Brian Hare · 384 pages
Rating: (1.9K votes)
“Consider Steve Jobs. One biographer said, “Was he smart? No, not exceptionally. Instead he was a genius.” Jobs dropped out of college, went to find himself in India, and at one point was forced out of Apple, the company he co-founded, when sales were slow in 1985. Few would have predicted the level of his success by his death. “Think different” became the slogan of a multinational monolith that fused art and technology under his guidance. Jobs may have been average or unexceptional in many domains, but his vision and ability to think differently made him a genius.”
“It's always a little nerve-wracking when everybody agrees.”
“Openness (artistic, curious, imaginative, with a wide range of interests) Conscientiousness (efficient, organized, responsible, ambitious, able to delay gratification) Extroversion (assertive, energetic, enthusiastic, finds the company of others stimulating) Agreeableness (forgiving, generous, kind, considerate toward others) Neuroticism (anxious, tense, sensitive to criticism, moody)”
“One of the most famous dogs in Chinese history was from the eighth century. The emperor was playing chess with a prince and losing badly. His favorite concubine, legendary for her beauty, was watching discreetly in the distance with her little dog called Wo. Seeing her master losing face, she let Wo run onto the chessboard and knock over all the pieces. The emperor was delighted.”
“Chimpanzees are so skilled at working together to hunt down other chimpanzees that lethal intergroup aggression, or murder, is among the leading causes of mortality in wild chimpanzees.”
“of the actual objects of physical reality. Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended.”
“13084
Tonight I came back to the hotel alone; the other has decided to return later on. The anxieties are already here, like the poison already prepared (jealousy, abandonment, restlessness); they merely wait for a little time to pass in order to be able to declare themselves with some propriety. I pick up a book and take a sleeping pill, "calmly." The silence of this huge hotel is echoing, indifferent, idiotic (faint murmur of draining bathtubs); the furniture and the lamps are stupid; nothing friendly that might warm ("I'm cold, let's go back to Paris). Anxiety mounts; I observe its progress, like Socrates chatting (as I am reading) and feeling the cold of the hemlock rising in his body; I hear it identify itself moving up, like an inexorable figure, against the background of the things that are here.”
“Somehow dying was like that. A sense of nervousness and finality and sorrow because for a season, they wouldn’t be together.”
“Victorian rigidities were such that ladies were not even allowed to blow out candles in mixed company, as that required them to pucker their lips suggestively. They could not say that they were going "to bed"--that planted too stimulating an image--but merely that they were "retiring." It became effectively impossible to discuss clothing in even a clinical sense without resort to euphemisms. Trousers became "nether integuments" or simply "inexpressibles" and underwear was "linen." Women could refer among themselves to petticoats or, in hushed tones, stockings, but could mention almost nothing else that brushed bare flesh.”
“Когато сутрин ставаш, помисли каква безценна привилегия имаш - да си жив, да милиш, да се наслаждаваш, да обичаш. /Марк Аврелий/”
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