Looking good

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.
They don't mean to do harm—but the harm does not interest them.
Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed
in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

            T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party

Believe it

Wear a mask long enough and it becomes your face.
Play a role long enough and it becomes who you are.
Spend enough time pretending something is true
and you might as well believe it.

        Kevin Simler, The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

 

 

What is all this?

The basic drive behind real philosophy is curiosity about the world, not interest in the writings of philosophers. Each of us emerges from the preconsciousness of babyhood and simply finds himself here, in it, in the world. That experience alone astonishes some people. What is all this — what is the world? And what are we?

Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher

 

 

 

 

Right and wrong

If we were not provided with the knack for being wrong,
we could never get anything useful done.
We think our way along by choosing between right and wrong alternatives,
and the wrong choices have to be made as frequently as the right ones.

            Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail

 

 

 

 

Look no further

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.

            John Barth, The End of the Road

 

 

 

 

 

Tend to your corner

I've had to learn, time and again,
that faithfulness isn’t always about taking big leaps,
but also walking with small steps,
and that it’s possible to make a lasting difference in the world
by tending to one small corner of it.

        Mariann Edgar Budde, How We Learn to Be Brave

 

 

 

 

Poem: Dawn

5am: the frogs
ask what is it, what is it?
It is what it is.

         Campbell McGrath