Quotables

Just a gathering of advice and ideas that I have come across in the last few months and has stayed with me since. — CD

Zuibun nagaku ikasarete itadaite orimasu ne.

“I have been alive for a very long time, haven’t I?”

Totally impossible to translate, but the nuance is something like: I have been caused to live by the deep conditions of the universe to which I a humbly and deeply grateful. P. Arai calls it the “gratitude tense,” and says the beauty of this grammatical construction is that “there is no finger pointing to a source.” She also says, “It is impossible to feel angry when using this tense.” — Ruth Ozeki (found in the Social Social Distance Club)

“To realize your existence, do the things you know you should do — the duties that echo from deep below. Stop avoiding your life.” — u/TheEmployedMoth1 on Reddit

“When you are making plans, you are actually not making plans but you are creating reality…” — Somewhere on Reddit

“A big secret is that you can bend the world to your will a surprising percentage of the time—most people don’t even try, and just accept that things are the way that they are. … Ask for what you want. You usually won’t get it, and often the rejection will be painful. But when this works, it works surprisingly well.” — Sam Altman, How To Be Successful