“Those fortunate enough to possess controlled neurosis – which is the manifestation of ‘total focus,’ which is the secret to thinking big – are ‘obsessive, they’re driven, they’re singleminded and sometimes they’re almost maniacal.... Where other people are paralyzed by neurosis, [successful entrepreneurs] are actually helped by it.’”
Donald Trump in The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump and Tony Schwartz, cited in Chronicles magazine June 1988 [and how true it proved, and how unselfaware]
“We meet here [the grave of her brother, who died of croup at two and a half, two years before she was born]. It is a place where there is but a thin veil between the past, the present, and the future. It is a thin place, a sacred space for the two of us. The phrase ‘thin places’ comes to us from legends of pre-Christian Ireland…. Heaven and Earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart; but in a thin place that distance is even shorter. It’s a place where we can sense the Divine more readily. Or perhaps it refers to a place where one can travel back and forth between two worlds: this one and the eternal world. Stonehenge comes to mind. As does Mount Sinai… We encounter God in the thin places, which become sacred spaces when we sanctify the ephemeral with monuments and alters…. There are man-made thin spaces. Cathedrals that soar… Or the small house of worship that cried out to Saint Francis of Assisi to be repaired. There is music that breaks the barrier… We have all had those moments when we felt touched… [her elision] by something.”
Diane Weber Bederman in Convivium 10-11/13
“‘Are you going to go back to farming after the war, captain?’ ‘I can think of better ways to make a living than looking up a mule’s arse.’”
Harry S Truman in the movie Truman (from his time in World War I), slightly Bowdlerized.
In my latest Epoch Times column I challenge Canadians, especially those in positions of authority, to stop embracing and even enforcing mediocrity… starting by admitting they have a problem.
“‘Because you don’t love mankind, that’s why!’ ‘I love mankind… it’s people I can’t stand!!’”
Lucy and Linus at the end of a Peanuts strip (of which only these two panels appear as the illustration on story in Maclean’s May 15, 2006).
Robson’s Rules of History: Anything with “People’s” in the name is a bad thing.
One of mine, obviously, from October 29, 1997 (I did not record what specific entity or incident prompted the thought)
“Woke /wōk/informal • US (adj.) A state of awareness only achieved by those dumb enough to find injustice in everything except their own behavior.”
Comment by Stewart Read on the Climate Discussion Nexus “Pinker To The Rescue” Readout video
“Boredom can literally kill you, according to an excellent new little book on the subject, published this week… Lars Svendsen, author of A Philosophy of Boredom... was inspired to write the book by a friend who killed himself out of boredom, and Mr. Svendsen shows how boredom, or the escape from boredom, is a much greater incitement to action than is excitement. People get drunk out of boredom; people give up reading newspaper articles such as this one out of boredom; people contract unwise sexual encounters out of boredom. But the dreadful thing is that even sex ends up boring, according to Mr. Svendsen. There is, in fact, a psychological term for it, he says: taedium sexualitatis.... Humans seem to be unfairly picked out for boredom, as we are for drunkenness and suicide, lemmings notwithstanding. Animals, medical studies apparently show, can be understimulated, but not bored. And, even worse, modern humans seem to be particularly prey … The word ‘boring’ in the dreary sense, as opposed to the drilling water pipes sense was used for the first time in England only in the 1760s. That’s not to say that people weren’t bored before 1760, just that there was a European explosion of boredom at about that time. The Germans invented their word for boredom, Langeweile, at the same time. And it was only with late-18th-century Romanticism that the demand got going for life to be interesting. The obsession has boomed ever since. Nowadays, it is hard to think of a time when one is not subject to at least one of the four types … Mr. Svendsen comes up with: boredom of situation, such as being trapped on a train without a book; boredom of satiety, when you have too much of a good thing; existential boredom, where you’ve just had enough of the world; and creative boredom, when you’re forced to come up with something new such as, say, an interesting item in a newspaper article.”
An author whose name I did not record in the Ottawa Citizen March 12, 2005