Lilian Jackson Braun · 256 pages
Rating: (25.7K votes)
“Are those cat hairs on your lapel, or have you been dating a blonde with a crew cut?”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“The dance of life should be created from moment to moment with individuality and spontaneity.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“Cats have many gifts that are denied humans, and yet we tend to rate them by human standards. To understand a cat, you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality. A cat’s lack of speech does not make him a lower animal. Cats have a contempt of speech. Why should they talk when they can communicate without words? They manage very well among themselves, and they patiently try to make their thoughts known to humans. But in order to read a cat, you must be relaxed and receptive.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“We designed the house to go with her looks.”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“the canvas had disfigured it. Koko squirmed and squealed and made himself”
― Lilian Jackson Braun, quote from The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
“But it seemed I had fallen for a human—and not just any human, the worst possible human out of all seven billion possibilities.”
― Anne Greenwood Brown, quote from Lies Beneath
“I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, quote from Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
“A belligerent samurai, an old Japanese tale goes, once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell. The monk replied with scorn, "You're nothing but a lout - I can't waste my time with the likes of you!"
His very honor attacked, the samurai flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled "I could kill you for your impertinence."
"That," the monk calmly replied, "is hell."
Startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calmed down, sheathed his sword, and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight.
"And that,"said the monk "is heaven."
The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates's injunction "Know thyself" speaks to the keystone of emotional intelligence: awareness of one's own feelings as they occur.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
“We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system. This is why it's so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board).”
― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
“Basketball Rule #9
When the game is on
the line,
don't fear.
Grab the ball.
Take it
to the hoop.”
― Kwame Alexander, quote from The Crossover
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