Please, read books. Not just captions, or carousel posts, or what made it to the top of your feed. Read books. Long ones. Complex ones. You cannot build a mind with weight on the back of social media ephemerals. Intellectual depth demands patience.
Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions.
~Pictures of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
the gap between you and someone you consider "crazy" or "ruthless" is narrower than you’d like to think. we are all running the same software. the only difference is the set of facts we’ve decided to distort so we can sleep at night.
we spend a lot of time looking at dictators, corrupt CEOs, or people who betray their own families and asking the same question: "how do they live with themselves?" we assume there must be some grand, monstrous departure from human nature to explain it. but it's much simpler...
looking back, you’ll realize that forcing a dynamic to work is just a slow way of destroying it. letting people go before the resentment becomes permanent is the only way to protect your own peace and leave their dignity intact.
your spirit grows by what it gives. step out of your calculated greed and strike a blow for kindness on a whim. the moment you bless a man, your ego submits to your nobility. you don't love him because of who he is; you love him because of who you became when you gave.
we must not confuse self-justification with mere lying. people will always lie to avoid prison, protect their jobs, or save face. but while an explicit lie is a conscious deception aimed at others, self-justification is a subconscious deception aimed at oneself...
we must not confuse self-justification with mere lying. people will always lie to avoid prison, protect their jobs, or save face. but while an explicit lie is a conscious deception aimed at others, self-justification is a subconscious deception aimed at oneself...
when a man convinces himself that his misdeeds were actually noble acts, he has crossed a dangerous threshold. the explicit liar knows he is doing wrong; the self-justifier genuinely believes he is doing right.
the man who just crossed the point of no return is a hostage to his own ego. he praises the chains because he can't break them. if you want the cold truth about a path, never ask the fool who just bought the map. he needs to believe he won; you need to know the cost.
your spirit grows by what it gives. step out of your calculated greed and strike a blow for kindness on a whim. the moment you bless a man, your ego submits to your nobility. you don't love him because of who he is; you love him because of who you became when you gave.