Thursday, February 21, 2008

Rojak

~Guys are like Parking lots the good ones are takin, and all the rest are handicapped.

"In writing think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Write what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery."
- Julia Cameron

``Any idiot can face a crisis - it's this day-to-day living that wears you out.'"
-- Anton Chekov

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"It was like this: you were happy."

Happiness comes when the story is over. Happiness _means_ that the story is over. Stories - books, songs, fables, ballads - must by definition tell of unhappiness, because without a struggle there's nothing to say. ~Deborah Markus

On Being Present (Pascal)

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away. We try to give it the support of the future, and think how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching.

Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so. -- Pascal (Pensees)

Success

To laugh often and much...
To win the respect of intelligent people,
And the affection of children...
To earn the appreciation of honest critics,
And to endure the betrayal of false friends...
To appreciate joy and beauty
And find the best in others...
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child,
A garden path, or a redeemed social condition...
To know that even one life has breathed
More easily because you have lived...
That is to have succeeded.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

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