steve Jobs